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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Jun 11, 2018 18:21:49 GMT
I've seen the sparks of some really good discussion about community management cropping up in other threads so I thought it would be good to give it a thread of it's own.
Basically I'd like this thread to be a place to discuss ideas and strategies for building and maintaining a gaming community whether it be at a local shop or private club. I'd like to stay away from discussing any perceived failings of the game or company or comparisons to other games and companies outside of the context of how to build the community (ex: "X-Wing does this well, could we do the same thing" vs "PP is bad at this"). The goal with any posts here should be to find new ideas for bringing in new players, maintaining your playerbase, and running interesting events. If you've got a cool idea, share it. If you have questions, ask 'em.
We all benefit from growing the playerbase so we should all work together to make that happen.
For me, I inherited a pretty stable community back in 2013 or so and my goal in my time as a PG and now was always to make sure that my existing players stayed interested and any new players didn't feel intimidated. One of the best ways I found to do that was regularly-scheduled Steamroller events.
It sounds simple, but something as straightforward as having a regular tournament day that almost never changes can go a long way towards keeping people engaged in the event. I always tell people that our events are on the last Saturday of the month so that they don't need to check the store calendar or the Facebook group or whatever to remember. They just know that on the last Saturday of the month there will be an event at the store unless something goes wrong. In the past I also tried to change things up in the format every couple months by using some different options but these days my plan is for every third event to be a Champions event rather than SR.
Another idea that I'm totally stealing from one store and pitching to my local shop is to have the store provide one of each starter box and have community volunteers paint them up for use and display. That way when potential players walk in they can see a case that shows the full range of factions and try any one they want for a demo game.
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gordo
Junior Strategist
My star is green?
Posts: 548 
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Post by gordo on Jun 11, 2018 20:22:23 GMT
A big barrier to play for me was dedicating a day to a tournament. The answer my meta uses for this problem is what we call a Scrum, which is basically a steamroller with only one game a week, any time and any place you can get it. Organized online, it also provides a great way to scrounge up players for pick up games too. Using this as a spring board, our meta went from maybe 6-8 regular players to 36+. It's pretty crazy.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Jun 11, 2018 20:30:01 GMT
In my experience, the Very First Thing you need to do to start a Community (if you are the one spear heading this) is to just Show Up.
What I mean by that is: Pick a Place, pick a Day and Time, and be there on time, every week.
Consistency counts for a lot starting out. Don't let your peeps ask on Facebook "are we meeting up today?", they should know that it will always be a "yes".
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gmonkey
Junior Strategist
I, for one, welcome our Infernal Overlords.
Posts: 313
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Post by gmonkey on Jun 12, 2018 13:08:18 GMT
What I mean by that is: Pick a Place, pick a Day and Time, and be there on time, every week. Gawd, I'd love if Life would allow me to do this. |
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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Jun 12, 2018 14:47:51 GMT
A big barrier to play for me was dedicating a day to a tournament. The answer my meta uses for this problem is what we call a Scrum, which is basically a steamroller with only one game a week, any time and any place you can get it. Organized online, it also provides a great way to scrounge up players for pick up games too. Using this as a spring board, our meta went from maybe 6-8 regular players to 36+. It's pretty crazy. I like this idea a lot, do you happen to have a rules doc for it or any notes on how it was organized? I think my group would get a kick out of this. |
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gordo
Junior Strategist
My star is green?
Posts: 548
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Post by gordo on Jun 12, 2018 19:15:54 GMT
A big barrier to play for me was dedicating a day to a tournament. The answer my meta uses for this problem is what we call a Scrum, which is basically a steamroller with only one game a week, any time and any place you can get it. Organized online, it also provides a great way to scrounge up players for pick up games too. Using this as a spring board, our meta went from maybe 6-8 regular players to 36+. It's pretty crazy. I like this idea a lot, do you happen to have a rules doc for it or any notes on how it was organized? I think my group would get a kick out of this. I posted all about it in the other thread that spawned this one, "I've got a sinking feeling". That thread is too long for me to go rifling through on my phone though, but you can find my notes there. Long story short: normal Steamroller rules, only one game a week with allowances for extensions, no judges so everything rules must be resolved by the players, and we allow first round challenges instead of purely random pairings. |
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Jun 12, 2018 19:21:59 GMT
A big barrier to play for me was dedicating a day to a tournament. The answer my meta uses for this problem is what we call a Scrum, which is basically a steamroller with only one game a week, any time and any place you can get it. Organized online, it also provides a great way to scrounge up players for pick up games too. Using this as a spring board, our meta went from maybe 6-8 regular players to 36+. It's pretty crazy. I like this idea a lot, do you happen to have a rules doc for it or any notes on how it was organized? I think my group would get a kick out of this. I ran a month long tournament "World Cup" style. I divided players into Pods of 4 and gave them a match schedule in advance. All pods played out their matches Round Robin style, and Top 2 of each pod qualified to the Playoffs. That way people would be allowed to lose during the Round Robin and still make the playoffs. I had some weird cases where 1-2s made the cut  It was great fun, and would totally run it again (had the FLGS not closed ) |
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Post by ForEver_Blight on Jun 12, 2018 20:08:27 GMT
I want to start a sort of "tab" system. The gamesstore we're playing at now has beer on tap and loads of snacks. I want to have some idea for a tournament style that the wins you get in the month long event earns your a point on your "tab" then we cash out, somehow, at the end. Where it's nothing but chump change for each entry but we can pay for a drink or two for the winners.
I want a "ha! you owe me a beer" type 1-on-1 but I think that would be too costly as some vets will just keep taking wins off of others.
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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Jun 12, 2018 21:16:07 GMT
I wonder how hard it would be to turn that into a multi-store thing? Do a month-long circuit in each store and then send the top of each store to a final? You'd have to negotiate between them where the final rounds would end up since that store will get all the snack money for it that day but it's workable.
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crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Post by crimsyn on Jun 12, 2018 21:19:41 GMT
I think people who want to build a community should also endeavour to play it painted. Doesn’t have to be award-winning and doesn’t have to always be fully painted 100% of the time, but it helps when community leaders are at least mostly painted most of the time. I think when they still had the PG program, you needed to have a certain amount of painted models to qualify to be one?
Personally, I haven’t done a lot of community building in the classic sense of being the guy who organizes tournaments and events. We already have a couple good TOs who have been playing a lot longer than I have and who are probably more qualified to be a judge than I am, so I think my local community is good on that front. I could possibly run a painting day, but tbh, I’ve been feeling kind of discouraged from doing that by some local drama.
However, I do try to show new players the ropes and am more than willing to drop everything and play a battlebox game. Also, a lot of the time I am the guy to help them when they are standing in front of the store’s paint rack all confused.
I also produce hobby content for a blog, so that’s good as well I guess.
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zich
Junior Strategist
Posts: 690
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Post by zich on Jun 12, 2018 21:23:48 GMT
I want a "ha! you owe me a beer" type 1-on-1 but I think that would be too costly as some vets will just keep taking wins off of others. Don't worry. It'll balance itself out once the winners get more and more drunk. A perfect self-regulating handycap system. |
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Post by jonnyboy on Jun 13, 2018 3:27:52 GMT
Myself and a couple friends are trying to build a larger community in our FLGS in Richmond. We got a couple people interested in via theme boxes, and brought some people back that havent played in awhile. We went from 4ish players to aroun 8/9 interested in a journeyman league we're starting
The journeyman league sounds like a great format for getting people into the hobbg. Slow start, easy casters, less meta crushing lists.
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Post by Gamingdevil on Jun 13, 2018 6:42:35 GMT
I want a "ha! you owe me a beer" type 1-on-1 but I think that would be too costly as some vets will just keep taking wins off of others. Don't worry. It'll balance itself out once the winners get more and more drunk. A perfect self-regulating handycap system. I don't think that applies automatically everywhere. I know of at least a few European countries where there is a sweet spot of being drunk where people turn into geniuses (and don't remember anything the next day) After that it goes back down hill, but by then at least this person would've gotten free drinks for a whole day |
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Post by HereComesTomorrow on Jun 13, 2018 8:39:15 GMT
In my experience, the Very First Thing you need to do to start a Community (if you are the one spear heading this) is to just Show Up. What I mean by that is: Pick a Place, pick a Day and Time, and be there on time, every week. Consistency counts for a lot starting out. Don't let your peeps ask on Facebook "are we meeting up today?", they should know that it will always be a "yes". This. I've run several groups and having a day and time helps keep things straight immensely because you don't need to worry about organising individual games or waiting for people to reply to texts/facebook messages etc. There's no uhmming or ahhing about stuff. It also means people can arrange stuff like babysitters or spouse stuff in advance like if they know every Wednesday at 6pm is game night its much easier to schedule it into their life. |
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Post by shroomvolcano on Jun 13, 2018 14:09:13 GMT
Myself and a couple friends are trying to build a larger community in our FLGS in Richmond. We got a couple people interested in via theme boxes, and brought some people back that havent played in awhile. We went from 4ish players to aroun 8/9 interested in a journeyman league we're starting The journeyman league sounds like a great format for getting people into the hobbg. Slow start, easy casters, less meta crushing lists. With that too, a lot of people start dropping off at higher point levels as schedules conflict, as bills come in, etc, so consider having stretching each week into 2 weeks. If that's too much, maybe just stretch out weeks 3 and 4 and cap there. Then have a regular game night where people can get bigger if they want to. |
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