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.
3. 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.
4. 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 that's 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.
5. 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)
6. Appearance is everything at this stage. It doesn't have to be perfect, but treat your land with respect. Make sure the weapons look 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.
7. After a couple of weeks (month at the longest) Organize your first Crown Quals/Election. (should be within 2 months of creation at the extreme) 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 just swinging 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.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• If you teach the members to be proud and care about the group, they will identify with it as an extension of themselves and take care of it.
• Let that core group know your dream of becoming the best land possible, 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.

Tawnee Darkfalcon

(Originally printed in the Amtgard Beginners Handbook)

So now you have your Amtgard starter pack in hand; Rulebook, Corpora, instructive materials, etc. The next step is actually getting a group started. This phase requires a great deal of time, work, dedication, and no small expense. You should initiate it when the weather is pleasant and you have plenty of free time available for several months.

First, you need to pick a place to hold your first few battlegames. City parks or other public lands are your best choice for this. It should be a large area, with terrain and man-made features if they are available. You should pick an appropriate day and time to meet, taking your area’s lighting and weather conditions into account. Once you have chosen the site and time, you or a responsible member of your group should always and without fail be present between the advertised hours of play. You should have weapons and be dressed in garb, displaying banners if possible. At least initially, you should have garb and weapons to lend. You may feel odd at first, sitting around in garb and being stared at, but in time both you and the local “mundanes” will get accustomed to the idea.

Having furnished yourself with garb, weapons, and other paraphernalia, it is time to begin seeking other members. Determine where you are most likely to find prospects. Here in the Burning Lands, colleges, high schools and military reservations have yielded the greatest number of players. Advertising at genre bookstores, science-fiction/fantasy/gaming conventions, city festivals, renaissance fairs, and other genre amusements is a successful method as well. Once you have established a core group, you can arrange to provide demonstrations at these events as well. Once you have determined your target groups, you should develop flyer formats which are likely to pique their interest. Military people seem more interested in the combat aspects of the club, while a college crowd might be more intrigued by the role-playing or costuming aspects. The print on your flyers should be large, there should be artwork, and it should be printed on colored paper if practical. A flyer is not really intended to inform, it is intended to interest, and you should bear this in mind when designing it. The most important information appearing on the flyer is the club’s name, and the time and location at which you meet. It is not really necessary to put a contact person, phone, or address on the flyers, since the direct physical nature of the group strongly lends itself to personal demonstration. Your local newspaper and television news will very likely be willing to run an article on your group. Contact them and make arrangements to have your group in best form when they arrive. When your new members do start showing up, welcome them. Immediately make them feel as if they are a part of the group. Lend them garb, weapons, let them look over a rulebook. Some people are intimidated by the idea of combat, don’t pressure them, let them watch. Most of these people will eventually try fighting, some never will.

In spite of the club’s strong orientation toward combat, non-fighters have many talents to offer as well, and should never be discouraged from contributing.Once you have a suitably sized group, you can organize demonstrations, or “demos”, at events. Five or six people can put on a quite credible demo, and for indoor demos you probably won’t want any more than that. Arranging to perform demos is usually easy, people organizing events generally welcome groups willing to provide free entertainment. Simply contact them, explain what the group is all about, how much time and space you would need, etc. When setting up the demo, make certain to pick participants who will make your group look good; well-garbed, well-armed, well mannered players who will take their hits. One person should serve as an Emcee, providing a brief description of the club’s history and activities, weapons, personas, classes, nobility, and what counts as a hit. During this, flyers should be passed out. Then the members present should demonstrate combat through duels and melee. The last half of the demo should consist of members of the audience playing. If there are sufficient weapons and the audience is adults, then members can play along with the audience. If the demonstration is for children, or weapons are scarce, then club members present should serve as reeves. The Emcee should be available at all times to answer questions.Demos need not be solely for the purpose of increasing membership. They can be used to generate goodwill and positive publicity in the community. We have done demos for Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, churches and local telethons. We performed an informative demo for our Parks and Recreation Board. If your city government is a casual one, it is advisable to schedule a demo for your council or Parks and Recreation Board.Even if this is impractical, write your Parks Department letters of introduction and thanks for park maintenance, or the installation of water fountains, restrooms, benches, etc. Familiarize yourselves with them, more importantly, make them familiar with you. Invite the council person in whose district you play to come and watch a game. When the police cruise by to see what in the world is going on, go up to them, introduce yourselves, and invite them to watch. Establish positive and friendly relations with the “powers-that-be”. At all times, keep in touch with the main body of Amtgard. In most cases, this will be through your sponsor group- the group from which you obtained your starter kit. But, should you lose contact with that group, establish ties with another immediately. Especially in this time of rapid growth, new groups which fail to correspond will be lost in the shuffle, and left out of the general organization rosters. Don’t get too discouraged if your sponsor group is slow to respond to you, remember, they may be supporting ten or fifteen groups such as your own, which is a tremendous workload. Good luck, and keep in touch. We intend to offer you all the support possible

by Grand Duchess Tawnee Darkfalcon