Forming an RPG Club

[Drakeburn]

I've had the idea of starting one since High School, but since I'm now in college, starting an RPG club is a bit harder.

I stumbled upon this article and loved it. Has some good advice on how to start and run an RPG club.

But I'm wondering if anybody else have advice or experience with RPG clubs at school or college?

[Barsoom]

We had an RPG club in college. A few lessons I learned:

- As tempting and convenient it may be, NEVER play at someone's private residence. Otherwise, it's not really a club, but a private group. Find a public area, like a student lounge, and play there. That's the only way to keep drawing interest from potetial newcomers and keep the club from dying when 1-2 key members graduate.

- Speaking of key members, make sure there are several potential DMs (GMs). Rotate GMs of needed, to keep everyone's skills sharp. Again, you don't want the club to collapse just because someone graduates, or loses interest, or stops playing due to courses pressure.

- If there are multiple playing groups in the club, COMMUNICATE between them. Don't let the Wednesday group live in their own bubble, not knowing anything about the Monday folk. Player swap and DM swap is a great way to keep interest and keep the blood flowing, so the speak. Sure, in the short term, the Monday DM might be pissed off losing a player to the Wednesday group, but in the long term, it'll contribute to the club's health. From time to time, run some one-shot games free-for-all, and mega-games for everyone.

[AttilaTheGeek]

If you want to do D&D, I'd recommend Pathfinder, because a) it's free, b) there are fewer splatbooks, c) it's free, and d) it's free. Nothing convinces a potential new player to avoid joining like "you'll need to pay $40 each for the three player's handbooks".

[Zahhak]

You could also make it a more general tabletop group and get some Munchkin or Illuminati to play

[mjlush]

Ran a Soc at Uni, here is my sage advice.

1) Don't bother with a club games library, its just an admin nightmare to get the games back at the end of term... If you do run a library make it a board games library, hand them out for an evening or a week at most. Consider requiring a post dated cheque as security. Have the email address/phone number plus the name of the game borrowed on the back cross it off when its returned.

2) Your most important job is to book rooms for people to play in.

3) Games Socs in an education establishment have a natural rhythm, lots of games kick off in first term some in the second but the society more or less dies in the third term when exams/deadlines loom

4) I bet there was a games soc it may be easier to revived a defunct society, than slog through getting a constitution filling in forms etc

[Slipperychicken]

If you want to do D&D, I'd recommend Pathfinder, because a) it's free, b) there are fewer splatbooks, c) it's free, and d) it's free. Nothing convinces a potential new player to avoid joining like "you'll need to pay $40 each for the three player's handbooks".

It also posts character advancement info like the xp and WBL tables, which the 3.5 SRD doesn't.

[Totally Guy]

I've been involved in an RPG meetup group on the MeetUp website.

A couple of things I've learned:

If you intend to run a D&D club call it a D&D club! The guy who founded the "RPG" club had no interest in doing anything beyond D&D and it frequently frustrated my attempts for support for running everything I wanted to run that were not D&D style games. If he's just said "this is a D&D club" then I'd not have assumed that cared about RPGs in the wider sense in the first place.

"That guy" is poisonous to your group. If you have a member that offends others away just through how they are then keep that guy away for the good of everyone else. "That guy" is a relative term, someone that cares a lot about ninjas can be that guy in a group that doesn't. The club is the bottom rung of clubs as long as you're willing to put up with any behaviour of any person. I'd go as far as to say that it's the number one reason "I can't find a gaming group" is a thing in our hobby (and that's not the case for the overwhelming majority of other hobbies).

I'm not really so active in that group any more, I wanted to run non-D&D games but the group wouldn't just come out and say that I was "That guy" to them.

[Drakeburn]

If you want to do D&D, I'd recommend Pathfinder, because a) it's free, b) there are fewer splatbooks, c) it's free, and d) it's free. Nothing convinces a potential new player to avoid joining like "you'll need to pay $40 each for the three player's handbooks".

Exactly, where can I get the "free" pathfinder material?

[Slipperychicken]

Exactly, where can I get the "free" pathfinder material?

Everything you need is on the website (they even have 3rd party stuff up there, marked so you can tell what's official and what isn't). 100% free, no strings attached.

Enjoy.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Everything you need is on the website (they even have 3rd party stuff up there, marked so you can tell what's official and what isn't). 100% free, no strings attached.

Enjoy.

They also have it everything they've printed in the main books (Core, Advanced Player's Guide, Advanced Race Guide, GM Guide, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Equipment, and the three printed Bestiaries) in a different format here. It's very convenient if your table, like mine, has physical books and pdfs and wants to stick to that format. I still use the SRD for things like feats and spells because you can see all the spells on a spell list from different books on one page, but the alternate format is nice to know about. And I think it looks prettier.