I talked to Matt at Tabletop on Saturday. He basically said that I'd need to talk to Phil (the owner) on Monday, so I'm going to drop by on the way home to see what he says.
Matt thought that a Sunday would work best, since he has a group that comes in every Saturday night, and if we were there, we'd be displacing them. The downside to Sunday, of course, is that we couldn't game into the wee hours of the morning. Actually, I'm not sure we could do that either night, since they'd have to basically supply an employee to do that, and pay him for his time.
My inclination is to call around to locate a sufficient conference room at a local hotel, and see what they charge to rent it for a day. The benefits of doing this would be:
more time - we wouldn't be constrained, and could game into the morning
more room - Tabletop has room for 40 people but probably not more than that.
The downsides would be:
it would cost something. I once rented a small conference room at a hotel on a Saturday for some Lan gaming, and it cost me $50. If I got a room 4 times that size, it might cost $200, but if there was 50 people, and everyone paid $4, we'd have it covered. If everyone paid $5, we could have a soda pop fund.
The other downside would be that there wouldn't be any gaming stuff for sale. One idea I was thinking was that if we did this, and had 50+ people, a dealer might be willing to cover part of the cost if he had the opportunity to sell to that many gamers. I can't guarantee to them that 50+ people would show. All I have are some people on a message board stating that they would come, and bring x number of people. That's nothing against any of you guys, but it tends to make dealers nervous.
the other thing to consider is that Matt mentioned that Phil really wanted to do some big Rogue Trader tournaments. Which, would mean that they'd be willing to put together something more significant, and help fund it as well. That would easily draw a bunch more people, and turn our little game day into a full-fledged con, which this area so desperately needs.
Well, in any case, there are still a lot of little details to work out, and I'll post an update after I get with Phil. He may be hard to obtain, but Ghrezdd, I know you mentioned that you would be talking to him as well, so we can double-team him.
thoughts?
