Dormitories & Dragons
This month, I want to discuss the process of planning and running small events. Normally, gaming clubs seems almost universally fixated on someday running a convention, but there are a lot of steps that need to happen before a club is in the right mindset to do this, and you can help create that foundation by running events that will get your club’s name out and raise some funds—as well as have some fun in the process. Lets take a look at some of the steps needed to make such an event a success.
The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Starts with A Synergising Focus Meeting
Running an event is a bigger deal than many people realize, if only because it usually involves at least a couple of people who are serving to help the event rather than participating in it, and as I’ve noted before, most gamers aren’t interested in one-off activities. So before you decide that your club should have some big shindig, present your idea to the group and let them know up front approximately how much time and manpower everyone will need to put in to pull this off.
You want to start with a small event so you can make mistakes without ruining your reputation or pocketbook. Don’t leap in and say that you’re going to plan a gaming extravaganza that includes a room for wargames, RPGs, and video game contests. Pick one, and start with a single event—a Magic: the Gathering tournament, or a small “New RPG games” day, something that’s limited in scope, as well as easily defined. This way, if something gets messed up, you won’t have the entire gaming community seething every time your name is mentioned.
Assuming you have the support of the club, your next step is to get people together to plan this out. The leadership skills of Sharing Leadership, Knowing and Using the Resources of the Group, and Controlling Group Performance are especially important here, since you can’t plan all of this yourself. Organize a planning committee, and make sure the chair of the committee is in close contact with you. If you have the time to chair it yourself, wonderful, but make sure you have enough people to move forward, as well as enough to do the work. Make sure that there is enough work to go around as well—if five people volunteer for the committee, these are people that want to make sure this succeeds. Use that energy to your advantage and give them something to work on; letting them sit there while you take care of the big decisions and planning can build resentment and loss of focus.
The Journey of A Thousand Miles Has Big Gaping Potholes to Maneuver Around
You probably want to start the planning for your first event at least a month in advance. This way, you have plenty of time to work with deadlines and emergencies that pop up. This is a rough guideline, and can be shifted depending on the complexity of the event—a public RPG day where people try out new games might not require a lot of new material, but the GMs would probably like time to plan their adventures. Video game contests require reserving lots of equipment. Tournaments with official results will need certified judges to oversee the event. Make sure you give yourself and everyone involved enough time to make the event a success.
Figure out who you need permission from, if anyone. Events normally require some extra wrangling with the university, since it’s normally more resource intensive. Be aware that, at the very least, you may need to deal with university catering options for providing food and/or drinks. You may also need to put orders into the caterers in advance, so check your deadlines and plan for that.
Get volunteers lined up. Make sure that you have at least one person available who can run basic errands and assist with the details. It seems unnecessary, but it can really help to have someone whose job is simply to take care of little set-up details and make sure the drinks are cold. If the person in charge has to handle all of that as well, he or she can quickly be overwhelmed.
Get everything in writing. No matter who you deal with or how well you know them, if your success depends on other people, get the deal in writing. I’ve heard horror stories about people who get others to run tournaments for them, only to be burned at the last minute by a huge change in details and no contract to enforce the original plan. If you need someone else’s help to make your event work, you need to have a basic understanding of everyone’s responsibilities written up and agreed to. Hopefully, no one will ever need to refer to it again, but if you do, you’ll be glad you’ve got it.
The Journey of a Thousand Miles Requires Cash Up Front
You should try to keep your budget fairly small for your first few events, and there will be three basic areas you’ll need to focus on: promotions, supplies, and prizes. Promotions for your event will need to have the following information:
- location of event
- type of event
- prizes (if any)
- requirements for the event (entry fees, necessary rules, etc.)
- contact information
That’s pretty simple, but you’d be surprised what slips by people. I remember one meeting the BGGS was promoting where we forgot to put what room we would be meeting in, which resulted in a couple of people having to handwrite the information on 350 flyers. Not only is this annoying, but it’s also unprofessional, so take the time to make sure you have all of the necessary information on it.
Assuming your first few events are fairly small, I would suggest sticking to the regular methods of promotion for this—there’s no need to buy ad space in the campus paper for every Magic: the Gathering tournament you’ll be holding. If you plan on holding similar events in the future, get a list of participants and their emails so you can notify them more directly in the future.
The supplies should be factored into your expenses as well. Make sure you have enough to cover all of the items you need—if writing may be involved, make sure you can provide pens and paper. If you’re having a video game tournament, make sure you can get enough game systems and copies of the game to play it on; renting copies from a video store might be a cheap way of ensuring you have enough copies to run a tournament. Try to save money wherever you can—buy a pack of the cheap pencils, or see if anyone has some lying around they could donate. Don’t skimp on items you’ll really need (can you really afford to risk using a “slighly scratched” copy of the video game? Or a poor controller?) but be aware that there are plenty of ways to save money. Remember: the profits are going back into your treasury.
Prizes are something that needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Really huge prizes will attract lots of people, but can kill all of your profit and require more of an investment on your behalf. Smaller prizes are easier to acquire, but people might not care enough to show. The usual compromise is a small prize that is either donated or desireable by your participants regardless of its cost, preferably both at once. A signed copy of an RPG could work, or a guarenteed rare Magic card. Tailor it to your audience, and you’ll be more likely to both save money and garner interest.
How much should you charge for participating? That really depends on the event—an RPG event might only require a couple of dollars to ensure people show up and to pitch in for supplies. A Magic: the Gathering tournament might cost $15 and up to enter, but entrants might get free cards out of it as well.
The Journey of A Thousand Miles Begins by Not Bullshitting Everyone
The most important concept to keep in mind is that you need to be honest with yourself and your abilities. If you want to run a Warhammer tournament, but no one has participated in one, you either need to enlist someone who has run one at least once or change your game plan. You do no one any favors by pretending that you’re capable of understanding not only the event but the culture that surrounds the hobby, when, in fact, you are clueless. Don’t pretend you can learn it all in the short time available to you. Don’t act like you can “pick it up as you go.”If you don’t know what you’re doing, stop and figure that out before you drag a few dozen people and your club’s name and finances into a potential firestorm.
The Journey of a Thousand Miles Ends with a Synergistic Focus Meeting
As always, make sure you have ample time afterward to reflect on your performance so you can evaluate what went well and what you need to improve. Comment cards for participants will help enormously with this, and you should also make sure that you get feedback from any outside help you received in holding the event.
While I always advocate reflection on the group’s actions, this is particularly important, and chances are you’ll have a lot you need to go over, from planning times to how many chairs you had available. Take copious notes, and make sure everyone gets a chance to give input. The more voices you have in this part, the more you can triangulate the real problems and work on correcting them for the next time.
After the event, you probably want to check in with the treasurer and make sure that he or she has done whatever needs to be done with the profits (if there were any; your first event might not net any profit at all—chalk it up to a learning experience.) The treasurer should know the proper procedures involved with this, but if not, make sure your treasurer gets to the Student Org office so you don’t lose the money. Few experiences are worse than making a few hundred dollars and then losing it to a thief—I know this from experience.
The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with ... Wait, Haven’t We Been This Way Before?
If you’re rebuilding a club, you may have some extra resources that a new club wouldn’t, such as previous notes and supplies from events long past. It’s nice to get this, but the real resource you have would be the older members (or ex-members, if they’ve graduated) that would remember how the events were set up in years past. These people are very useful resources, and hopefully they’ll be able to give you some insight as to what you need to do. However, remember that the club needs ot be rebuilt for a reason, so keep your eyes and ears open for any warning signs—phrases like “We broke X and Y rules all the time” or “You don’t need to worry about Z—we just ignored it and mocked whoever said we needed to.” Sometimes corners get cut, but avoid any practices that seem lazy or disrespectful.
If the club’s name is tainted by association with a poorly-run event, chances are you need to change the name of the event, if you haven’t already changed the club’s name. You have enough problems getting your event off the ground without adding in the automatic revulsion possible participants might have from previous experiences. Besides, chances are you’ll be changing the event significantly from the past anyhow, so you’ll want a new name to reflect the change.
Hopefully, this will help you start to figure out what kind of event your club should hold, maybe even this semester. Next month, we’ll discuss your club’s constitution and why you need start paying it more attention.
January checklist
- Make sure you participate in the Spring Semester Org Fair
- Get together with your club and see if they’re interested in holding an event, and if so, what kind.
Alec “Kid Twist” Fleschner
