After struggling to find a very local game group to our new
house or my workplace I finally took the plunge and decided to start a work
game group. I’ve been wanting to do this since starting my job there 9 months
ago, but lunchtimes never worked out because everyone is so busy and with a
long commute I really just wanted to head home straight after work.
Our recent move means my commute is better and so I decided
to advertise my new board game group for the after work slot. I’d like to start
writing about the challenges and successes to try and help others starting new
gaming groups. Spoiler alert – after the first week, I think it is definitely
worth it for anyone thinking of starting a new group when there’s no-one else
doing it!
Week 1
Number of Attendees:
11
Games Played:
Dobble, Looney Quest, Exploding Kittens, Secret Hitler, Jamaica
The First Week Challenges
Making a booking at a
venue (in my case a pub) when you have no idea how many people are going to
turn up!
Some pubs I asked were also unsure about reserving a large
number of tables on a regular basis, either wanting payment or a commitment
that we would be eating or drinking.
Knowing what games to
provide
For the first game night I really didn’t know anything about
the people turning up. I tried to ask people about their gaming experience
after they emailed me but the responses varied a lot!
“ I like playing Guess Who and
Cluedo with my family”
“I only play Backgammon”
“I am a master at Catan”
“I played Catan once 3 years ago
and liked it”
“I play lots of games”
“I don’t think I’ve ever played a
board game, but I sit next to you and I will support you in your quest to make
new friends”
I decided that gateway games were best and picked some
fillers (eg. Dobble) to start and then a mixture of abstract (eg. Blokus),
gateway euro games(eg. Catan) and silly fun (eg. Looney Quest). I was a bit
scared this might alienate any seasoned gamers who turned up, but out of the
three that did, one brought a couple of their own games and the other two
seemed happy enough. I can bring out some heavier games over time.
Entertainment factor seemed to be key with most of the
crowd. I’m not sure how well introducing strategy games will work in the long
run.
Worrying that no-one
would turn up
There were 15-20 scary minutes where I was sitting in a pub
with a small mountain of board games and no-one to play with. It was a bit of a
worry and a few people were giving me looks of pity. From my publicity of the
evening i had 14 people interested, but I’m not going to try and make people
commit each week, it’s just too hard in the crazy environment we work in.
The Successes
People Came!
There was loads of
shouting and laughter
A lot of this shouting was aimed at Dobble, which was
definitely the hit of the night! But all the games were a hit. My personal
favourite moment was two people celebrating how great it was to win a game as
Hitler and a Fascist...they were also amused at this distasteful victory.
A lot of people were
introduced to a whole new side of board games
A few people were really surprised at how diverse and fun
board games could be and couldn’t believe what ‘counted’ as a board game these
days. I’m really glad to have opened their eyes a little bit to the hobby!
Meeting new people
My workplace is around 1200 people in one campus and I work
in a team of just 10. Already I’ve met a bunch of people working in different
teams who otherwise I would have never crossed paths with and that’s awesome!
Happy people!
I made a bunch of people happy and that has made me really,
really happy! Especially the gamers who are just really grateful that someone
thought to organise something.
Lessons for Next
Week
Book better tables
The pub isn’t going to know what you need unless you tell
them. We ended up o high tables with bar stools – a bit uncomfortable and
quite small tables.
Try something with a
bit more strategy
Part of my motivation for starting a group was just to meet new
people and spread the love of the hobby, however the other part is that I do
want to play more games more often. To keep me personally happy we’ll need to
move beyond the games that are just silly fun, so I’ll be trying to engage
people in something a little more tactical next time.
Nice one Fiona. I've run a board game group at work for a few years and had a lot of the same experiences. People gave it a go and were surprised at how interesting modern games are. The experienced players were a big help in teaching games when the group got bigger. A big hit for us was Ultimate Werewolf but Secret Hitler might fill that niche for you. Good luck and I'm interested to see how your events go.
ReplyDeleteThanks Darren :-)
DeleteWerewolf is a game that I personally don't like, but I do think I need to invest in some similar light games like Avalon, Spyfall etc.