I've been toying with the idea of forming a Fantasy Gaming Club for my daughter's middle school here in the Chicago area (Evanston). I am waiting to see if I can get a teacher to sponsor – then I need to get a background check. So things are moving along. I imagine we'll begin meeting mid-October. November 1 at the latest.
Some Club Criteria
Because we have about 1/3 low income students, the school has some ground rules for clubs. (1) No cost – we don't want kids to lose out on after school activities because of cost. (2) Drop-In. Clubs should be a come or not activity, as opposed to things like band, the soccer team, etc. where the commitment is season long. Come when you like, skip when you don't. (3) All ages welcome.
Rules
The ability to make armies out of the silliest of materials made Hordes of the Things (HoTT) really attractive. But I wanted rules written in English, so the kids could take them home and play elsewhere. I'm currently looking at Mighty Armies, Mayhem, Kings of War, and a few others.
I want as much as possible to have rules that use only D6 (readily available from board games in most homes), and do not require buying other components (like card decks for Battle Lore). Kids can make armies and terrain, so the idea is if you have the rules and a D6 you can make the rest.
Figures
All armies will use 25mm base sizes, but we will be figure scale agnostic. 25mm dwarves vs. 1/72 centaurs? Well, today they're miniature fairy centaurs. 1/72 Knights vs. 15mm Goblins? Today they are GIANT knights. And so on.
Painting/DIY Tutorials
Each club session will feature a game session or two, with my terrain and armies. We will end each club session with a painting/building session for 30 minutes or so. Anything made will be used and shared by the club.
Additional Armies
Kids will be encouraged to think up armies using scratch builds or toys or whatever they can think of. Attack of the pipe cleaner men? Bring it on. Legos of Death and Glory? Sure.
Regardless of the rules finally chosen (and there's nothing to say we can't use more than one) we'll be using a HoTT style army creation system to start.
Care To Help?
If you'd care to help with a donation, please get in touch. Got some old figures? An oddball piece of terrain? Maybe some paint colors and brushes you don't need? I can arrange to make the donations through the PTA, a 501 c(3) charity so you can get a tax deduction if you want .
Cheers,
EC
mark@scalecreep.com