A Cautionary Tale

In the time before I was introduced to the seductive world of tabletop miniature games, I am told that the gaming community in our town was very disparate.  Some people knew some of the other people that gamed and some didn't.  Around the time that I was being exposed to the genre a fellow came to town that made it his mission to introduce the gaming community to one another and to open the lines of communication.  He also wanted to provide a central place for games to be played.  At this he succeeded.  There was a "clubhouse" of sorts and through message boards and other events, most gamers in town at least were aware of the other gamers in town.  Good job and happy ending, right?

Unfortunately,  the leader of the crew took on all responsibility and in organizing and communicating with the different people and groups that make up our local gaming community.  When the club was set up, there was no formal structure or committee put in place to run it.  None of this was a problem as long as the head guy is there at the centre of the web for everything to run through.  Honestly, we were all lazy enough to just let him take care of everything and he didn't really ask for much help.  However, this past winter, due to a new child, and various family issues, our guy sort of dropped off the face of the earth.  No blame for it, but it happened.  This is when our lack of organization started to show.  There was uncertainty about when there were club nights and if anyone with a key would be there to open the thing up.  There was nobody publicizing the club or running the Facebook page.  Attendance at gaming nights plummeted.  Then in a grand finale, the space we were using was going to be closed to us. 

Since our guy was the main point of communication, the notice went to him.  He didn't respond and didn't pass it on.  Lucky for us, there were three of us in the club when the news came down that the next Friday would be the last day the club was available to us.  The three of us came up with a plan.  One of our members found us space in his school to play and since the other two are school district employees, there are three of us with keys.  We got all of the stuff moved to the new place.  We got our guy to give us admin. privileges to the Facebook page.  We have a plan to start to promote the club again.  The next step is to formalize the arrangement so that the club can survive any one of us dropping out of sight or leaving (we have a very transitory population).

I just thought that people starting clubs or running them should know the potential pitfalls of either concentrating responsibility in one person or not formalizing your relationships.