Wednesday 1 July 1992

Dungeonworld, The Beginning of the Club

In 1992, I was in Highschool, Year 12. I had an after school job in Childcare, and alot of kids from the after school care were interested in board games,. one in particular was Heroquest.

Back then I was paid $7 an hour to look after kids. I worked one hour after school from 3:45 to 4:45 when the school care had the most kids, and needed extra help.

I volunteered to run Heroquest for any of the kids interested, from 4:45 to 5:45 as some of the kids had to wait around for their parents until 6pm.

while I recognised that I was giving up a potential $7 an hour.. I also saw this need. Kids wanted to play these games, and their parents might be in the need for them to get out of the house and give them some peace and quiet..

So I started a club, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, 12pm til 4pm, for $2 an hour (I was expecting the kids to get most of this from their parents)

First of all, this partly didn't work, Parents had choices, and many of them were not as expensive as $8 for the day. Magic mountain, down at the beach, cost 20c a game, and $2 would get you a hot dog and coke.. so parents could leave their kids there for the day, with barely $5 in their pocket.

Most of the kids who wanted to come to my club, couldn't get $5 a month out of their parents, let alone $8 a week.. So I had to scale this.. firstly I made a set of 'helpers' those who would turn up at 11:30, help set up, and get in free.. then I made a membership card, laminated , which allowed 5 'visits' for $10.

So my next big problem was gamesmasters.. which is still a problem to this day.. I ran games, I never once had anyone run a game for me, For the next 4 years, I would run games.