What were early gaming clubs like?

[Aeolius]

I started playing (Basic) D&D around 1979 (jr high), as a neighborhood game played either at my house or my best friends. A few years later I started an after school D&D club that met on school grounds. I switched schools in 11th grade and could never get a club going, there, as most of the kids were into varsity sports, cliques, and being popular. I still had my neighborhood game, though. In college, I organized a weekly D&D game that met in the main floor lounge of my dorm. When that started to fall apart, we met in one another's rooms. After college, games were few and far between, as I was more concerned with employment and paying rent. I'd run a game a year at best, in those days.

In 1994, I ran my last offline game, "Isle of the Unknown". It was a L10-12 one-shot, a snowed-in weekend game that involved loads of alcohol. Highlights included vegetarian vampires, the sand witch, batlings, and a puzzle befitting a Pylon.

In 1995, I started running games online, both play-by-post and chat-based. That has been my preferred mode of gaming ever since.

So I am possibly atypical, as a gamer, as I have never gamed in a gaming store nor have I gamed at a convention.

 

[smetzger]

...were in Delaware....

In the early 80s friends of mine started an gaming store and there has always been in some fashion a game club attached (to this day). In the beginning the gaming was in the store. The first time they outgrew their location and moved to another location in the mini-mall (where they spent most of the 80s and some of the 90s) and the old store area became a gaming club. For a while there was a monthly fee to join (to defray expenses) but more often then not it has been completely free as long as you have space to play. Of course, the store gets first call for their events.

hmmm... Delaware... mini-mall... must be Days of Knights...
I went to Newark and graduated in '87

 

[pogre]

[MENTION=53]Glyfair[/MENTION] - dead on about the college influence and even the ripples from that.
D&D started in Lake Geneva, WI - the major clubs were around the Chicago area of which the University of Illinois at Chicago (The Medical folks) was a part.

They caught the bug and moved it to U of I in Champaign/Urbana when the Illinois wargamers had their annual convention of University students. This in turn passed it n to the folks at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale - In a few short months D&D was played in every part of Illinois and it was due to the colleges.
..

My experience is similar. Every Wednesday night there was a gaming meeting on the University of Illinois campus. CITTW and the U of I club worked together to get spots. It later stabilized into meeting at the foreign language building on campus.

It was an exciting time. Frank Chadwick and the GDW guys frequently brought over projects they were working on to play: Traveller, Twilight later on, Space 1889, etc. Occasionally, the Decatur folks would show up with some of their Judges' Guild stuff. There was a lot of innovation and different games being played during those days.

I have to admit, I did not play many of the rpg campaigns - I did more of the minis games and board games. However, there were several long term campaigns that were influential in the early gaming industry.

I don't remember rpg tournaments or much of a competitive environment.

Everyone was a recruiter back then and looked forward to Wednesdays. You showed up and usually had several games to choose from, although their were certainly groups who stuck together.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The first RPG club I belonged to was sponsored by our junior high school librarian and met weekly in the library.

The second club resided within Friends Hobby in Waukegan, IL and was named Gamemasters Guild of Waukegan. Dues were $10 a month and the club had officers (President, VP, Treasurer, etc.). The clubroom was a large portion of space separated from the main store. The club even had its own area at Milwaukee GenCons in the late 80s/early 90s (possibly influenced by the store owner/club treasurer being a regular contributor to Dragon magazine). A variety of games took place. The owner opened use of large wargaming tables and use of his terrain for fantastic miniatures battles. I ran my weekly Friday night D&D campaign there for a few years. We would hang out there and watch anime, play board games, etc.

 

[S'mon]

Our "club" was based- as so many others- out of our local store. The "dues" were simply $5 a day, and you could play all day in whatever game was available. .

$5/day per person? In the '70s?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The ones I was a part of mixed RPGs, wargames, and "bookshelf games"- stuff from Avalon Hill and the like.

The atmosphere didn't differ too much from Chess club, but without as much adult supervision.

 

[Lord Ipplepop]

$5/day per person? In the '70s?

Damn, bro... give me a break... I started playing in the late 70's, but I'm not THAT old lol
Actually, the gaming store I refer to wasn't until the 80's

 

[nedjer]

The holy war maybe had a lot to do with what RPGs brought:

play as a team
playing your character well is the focus
what's with the win mentality?
the rules are meant to be interpreted
play can be as open-ended as you like
the referee's a guide

This new-fangled hippy take on gaming upset wargamers - who quite like certainties, boundaries and win-lose outcomes.

Others liked the new angle, but couldn't make much money out of leaving interpretation and expansion of the rules at the table. Instead they went to the mines of Mordor and mechanised anything and everything - until the rules for picking pockets sat alongside rules for picking noses. At which point many players started to wonder if they'd maybe just like to try roleplaying again

 

[Mark CMG]

Since I wanted some account of this on my website, too, I decided to discuss the early gaming clubs I attended in a blog post here.