Forming a Gaming Community

Seattle Gamers Assemble!

Seattle Gamers Assemble! (SGA) is a loose community of role-players centered around Seattle, Washington. After several years of operations, we thought it might be nice to share what we've learned about setting up a gaming community.

(Article in progress; these are merely some talking points that will be developed over the next few days.)

WHAT IS A GAMING COMMUNITY?

In this article, we mean by "gaming community" a group of people that adopts a certain structure or organization to support game-related activities. At SGA, we focus on role-playing games but most of this advice is directly applicable for other types of games.

People

• Different skills and interests
• Newcomers and people without a regular game looking to form small gaming groups
• People looking for drop-in games or players
• People who like to try different games
• Game designers looking for playtesters or actual play

Structure

• Online group
• Gaming circle
• Game club
• Meetup group

Activities

• Weekly games: See our article on Weekly Short-Shots
• Meetups
• Bring-and-battle
• Tournaments
• Mini-conventions/Game Day
• Full-scale conventions
• Social events

LINKING UP

Online Presence

• Mailing list
• Meetup group
• Yahoo! group
• Gaming blog
• Wiki

Networking

A community is a fractal beast: communities can network into larger communities. Don't limit your horizons with a very narrow definition of what your group is about, at least not on first approach. Sure, if you play DnD or Exalted in a metropolitan area you can probably find enough players to get a game going and even to organize events. But why not start wider and meet more people? If the community is very large, it will sub-divide soon enough anyway. But most of the time, you will find the opposite problem: too few people rather than too many. So how do you build your local gaming community?

Ask yourself: Who else is out there that shares your hobby? Although our main focus at SGA and in this article is role-playing games, most of us are interested in many other related activities:

• Board games
• Miniatures games
• Wargames
• Card games
• Live-action role-play (LARP)
• Console or online gaming
• Comic books
• Science-fiction and fantasy
• Creative writing
• Game design
• Theatre
• Movies

So your contacts in the local community might include:

• Gaming clubs and associations
• Gaming stores (RPGs but also board games, card games, miniatures, hobby stores, etc.)
• Comic book stores
• Book stores, especially those specializing in science-fiction and fantasy
• LAN gaming oufits
• Writing groups and workshops
• Improv theatre groups and workshops
• Movie clubs
• Local game publishers
• High schools, colleges and universities

PROMOTING

Creating Buzz

• People
• Events
• Locations

Promotional Materials

• Posters
• Handbills
• Ads

RESOURCES

• Game Circles: Bringing gamers together
• Games Workshop's gaming club resources
• Negative Space's Role-Playing Meeting Grounds
• Wikipedia:Game club (article stub)

(To be continued.)

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