Quote from: soviet;661793Like the woman who came over to me and my friend once when we were playing Magic the Gathering and accused us of contacting the devil, then flipped the table. True story!

you totally had the devil take care of her, right?

Quote from: soviet;661793Couldn't imagine playing in a pub, feels like unless you booked a function room it would be very noisy and you'd get curious normal people wandering over to see what was going on. Like the woman who came over to me and my friend once when we were playing Magic the Gathering and accused us of contacting the devil, then flipped the table. True story!

Green's Tavern is not that noisy (when The Walking Dead is on, it is totally silent so you can hear the TVs). I can honestly say that any person who tried what this woman did to you, soviet would be kicked out as soon as she said anything about contacting the devil. The owners do not put up with any bullshit like that because they are also gamers and will gladly 86 an asshole if they are bothering a paying customer or a regular.

I've gamed at rooms in the library, apartment offered conference rooms, outdoors at parks, and the game stores which offers RPG areas (and card playing room as well.)

In addition to the places listed already, I have scoped another type of venue (even though I have yet to pull the trigger on it).  My municipality rents their community center for $40 a night, first come first served. With a large enough group of folks, this could work...

Quote from: mcbobbo;661953In addition to the places listed already, I have scoped another type of venue (even though I have yet to pull the trigger on it).  My municipality rents their community center for $40 a night, first come first served. With a large enough group of folks, this could work...

That would be cool idea, especially if you could get every one to pitch in a few bucks.

I usually have gamed at my house, Kevin's house, or Jason's house. At the university usually gamed at apartments or in their large communal rooms with a ton of chairs and tables. So going up to the University to chill out and play games is an option if you have one nearby and they have a sort of public area if you want to stretch your feet out a bit.

Quote from: David Johansen;661732I actually opened a gaming store to have a place to play.  It's been an interesting year.  I wouldn't call it the wisest decision I ever made but I would say I've gamed a lot more this year.

I know what you mean by "interesting year".
Although my personal gaming took a severe downturn when I opened my store. All that book keeping and ordering took away all my leisure time. I am really glad that I left all that behind ten years ago. (What I liked about it was being an ambassador of gaming, explaining all kinds of games to people, and yes, converting board gamers to role-players. But all that behind-the-scenes logistics of running a store became more and more important, and kind of ruined my fun in gaming. Just like the saying goes - "Turn your hobby into a job and you'll lose it as a hobby.")


But before that, when I was just a customer and good friends with the owner, I had a bi-weekly open introductory game. The game was held on Saturdays, after closing hours, in the store. (Back then, German laws were such that most stores had to close from Saturday about 3 pm to Monday morning. Gee, I miss that time when week-end truly felt like week-end.)
So there were no walk-in customers in the store when we played.

Other locations:

My very first Midgard session was at a town community center. The GM rented a room and we split the cost (about 3 in today's US$ each). The room was very clean, white, and sparse, and the gaming felt ... lifeless.

Much later I organised a regular RPG club meeting. It grew out of the staff meetings of our local RPG convention team and became an open gaming evening, held every other Wednesday in the youth club room of a local church.

I have to admit that I don't really like playing at people's homes, not even my own. In between shop sessions I had a second campaign with a different group, at my home, and I liked the shop game much better.
The reason might be that there are two types of "gaming at home" styles: the kitchen/dinner table style and the comfy couch style (a variant of which would be "just sitting on the floor"). Almost all people I know prefer the couch, while I strongly prefer the more focused, "serious business", dinner table.

Even today, I'd rather play at a (semi-)public place. For quite a while I am eyeing the local library but my day job currently forbids that kind of commitment (I have to go to anime conventions a lot so my preferred gaming days - Friday or Saturday - are out).
And I guess it would be an interesting experience playing at a pub (or German equivalent).

Quote from: soviet;661793When I was in the roleplaying society at uni we used to play in lecture halls and seminar rooms, which was pretty cool. But now I always play at someone's house.

Couldn't imagine playing in a pub, feels like unless you booked a function room it would be very noisy and you'd get curious normal people wandering over to see what was going on. Like the woman who came over to me and my friend once when we were playing Magic the Gathering and accused us of contacting the devil, then flipped the table. True story!

Really, it depends on pounding the streets and finding a good pub in your area. There's no short cut, just hard work.

As a general rule I run games at my house. Although when a friend of mine had a comic shop we played in the back room. Which led to more games being run at my house:) Key tip for you folks out there, dont of be very careful how you run a supers game at a comic shop. And for god sakes dont use ideas from what you just read. Cause they all read it too and are gonna meta game the fuck out of it;)

An independent coffee shop has recently been kind to me and mine

I heard someone talking about a gaming group who rented an appt, and as I was living in a two bedroom appt at the time I found myself considering the idea.  

If you get 20+ people each chipping in, and get one person willing to clean up and pay bills in exchange for cheap rent, you could end up with a couple of good gaming rooms and a real kitchen for fixing chow.  

You would need a solid group of committed people to make it work, but the idea always appealed to me.

These days, pretty much at home (its set up for that).  But not that long ago at some of the gaming cons and club events; and before that there used to be a specific club here that was for gamers to get together and run RPGs.
Its since closed, though.

Quote from: Ladybird;661721Something like D&D4, or anything requiring that sort of map, is probably just not going to be practical, again due to table size.

I play/GM 4e at the pub - usually we put two or three tables together to have enough space, but I can play with a single coffee table if necessary; people keep stuff on their laps. If table is very small I fold the flip-mat to half size or use the WoTC dungeon tiles.

Quote from: Ladybird;662007Really, it depends on pounding the streets and finding a good pub in your area. There's no short cut, just hard work.

I spend plenty of time in pubs as it is thanks!

I've got a solid group and we have a couple of houses we can play in, so I already have pretty much the ideal setup. If that fell apart somehow I guess I could find a quiet pub to use, but I can't see any benefit to switching now.

As far as I'm concerned, pubs are for drinking rather than RPG's.  Although they can be fun for character creation, but without exception I have had to convince drunks/rubberneckers to leave us alone when doing this.  I can only imagine what it must be like running a full game.

I also tend to swallow my words a bit so might have trouble being heard above background hubbub.