Okay, so I've got this idea, right, that I'm thinking of putting into motion in the next couple months. It goes like this:

"I'm going to host a regular/weekly gaming night thingy. I'm going to invite a bunch of people: 20 or so. If you want in, you are not required to attend regularly. When you do come, you need to bring two things: (a) a snack-or-drink to share, and (b) a game that can be played that night. Yes, everybody will be bringing a different game, and we will have a 1:1 gamer:game ratio. We will decide what to play that night, and not before. We might split into two or more groups to play different games. We might play multiple games in a row. Some attendees might decide to pick up a game that they started on an earlier week and play the next installment. The idea is simple: we're going to throw a lot of gamers and a lot of games into one place until something hits critical mass and play ensues."

So: if you received such an invite, would that interest you, or turn you off? What, specifically, would grab you or worry you?

From our nice comfortable internet armchairs, can you see any potential problems in this set-up? Any bright ideas on how to optimize the fun output?

Joshua BR,

Me and some people in Vancouver were discussing this earlier, or at least something similar. Our idea was to have a party that started around dinner time (5 or 6pm) and ran until about 2am. Get around 20 people who play games together, have a dinner, and have games organically start happening between the participants. Put a stress on simple, one-shot games and pick-up games, so that people can sink their teeth into 2-3 games over the course of the evening while still taking some time to talk and mingle.

The obvious pitfalls we came up with were:
-RPG sessions will typically run 3+ hours, and people getting in more than 2 games might be tricky to manage.
-What if we finish our game in 2 hours, and plan to play Unistat next... but Tony also wanted to play Unistat, and his game will take another hour to wrap up... what then?
-Where would you hold such an event? Space for anywhere between 2-6 games being played simultaneously is a lot of space - there needs to be 2-6 tables or free floor spaces, and room in the place for 10-20 people to get in on these games.

So, those are all the thoughts we came up with for our similar idea. Hope that helps.

Joepub: It seems like what you are talking about is a weekly "minicon." Something that would be facilitated by have "traditional" con rules, such as 4 hour game slots, etc. I think it's totally doable if you were willing to have it be a bit more structured then what Josh seems to be talking about.

alex

We sustained an 8-person thing for around a year, where people would come over to one guy's place on Monday night, and we would regularly break up into smaller games, sometimes one large one. But that eventually turned into the three-or-four player Monday nights I do where we all just play one game (or in the case of last Monday, go to Target and buy Legos.)

I would be down if things the "rules" were not heavily-enforced. If I would be causing some big social faux-pas by not bringing a game or not having enough time after work to go and get some snacks before heading over one evening, that would kill the vibe for me.

Posted By: Joshua BishopRobyAm I making sense, or worrying about nothing?

I think the former.

Perhaps a reasonable alternative may help the situation, such as "Please bring some sort of snack or drink to share, or contribute to the kitty I use to get some general stuff next week." This puts some work on your part, but frankly, if you're organizing this you'll likely benefit from front-loading some of the snack stuff anyway.

On our Monday games, we typically have a rule of "bring what you want before you show up" -- sometimes people bring shit to snack on of their own accord, and that's pretty cool. But there's no sense of irritation or begrudging when someone doesn't (though I do like it when someone picks up my food, since I walk home from work and the game's at my place).

I'd also suggest that if you lower the barrier of entry, you may find it easier to start up. Then, should the need arise, you could address that as a group rather than as a leader.

I have some friends who used to host something like this, and I attended a few. Here's some of my observations:

Nearly everyone who attended had children, and child care became the burden of the spouse/partner who wasn't into gaming. It was not much fun for that person. My non-gaming husband had the right idea and came once. That said, there were lots of things for kids to do, but the age range was too vast: an infant, a few toddlers, and a few 5-9 year olds. I would have happily pitched in some cash for a babysitter or two.

We broke up into smaller game groups, but we didn't do many role playing games. There were plenty of people who would have, but it was just too chaotic, and not everyone who attended liked rpg's. We played things like Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, a Steal Away Jordan play test that went quite well, Mechaton, Exquisite Corpse, lots of card games, lots of board games, a few kid friendly games.

Doing this weekly would have sucked. Time suck, energy suck. I can't impose this on my kids and husband every Saturday, and if you ask people with children, I can assure you, you'll get that answer more than a few times. Once a month was good.

In the end, I didn't want to go any more. Even once a month, it was too stressful for my kids, I missed quality time with my husband, and it was too loud and chaotic for role playing games other than things like Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, (which is a fun party game and perfect for people who are and aren't into rpg's.) One of the problems was that it was just once a month. It was never on the same week in the month.

But the first few times it was fun. I think the whole thing lasted about six months, then the host got very ill, and after that people stopped coming.

If it were offered, I don't think I would do it again. I like the twice yearly JiffyCon, which sounds a lot like what you want to do; and our regular gaming group, which is small and closed, and since it's held across the street, I can show up in my pajamas. That's just me. I have a lot going on, and I have to pick new commitments carefully. Other people who used to attend this game day also post here, and may have a different perspective.

What could have kept it going (IMO)
* A paid babysitter, with parents pitching a few bucks to cover the cost if necessary.
* More rpg's. A few sessions that people could commit to would have been nice. One shots make it fall apart because no one is invested in it.
* Better food organization. Some people didn't bring anything, not even a game to play. Six bowls of chips is better than one bowl of chips to feed 20 people. And it helps cohesion if people are expected to bring something: food, an idea, a musical instrument, anything! If it's agreed that people will pitch in a few $$ to order pizza or some other take out, that's cool, too. Food helps gaming.

I hope you're able to come up with something that works! It's a nice idea.

Story Games Boston just celebrated our one-year anniversary of doing basically this kind of thing on weekly basis. I've been meaning to write up our experiences, so here's a good excuse. Hopefully Dev, Nathan, Eric, and the other SG posters who have been involved will post their thoughts as well.

We started small, with basically just Dev, Nathan, and me + whoever showed up. In the beginning we ran one game per week, all one-shots, basically just playing whatever indie games we hadn't gotten a chance to try out. It started growing (but only after the first couple months) and soon we were running two games a week for about 8-10 people total. We had a few regulars, besides ourselves, but we would tend to get a few new people each time, or people who would come once every few weeks.

Plenty of people have come once or twice and never come back. I don't know if that's because they didn't enjoy themselves that much or because of scheduling issues. We've also had a few people who've been regulars for a while but then quit on us. Some of that, I know, is due to personality clashes between various people who participate. I'm not sure what to do about that. If there are some regulars who just don't get along, they either clash all the time or one/both of them eventually decides it's not worth the energy and leaves.

We had guest designers come in and play with us. Jared Sorenson stopped by a half-dozen times. Luke Crane's been through twice. They brought other folks on occasion. Thor might have been there once or I may be imagining that. Clint Kraus came through. Malcolm Craig stopped by before GenCon this year. We hosted one of the JiffyCons in Boston (as opposed to Greenfield) and had Emily Care, Joshua Newman, and some other Western Mass folks join us.

We often playtested games, either stuff we ganked from the net or stuff we were individually working on. Generally we played one shots, which was awesome at first (so many different games!) but gradually became less satisfying over time. We began experimenting with different formats. Dev ran a 2-shot of Hero's Banner. Nathan ran a 3-shot of the Mountain Witch. I ran 4-5 sessions of Afraid, with a few regular players and then other players who guest starred for a session here and there. We began starting to run games outside of our normal Wednesday meeting time. I ran a 3.5-shot of Cold City on Tuesday nights. We're preparing to do more of that, I think.

Overall, we've had trouble connecting with other gaming communities in Boston, even though you can't throw a brick here without hitting a roleplayer. I know of two other groups of gamers in town with whom I get along great with. However, aside from a couple of people who've shown up at SGBoston events once or twice, it's hard to get people to intermix. I'm not sure what the deal is. Part of it, right now, is that me and Dev are the only real connections between these groups, so hopefully that'll change if we can start getting people to play together.

That said, we seem to have capped out at about... 10-12 regular participants? The times when we've had more, like the few times when we had 20 people or so, it seems to be harder to manage and we eventually drop back down because we can't sustain it. I wish I had a more solid grip on why that was. A few folks have suggested having a more formal organizational system, where we elect officers and have a governing committee with individual responsibilities and such. We might at least start having one or two officers or something, I don't know. Hard to imagine that in our current informal system, honestly, but structure might enable us to handle larger tasks in a more organized manner and sustain people's investment.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Hopefully other SGB folks will weigh in on what has and hadn't worked for us.

Posted By: PartheniaDoing this weekly would have sucked.

To offer an alternative position, doing it weekly helped us remember that we had this thing we did. Not everyone showed up every week, but there wasn't an confusion about which week something was happening and any need for serious coordination like we have to do for our bi-weekly RPG sessions.

Seattle has the Monday Night games, which are more specifically an open gaming night, and which generally have a game, or games, chosen ahead of time. I'd be there regularly if it wasn't for family obligations; they seem to get some great gaming done.

I just noticed that Parthenia said everything I was about to say regarding game nights, kids, and spouses, so I'll stop there.

Posted By: Joshua BishopRoby
"I'm going to host a regular/weekly gaming night thingy. I'm going to invite a bunch of people: 20 or so. If you want in, you are not required to attend regularly. When you do come, you need to bring two things: (a) a snack-or-drink to share, and (b) a game that can be played that night. Yes, everybody will be bringing a different game, and we will have a 1:1 gamer:game ratio. We will decide what to play that night, and not before. We might split into two or more groups to play different games. We might play multiple games in a row. Some attendees might decide to pick up a game that they started on an earlier week and play the next installment. The idea is simple: we're going to throw a lot of gamers and a lot of games into one place until something hits critical mass and play ensues."

Sounds a bit like a Barcamp, ie. "awesome"...

Anemone, that was a really useful link. Thanks!

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf