by Tony Hoffart
The current monthly carnival for the RPG Bloggers Network is “growing the hobby” this month. I’ve read some great things from a lot of very smart people on the topic – but what I want to discuss is more local.
I’m very fortunate in that a block away from my apartment is a 15 year-old independent gaming club called the Society of Quintessential United Independent Gamers or SQUIGs (cute huh). It’s never been big, and the fact that it’s survived in such a small town that has no hobby stores is a testament to the generosity of the landlord for keeping the rent for the space low, and the commitment of the club president (who has been the pillar of stability) was needed to keep the club going through the manic good times and the barren bad times.
SQUIGs was where I gamed in my high-school days. It kept me feeling somewhat fulfilled when I was dirt poor and unemployed after high-school, and it kept two boxes of my gaming books stored safely away rent-free while I spent 3 years not coming down or paying membership because I was busy working.
In truth my sabbatical from SQUIG gaming was closer to 6 years. From 2003 to 2009 I would live for 3 weeks at a time in remote camps for much of the year. I kept my skills honed by participating in Exalted IRC games and later Skype IM chats. I was running games every evening online during that period. While SQUIGs was where I was initiated into the hobby and grew into it, online was where I matured.
Then my work found me a position that had me home every night. Suddenly the two hours of prime online gaming time was spent driving home and it became impossible to maintain any RPG campaigns that way. After a period of transition, I decided that if I were to continue enjoying the hobby I loved I would need to move from online back to face-to-face gaming at the old club, so I gathered up my books and hauled them down and asked a few people if they would be interested in playing some Exalted…
I don’t know what it is about Exalted but to say I was well received would be an understatement. Guys that I hadn’t played with in half a decade were calling me two days in advance to make sure things were still a-go every week. I feared for my safety if I didn’t run the thing, these people were hungry! They wanted to play but for whatever reason had not started their own games. They attacked my Exalted game with a tenacity I honestly hadn’t expected, but in hind-sight I should have because a year ago when I returned to the club the only non-wargame RPG that had been going steady for the past 2 years was a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game being ran by the club president.
Since then, I’ve stopped running Exalted; after 5 years the game doesn’t hold the same wonder that drives me to be a Storyteller. Two of my players have taken up that mantle and are doing just as well as I did in my ST’ing prime.
This winter my girlfriend (who is not a gamer) and I started inviting all my old SQUIG friends out to drinks with all our non-gamer friends. The club was fractured, but as we invited more people everyone got together and even more games were being planned. Wargamers and RPG gamers were playing together, and I even started to see old feuds between longtime members start to cool. The club, which was badly stagnant when I returned, is starting to revitalize.
I would like to believe that some of these noticeable changes I can take credit for, but I know that they’re not solely my doing. Another friend who had returned from life afar has set up shop playing World of Warcraft at the club during the day, which keeps the doors open for people dropping in. A vital thing. Also my town’s economy is going crazy at the moment while the rest of the world is recovering from a recession, so some of the old gamers that moved away are returning because of job opportunities here in town and they’re just thrilled that the club is still surviving.
I want to continue supporting my old gaming club though and see that it survives and maybe even prospers for another 15 years. What good are all my efforts to write and design new games if I lose the one thing that’s been the greatest influence on me as a gamer? With that in-mind I’ve decided to get another World of Darkness live-action-role-play happening again. Barely out of the pitch stage and people are already approaching me and my co-storyteller about the game, a very good sign. LARPs are one of the best things that happened to the hobby in the past 15 years and in my opinion have brought more female gamers into the fold than any other RPG innovation. If you have a club venue that can support one, I strongly suggest holding them.
Other things I hope to pursue for SQUIGs in the future include a bit of cross-hobby promotion. A lot of role-players are interested in hiking, 4-Wheeling and 4×4’ing (exploring), martial arts, paintball tournaments… Oh hell, gamers are interested in tons of other hobbies! To start listing them would ultimately just be an exercise in excluding the sizable portion of gamer/knitting enthusiasts! (Or whichever.) My point is, that these days gaming is no longer the fringe hobby of social pariahs. Football players enjoy World of Warcraft. Rock stars have massive Anime collections and Harley riders are just as likely to enjoy talking with you about their Elf Cleric as the next gamer. We can begin to be more than just an RPG club, we could link up with other hobby clubs to hold cross-over events!
All the possibilities actually get me really fired up. It’s a good time to be a gamer in a lot of ways and I think if we start by trying ways to invigorate the local scene… well… the future looks bright for small start ups in the industry like Nevermet Press.
A long time pipe-dream of mine was to found an NPO dedicated to gaming, something like your SQUIGs. A location dedicated to gamers. Unfortunately, the cost of running something like has always been the primary deterrent.
This really got me thinking about other hobbies/activities that I share with the people I game with. A lot of my core group (myself included) are metalheads and hoplophiles (that’s firearm aficionados). I myself have a deep love for go-fast and pre-50s hot rods… wonder how many other gun-toting, hot-rod cruising, metal-head gamers out there?
Thanks for your addition to this month’s Blog Carnival!
Gaming clubs. — perhaps this is the future of brick and mortar hobby shops. Instead of being a retail focused busines; they could evolve into a social focused business. A local gaming “joint” where people could gather in a safe, friendly environment to play games and have fun. The idea of a gaming club – with dues – is very intriguing.
@TONY — how does your club attract new members? Word of mouth? And are new members, who have only paid dues for 0 – 1 months still allowed to make use of all the facilities and shared resources? Or is there some waiting period?
We’re mostly word of mouth advertising. People inviting people down for games and that sort of thing. As for new members we’re generally about sharing our toys and have kind of an informal period where an existing member “sponsors” the new member (or invites them to his games and teaches the ropes) before they’re likely going to start paying membership.
This is the direction gaming stores are going. Living in vancouver I can think of a number of hobby stores that host gaming in their back rooms. Drexol does magic nights and board game nights regularly, there was a place in new westmisnter that did RPG’s and served as a launching point for LARP’s There was a place in North Van that usually had people playing D&D in it whenever I wandered in. We all know we can go to games workshop to play warhammer.
In order to sell the hobbies, we need to create an environment where people can be introduced to the hobbies.
For me, only Drexol games has been able to create a friendly social environment that could compare with SQUIGs. though I must give the other locations credit for making the attempt. With practice comes experience.
I am a former SQUIGS member. A few of the things we did to attract members was to work deals with the at the time local gaming stores/comic shop that woudl offer a % discount to club members on gaming materials, we participated in the anual community cleanup(i believe we were/are the longest running group for that event), for a short tiem we were allowed access to the local high school to promote our venue and then good old fashionned word of mouth.
There were tournaments for various games mostly organised and ran by the club president that attracted crowds from 200 – 300 km away.
Like all great gaming endeavors it started in a bar….