Starting your own Park

This page is a listing of advice, good and bad, about starting your own park from players in their own words. Take it with a grain of salt and never give up never surrender!

Kuma

It can be slow going, but if you stick with it you can get some good results as being a student organization at a school.

Here are some things I've found to be helpful.

-1) Have an assload of loaners always at the ready. Keep these under close watch. If you don't, someone will just pick one up and either walk off or start beating people indiscriminately to be a fucktard. The school I'm at now used to have Amtgard on campus until someone picked up a sword during a demo and started running around hitting passerby.

-2) Make sure to have a copy of the rulebook available at all times for someone to flip through.

-3) Jump through the hoops that the school makes you jump through. If this means reserving a space to play, then fill out the paperwork. Generally you'll need a faculty sponsor. Don't get discouraged when someone says no, just go to the next one. I've had better luck hitting up the younger professors whom I've had in classes.

-4) Develop good relationships with other organizations. Nowhere Mountains has had a day where an entire fraternity showed up to play. It was a lot of fun for everyone involved. Also, by keeping good relationships with other organizations, you get better word of mouth and more support when doing fundraisers.

-5) Find out what benefits you can gain from being a student organization. Sometimes this means you can reserve indoor space for feasts or for cold weather, get funding from the school for loaner gear or trips, or even participate in things like homecoming, if you wanted to.

-6) Be visible and be prompt. If your fliers say it starts at 2 on Saturdays, be there at 1:50 in garb in the middle of the most public space you can feasibly play in.

-7) Look at what days really work. Nowhere Mountains is situated at a school in the middle of nowhere where everybody goes home on the weekends, so they traditionally meet on a weekday afternoon and have quests every couple of weeks during the weekends. Just because Amtgard is always on Sundays where you're from doesn't mean it needs to stay on Sunday in your new park.

Sir GoldCrest

Here's some simple stuff that can be huge investments in a land.

1) Find some like minded folks. If you can get 3-4 others that are interested in helping out, that can make all the difference. Invite them to a weapons making/garbing whatever party at your house to talk about Amtgard.

2) Once you've got those couple folks, establish them as your core. Immediately set someone up as the initial PM (great records keeping from day 1 is essential to saving time/effort later). This doesn't have to be formal. Letting them know you will need help with records/sign-ins and the contract will usually get you a volunteer. Make yourself the initial Monarch. (it won't have to be for long, just long enough to get things moving) Get your BL contract taken care of, so your a freehold.

3) Figure out who likes what class the most. Make them the POC for a range of classes. What I mean is, find the guy.gal thats really into a magic using class, have that person act as the GM (if you will) for all magic using classes. That way you know who to direct new folks to with questions about magic. Find a well-spoken, safe fighter. (not always the best one) Make them in charge of teaching fighting to new folks.

4) Now that there's some real interest, get out to the park. As a minimum, make sure that core group has garb and weapons. (ideally have some spare for walk-ons) Get a banner also if possible. Anything to draw peoples eyes (in a positive light) over to you. Banners are a good way of letting people know its established (sorta looks official if you will) Appearance is everything at this stage. It doesn't have to be perfect, but treat your land with respect. Make sure the weapons like decent (not fancy, cloth covered, solid colors etc.) Have folks in garb. If you can keep them out of jeans/t-shirts all the better. Sweats with a Tabard look a lot better at first glance.

5) After a couple of weeks (month at the longest) Organize your first Crown Quals/Election. (should be within 2 months of creation at most) This should encourage folks to create some of their own garb, new weapons etc.

Sustainment) Best rule of thumb, Always act like you are larger than you really are. You may only be 3-5 folks swinging sticks, but if you act like 5 people with foam, you'll never be ready for the next level and you will probably not do well. (never be satisfied with what you got, always try to grow) Start off on the right foot, think of your land, and treat your land like its a Barony with 20+ attendance. That way when you do have 20+ attendance, your ready to act like a Duchy etc.

Always have fliers and spare rulebooks readily available. I wouldn't suggest giving out rulebooks (focus on extra garb and weapons if money is an issue) but have rulebooks available for people to look at, and fliers/info sheets that give interested parties info on how to get started, where to find info online and POC information. Any community service things that your group does make sure its listed on there also. Its called good PR for a reason.

If you can, CDs with lots of data from the web are nice to give out (and not horribly expensive) you can flood them with rulebook, amtgard 7 releases, pictures from across the web, how to's and more for a low cost.

Other) On the other side of things, encourage your core folks to get active on the net. Once you've got your first election down, its time to sign a contract with a Kingdom.

Last but not least:

Professionalism is a must.

a)If you set a time for Amtgard, be there 10 minutes early. If no one else shows up, stay at least until the time you said it would end. (If you've got fliers out etc.. and no one is there when interested folks show up, odds are, they won't return) When there are people, start on time. If you got a decent core group, they will be there to ditch with while waiting.

b) Always have a plan on what you want to do that day. And get the ball rolling. Get on the web and review the various battlegames. Try them all out! Let each/or at least every other week be something new, for as long as you can.

c) Make sure that every new person feels welcome. As that core group starts to move forward, make sure they remember where they came from. Continue to hold weapons making/garb-making classes etc.

d) Try to establish an identity for the group. Group pride is difficult to build later... start initially. Things like garb with the groups heraldry and stuff like that are great. If you can get your core group interested in helping establish that identity, it will stay for a long time.

e)Let that core group know your dream of becoming a Kingdom, and let them know what it takes. Odds are they will help you (although in their own way)

Also, check this out: http://www.crownandflame.com/

There are a lot of great posts to be found there.