Welcome to April! It's getting to be finals again, and you've gone a whole year thinking and planning for this club. Now it's time to review what you've done and consider other ways to help it grow. We've already discussed different methods of recruitment, so this month, I want to talk about the tools you have to help attract members--the club library.

Perhaps you don't have a club library yet. This isn't terribly uncommon, especially after only a year in. However, if your club looks like it has some staying potential, investing in some club games is a good way to ensure that there's always something to do. This month, we'll discuss the logistics of the library, what sorts of games you should stock, and some general advice for maintaining it.

The Idea of a Library, or How To Build Your Own Warehouse to Lose the Ark of the Covenant

As your club matures, so should the library. A good library can be the foundation for a lot of your events and meetings, and a really well-stocked library could be in constant use. It can be a resource for gamers looking to expand their horizons. It can be a colossal headache to manage as well, so we ned to understand what the library does and how to build it up.

The basic idea of a club library is to provide some games and resources that people can use during meetings. The advantages to this are fairly obvious: for one, you don't have to rely on one person showing up because they have the only copy of the game. You can also take some time to learn the rules, which means that several people could know the game and run it at any time, which helps with people who randomly show up wanting to play a game. It also saves you the trouble of having to actually buy a game, which means it's money in your personal pocket.

The disadvantages of a library are pretty big, though, so you need to make sure yo can handle them before you start building one. The biggest is space--you need space to store all of these games securely, which can sometimes be a problem on campuses. Usually, there's at least a set of storage cabinets that you can ask for access to, but those aren't always very secure. The chances of people just showing up and breaking in are pretty slim, since usually the supply cabinets don't hold anything of much interest to people outside the club, but realize that if there are gamers out there who want a copy and know your club has it, a poorly monitored supply locker is a target for theft.

In addition, you have to have someone to manage the library. This is sometimes difficult to find because a decent-sized, well-stocked library can be in use a lot of the time, which means you need someone who can watch over it a lot. However, a majority of the librarians job consists mainly of opening and closing the storage closet and making sure the pieces of the games are all there--not a glamorous job, to say the least. So it's sort of grunt work, but at the same time, it's grunt work that needs to be done. If you can assign that job to one of the officers at first, that's probably for the best, especially if your library is pretty small. While it would make sense to give this to the secretary, it may actually make sense to give it to an officer that doesn't have quite as many immediate duties, since the secretary is usually pretty busy with a lot of other small duties. The treasurer might actually be a good choice here, since the treasurer is also going to need to figure out if new games need to be purchased. As the library grows both in size and popularity, it may make sense to make the librarian its own position--we'll discuss that more below.

Once you have a space, how do you decide how to build it? There are a few options, each of which has it's own benefits and drawbacks.

• Donations: If you can swing it, people may be willing to part with a game or two to get the library started. It's nice if this happens, but it's not very often, especially as college students usually don't have a large collection of games themselves. Sometimes outsiders might be willing to donate games, but if these are games that have several pieces missing or simply aren't fun to play, then it's just taking up space in the library. Overall, donations tend to be gift horses with gingivitus, and you end up getting rid of most of them. Sometimes someone will approach the club saying that they have a large collection they want to get rid of for some reason (death in the family, de-cluttering from a grown child away from home, and so on) and they're willing to donate a collection they have sitting around. It can be worth it to accept these, even if you have to get rid of most of them--sometimes there's a gem or two in such a collection, and the person would just throw them out anyhow, so you might as well take advantage of it.

  A quick warning: Don't go around to game stores asking for donations. They're in the business to make money, and they usually don't have the games to spare. If there's a particular game that gets a lot of play at the store, It would make better sense for the store to hold a demo event and have people come to that (or perhaps hold the demo event at your club), but even these are usually run by enthusiastic volunteers from the company itself rather than store employees. In general, though, asking for free product from game stores, especially if you use the line "But giving us a free game will increase your sales because we'll play it and people will want to buy it!" sounds incredibly self-serving and short-sighted. Don't mar your club's reputation by trying to wheedle free games from already money-strapped game stores.

• Garage sales: This is a good summer activity for the club-minded college student. Assuming you can get around during the day when most of the sales occur, you can find some interesting stuff for sale. By and large, these have the same problems as donations--old games, missing pieces, not very fun--with the added problem of people expecting you to pay for them. The upside is that you don't have to pay for stuff you don't want, and the stuff you do want is pretty cheap. It can feel like you're searching for a needle in a haystack at times, but if you're willing to spend the time and effort, you can find some interesting pieces.

• Getting free copies from publishers: This will likely not work, since like the store owners above, they're in the business to make money. Board games are a slightly different issue: if you establish a relationship with a company, you may be able to demo games for them, which usually results in a comp copy of some sort (or at least a cheaper price on a copy.) It usually requires some kind of feedback from events, but the upside is that, if you can establish that your group is fairly large and you can get a couple of good demos under your belt, you can get some nice games for pretty cheap. Again, not all companies do this, but it may be worth the effort to figure out which ones do and see what you can establish.

• Purchasing new games: Don't fool yourself into thinking the above will work the majority of the time. Most of the time, you'll know which games you think are fun and want to buy those. Here, it might make sense to ask for a discount with a game store, especially if you want to establish a working relationship with them. You may want to wait a bit before you ask for this--save your receipts and bring them in to show how much your club spends. If it's enough, you might be able to get a better deal. But waiting to ask for a discount is probably best, since you don't look like you're just trying to scam free stuff.

A Game Goal Made Real: Acquiring Stuff

What do you put into a library? At first, you may just grab a few items you feel are necessary, but it's a good idea to start figuring out what kinds of items you want to acquire. What do you consider "necessary?" What might just help your club grow? By and large, if you're building a library for an RPG club, here are some items you might want to invest in.

• Dice: Chances are you and the other members have a ton of these lying around, but when the subject of donating dice comes up, a lot of gamers look at the floor and mutter something about needing them for a possible game that requires a ton of dice. If you can get past the urge to horde as many polyhedrons as possible, you can probably get a bunch of these to use a loaner dice. If not, pay attention at the next big convention you go to and try to find a dealer that will sell you one of those "cup of dice" for a relatively cheap price, and buy a couple. It's just nice to have extra dice around in case people need them, so this is something you can set up early on.

• Gaming Supplies: pads of paper, pencils, a sharpener, maybe a vinyl map and some markers--any game usually needs some supplies to run it successfully. Stockpiling some pads of paper and pencils doesn't take a lot of space or time, and can help people out when they want to play a pick-up game of something. Chances are you won't need a lot of these, but you can probably get a bunch of them cheaply at office supply stores or back-to-school sales. You might even be able to get someone to give them to you for free if they work in an office and have a bunch lying around.

• Books

Those damned books.

This is why you want a library after all, right? A stack of RPG books sitting there, lined up nice and neat, just ready for someone to pick one up and start playing a game? And if the club gets them, you won't have to buy them yourself, right? You probably want to anyhow, but it's the idea that could get access to it for free, that you won't have to pay your own money right away.

The moment you buy a new book for the library, though, you will see what this means. Two people will see you have it and will want to check it out at the same time. Someone makes a joke about "not showing up" to the next meeting now that he has the new book. Someone spills something close to the book. You'll see it all happen, and you'll realize that, for a new club, that $40 or so you spent isn't just a book; that's the yearly dues of at least a couple of members, maybe more. That's X number of Magic tournaments you had to run to free up enough money to buy it. This paranoia only increases if you purchase a bunch of books at once; if you can drop $200 on a few new gaming books, that's $200 just sitting in a poorly guarded cabinet waiting for a morally loose club member with a grudge and a crowbar to take it all away. It's scary, and it's a real worry.

However, you need to step back and take a good view of the situation. Yes, people are less likely to treat the books well if they think they're free, but the people checking them out are also gamers, so they're likely to understand the necessity to take care of them. And the overwhelming majority of gamers understand the value of the books to both the club and the gaming community at large, so you usually don't have to worry. However, it's a good idea to prepare yourself for the idea that, if you're operating a library, chances are you'll lose a few books. Hopefully, that won't be too soon or too often. If this is too scary a thought for you, you need to not have a library.

If you decide to move forward, you'll want to talk to your members about what books they might want to see available. you'll probably get many varied answers, but you want to keep your mind on a few prinicples while you're making it:

• Stick to core books. Unless you have a large demand for a particular game (like D&D), chances are people will be primarily interested in the core rule books. Beyond that, the use will be pretty limited, so even though the DM for one a popular Shadowrun game might want you to buy the entire 4th edition line, it doesn't make sense to invest a lot of money into books only one person will realistically get use from. Therefore, core books make the most sense. I also tended to favor books with more universal rules, since you can use those for a variety of games rather than one type of game.

• Related to that, with the exception of core books, you want to stay away from GM-only books. Those will also see far less use than a player-centered one. Again, for something core like the DMG, you can probably make an exception, but by and large, you want to avoid them.

• Also related, stay away from special editions of books. You don't need the really fancy anniversary set of a game because it has nicer covers or whatnot. Be prudent with your money--if there's a cheaper edition of a book with the same information, spend your money on that.

• Don't buy books no one will use. It's tempting sometimes to wade through the used book bin and see all the wonderful games that were so popular years ago, just waiting to be used. The problem is that they're sitting in that box because no one plays them, and chances are they'll just sit on your shelf, eating your storage space and making you look like you have no idea what games are available now.

• Beware fad games. It's tempting to purchase a ton of the popular game at the time and capitalize on it, but the problem is often that it doesn't stay that way. In my last year in the gaming society, Heroscape was huge, and we purchased a lot of Heroscape sets, held a couple of tournaments, and generally played it like crazy. Then, for some reason, it died--fast--and we were left with a lot of plastic pieces that no one was interested it. We got lucky, and the club managed to make use of it in later years, but for every success story there is, there are ten where someone bought it based on word-of-mouth and ended up getting burned. Don't buy something because it's the popular game at the moment--buy it because your club will play it.

If you're interested in purchasing board games, I would urge you to stick to cheaper games that are easy to learn and fun to play--Munchkin usually got a lot of play in the BGGS, as did Ticket to Ride and some of the Cheapass Games. These are nice because you can just pull them out and play, and if you get bored, it doesn't take a lot of effort to leave and start a new one. Only invest in the really expensive or time-consuming ones if you have a group that's really bound and determined to play it--hey, there are some people who really do just want to sit around a Twilight Imperium board all night and play, week after week. If those people are in your club, there's no reason not to sink some money into a Twilight Imperium set.

Once you have your small treasure hoard, what do you do with it? The first step is figuring out who's in charge of it--again, put this in the hands of an officer at first, then measure the needs of it as you go along. In addition, you need to discuss how you'll go about lending books and materials (if at all--perhaps you want to keep it for meetings-only) and what the procedure will be for late/missing items. If you're short on ideas, getting input from your members is a good way to determine fair use policies. Once you get those set, you should be ready to take your first steps as a knowledge-based lending institution.

Rebuilding (or Razing) Your Personal Library of Alexandria

If you're rebuilding a club, you may have a large library already, which is great! However, this poses a special set of circumstances for you. First, you need to take stock of what you have and what the current system is. Who is in charge of it? What do you actually have? The BGGS had to do this when they were rebuilding as well, and we found out we had a lot of old games no one was interested in or had a lot of missing pieces. We sold a few, got rid of the rest, and started to invest in newer games and books. The end result was a library that seemed smaller, but was more popular because we had materials that people wanted to use--which, of course, is the point.

Don't be afraid to gut large parts of it that are simply not worth carrying around. Old games, one's missing pieces, other materials that don't get used...get rid of it all. The only thing I would urge you to keep are documents that give you an idea of the club's history--it's nice to look back on those and get an idea of what the club was like back then, and it gives people a sense of perspective. They're usually pretty cool, so hold on to those unless you're really, really hurting for space, and even then, find someone willing to hold on to them.

Checklist for April

• Examine the library, if you have one, and determine what you keep and get rid of.
• Figure out what sorts of games and materials you should stock. Input from members helps here.
• Make a plan to how to acquire the pieces and which order to do such in.
• Plan who will be responsible for the library and what the lending procedures, if any, will be.
• Keep your eyes peeled for the fall org fair sign up and get on the list as soon as possible.

Next month, we'll discuss the summer break and more events you can try now that you have an actual club.

See you next month! Alec "Kid Twist" Fleschner