4scension

And just to give you an idea of how fast we’ve been, inexplicably growing, I’ve gone from 50 members last week to 57 this one.

So it’s been a little while, and I think I should probably update this goal a little bit. The pizza place, though the space was amazing, was so poorly managed that there is no way I could see us remaining there. So we have not, instead we have switched completely to the Deli as the place we go.

Administration
I elected 2 members into the position of assistant administrators. One I’ve dubbed my replacement for the meetings I can not run, and the other is the groups photographer. Pictures are a powerful tool, particularly for the website, to entice people to want to come and game. This has eased some of the stress I’ve dealt with in the past.

Another thing is that I’ve decided to experiment with having no more ‘themed’ meetings, just ones where people can declare that they intend to run a particular game. I like to line it up the week before, or multiple weeks before if it’s an expo of an RPG. I then write up the next meeting and include it in the description. Afterward I send a reminder to the person who is running the game about their obligation. This seems to work.

Growth
The group is in a strange state of flux. We’re losing regular attendees due to the start of classes, and yet we’ve been gaining members at a rather brisk rate. From the start of summer to now we’ve gone from approximately 35 to 50 members. We’ve also dipped from 13 regular attendees to 10, and it seems that one is always brand new to the group these days.

This is somewhat scary since, were the stars to align correctly, and on a particular week everyone in the group didn’t have lives, we’d probably end up with 17 or so people attending. I’m actually very surprised by all of this because it comes about from me talking about the group and it getting passed via word of mouth, or from people who are casually patrolling the website for a gamer group.

I have some intentions to do more advertising but so far I haven’t found places to put them up. That’s something I should get into though- how I’ve advertised and what not so far.

One of the best things I’ve done, I think, is seeding gaming books by making business cards by printing and cutting them out of card stock. I then go to the local gaming section of the bookstores in the area and place them sporatically inside of some of the books. I’ve also made some simple flyers and an Ad that features tear-away tabs which list the name of the group, our website, and my contact email.

On the horizon Flat-con, a local gaming convention, is coming back up. I want to run an introductory one-shot Exalted RPG and pass out info about the group there. I’d also like other people from the group to host events but I don’t feel confident I could convince them to do much. We’ll see.

We’ve gotten even bigger- todays meeting was 13 people, 4 were new. Additionally we’ve got one big thing set in front of us; I’ll summarize.

We have an offer to use a party room at a kind of “Out of the way” pizza place, on the second floor. It’s private and we have access to drinks, food, and we can go until 11pm or later. Which is all great, but it presents us with some problems.

Primarily what do we do about the places we have lined up now? Do we sacrafice the visibility of Barnes and Noble? or do we sacrafice the kindness and good graces of the Deli?