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Old 05-19-2018, 11:00 PM   #1
RoboAdmin
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Default May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

Read this article on the Illuminator.
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Old 05-20-2018, 01:18 AM   #2
flyingwombat
 
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Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

No club as such. Just a group of friends who come over to my place every month or so to play GURPS
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Old 05-20-2018, 05:49 AM   #3
Michael Cule
 
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Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

I still belong to a gaming club I joined just after I discovered DnD in the mid 1970s. I am now The Oldest Member. I live in High Wycombe, in south Buckinghamshire in the UK.

We still meet on Wednesday evenings and in the years since then we have travelled all over town using every one of the (diminishing) number of halls available for hire in town. We now meet in the eighteenth century guildhall on the High Street (which is nice for me because I live at the other end of the High Street) and my group gathers not under the benevolent gaze of Peter Frampton Coming Alive (1) but under the benevolent gaze of St Paul Preaching to The Ancient Britons.

When I joined the club was centred around the figures wargamers, serious men in jumpers with a tendency to smoke pipes. They went away and formed their own group when the rolegamers took over. When the collectable card game craze spread over us I very nearly felt like doing the same but they went away as well.

We currently have three to five tables meeting each Wednesday with up to eight players each (mine's capped at six plus GM) and just enough space for one more maybe. We had to buy some portable screens to damp down the noise in the big hall a year or so ago.

Three pounds per person per night. Your first week is free. We aren't planning to fold yet.

(1) A reference to Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff, m'lud.
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Old 05-20-2018, 06:40 AM   #4
Alan Hume
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

I am a member of SOUTH EAST SCOTLAND WARGAMES CLUB (SESWC) which has been serving the local community for years and years now (at least since the 1970's if not before) we meet in the ROYAL NAVY AND ROYAL MARINES CLUB in Edinburgh and all kinds of games are played (although mainly miniature wargames)

The late great Loren Wiseman was kind enough to visit us on several occasions
I wanted to award him an honorary lifetime membership but unfortunately it never happened
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Old 05-20-2018, 07:58 AM   #5
bms
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: St. Paul, MN
Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

The St. Paul Area Road Knights (SPARK) are still active nearly 26 years since its inception as an AADA chapter. The AADA is no more at present, but we still get together every month to play Car Wars and still have a club championship every year. We’ve got a solid core of 5 members and another 2 or 3 who duel as time permits, and we do even get new players on occasion.
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Old 05-20-2018, 07:59 AM   #6
RobKamm
 
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Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

No club. Just an irregular bunch that get together every few weeks. About half of us met through the Chicago Swordplay Guild, a notable exception came in from the SJGames Gamer Finder.
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Old 05-20-2018, 08:14 AM   #7
nancyhutch
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

I think they are called "groups" as opposed to "clubs" these days. I belong to several with membrships ranging from 15 to 100 (at least on paper). One meets in a church, the other at a local pizza restaurant where we eat and play games all day long in a room off the main dinning area. I have a "group" that meets at my house once a month. I have been invited to a couple of others - 1 meets once a week at a friend's house, the other meets once a week for a couple of hours at a Culvers restaurant.
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Old 05-20-2018, 08:25 AM   #8
johndallman
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Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

Not a club, but I host a group at my home every Wednesday, and another group monthly on a weekend afternoon.
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Old 05-20-2018, 08:27 AM   #9
Joe
 
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Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

Sadly, I've never been involved in a gaming club - if there were one around, I'd be very pleased. The closest I've got to a gaming club in my area is a new "board game cafe" that opened 2 years ago. I was excited to see it arrive, though after turning up there a few times with friends, we found that we'd prefer just to play at home. We had fun, but it wasn't clear to us that the location was adding anything significant to the experience (the drawcard was meant to be the cafe's large board game collection, but we had plenty of games at home).

The group with which I currently game regularly was formed specifically for the purposes of playing RPGs (GURPS and D&D), though we also play board games from time to time. Some members of the group were also friends or work colleagues before joining, but that's secondary for the purpose of the group.

This is a reversal of a norm for me: in the past, most of my gaming has been with groups who are friends first, and gamers-in-common second; now it's the other way around. The other notable exception to that general rule was my seven year stint as a player in a weekly RPG game with a group assembled by the owners of HERO games specifically for the purpose of playtesting HERO supplements. Almost all the players in that group were strangers to one another before joining, though after years of weekly games we naturally became friends.

Returning to the main topic: from where I sit, it looks as if "game clubs" are less common (outside of university campuses) than they once were, whereas there's a real boom in things like gamer Meetup groups, new board game cafes, and the like. But I don't place too much confidence in my view here - no doubt I'm seeing a very small fragment of the bigger picture. I'll be very interested to see how others respond.
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Old 05-20-2018, 08:46 AM   #10
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Default Re: May 20, 2018: Gaming Clubs

The university where I work has a Role-playing Games Club that was active at least a couple of years ago, when I attended a few meetings. They necessarily went dormant for the summer, and I haven't seen any activity (recruiting or promoting) since then.

All of the surviving Friendly Local Gaming Stores, as well as no few comic book stores and others, in the area offer playing space and sponsor events as part of their business model. There is one venue (The Geekery) where this is almost their entire business -- they offer only token amounts of game product (mostly collectible card game sets) and seem to survive on pre-orders and the sale of snacks and drinks.

A local company (Fenris Publishing) sponsors a playing group for their flagship Triten Gaming System: Fantasy Manual, but I haven't connected with them to see how active it is.
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