EPGS Recent History
by Greg Jablonski, March 18, 1995

March 1995 marks the fifth anniversary of the Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Society, which was founded to promote boardgaming in the Philadelphia area by Joel Ferich and some friends who met through an advertisement in the "Opponents Wanted" section of Avalon Hill's The General. I will attempt to describe the last two years of the club's history to give members a sense of how the club has evolved.

I joined the EPGS in the summer of 1991 after learning about it from Jim Brackin while attending the meeting of another gaming group. I was looking for more opponents at the time and decided to give it a try. After liking what I saw at EPGS, I started attending regularly and soon got to know a number of the "regulars." I liked the format of each meeting which was basically open gaming. Most of my adversaries were good at boardgaming so each match was a challenge. I also liked the fact that the club had a regular meeting time and standard (and dirt cheap) membership rates. In the Fall of 1992, I heard the editor of the club newsletter, David Bozzini, was resigning after growing tired of the job. Not knowing the amount of work involved but full of enthusiasm, I volunteered to be his replacement. At this point, I was told that Gene Haley had beaten me to the punch but I decided to see if he needed any help. We agreed to divide the workload and I took the job of editor while he worked on the production side of things. At this point, I also found that there was a new treasurer, Pat Dowd, and called him up to discuss the situation. Both of us agreed that the club was running along pretty smoothly and that we would talk things over with the membership when we wanted to proposed any changes.

My view of a gaming club is that it was modeled after a software user's group instead of a chess club. In a user's group the only thing that any of us share is our interest in gaming. There are no standard games that we require members to play as we would do in a chess club. At EPGS, you don't hear people say things like: "We only play Avalon Hill games" or "We only play multi-player games" or "We only play wargames." This club was originally set up to help players find opponents. That's still the club's primary goal. All of us should be able to find people to game with at a meeting if we are flexible enough to find some common game to play. The goal is to encourage people to bring and play a variety of games at monthly meetings.

When Pat and I got started as club officers, we decided to go for a larger set of rooms at the Inn at Plymouth Meeting to give people more room to spread out. It was definitely the right move despite some congestion at the winter meetings. The air-conditioning could also be improved but the rooms were relatively cheap so we settled with what we had. Word of mouth started to spread and soon the club attendance began a steady monthly increase. The club doubled in size during the period covered by this article to roughly 130 members on the mailing list with regular monthly attendance between 50 and 60. A lot of credit goes to people like Jim Brackin who started to work with local hobby shops to post notices about EPGS, Bob Varas who was a one-man sales force in promoting miniatures gaming at the club, and James Noone who volunteered to be corresponding secretary and got the word out to other companies, clubs and hobby stores.

As a result of all this effort and Pat Dowd's negotiating skills in getting a good rate for renting the rooms at the Inn at Plymouth Meeting, the club's finances became much more stable and there was even a reserve to get us through any hard times. This allowed Pat to lower the dues at the meetings. Club members agreed to lower them a little but wanted to have them high enough that we could seek other accommodations if we outgrew our surroundings. Members also agreed to have a "free" meeting in March to celebrate the club's 4th anniversary.

Teams were organized for AvalonCon, and Mike Nagel did a very professional job on club t-shirts for members to wear at conventions to help promote the club. Club members also ran tournaments in the EPGS "Summer Games" to help players prepare for the rigors of the competition at the larger conventions. Throughout all of this the club newsletter served as a record of what went on at meetings, reviews of new games and publication of club business. Pat Dowd also worked out a deal where the Inn would provide boxed lunches for members who filled out an order sheet and paid for them on gaming day.

Members ran a variety of boardgaming and miniatures events at monthly meetings including: Double-blind team games of FLATTOP, NAMSAMW WRG regional miniatures competitions, a "Chronology of War" series of ASL matches designed to cover the major campaigns of WWII, large umpired team games of CLOSE ACTION sponsored by one of our neighboring game clubs ... I've just scratched the surface of events that werre held in the last two years. What keeps people interested in coming back month after month is the sheer variety of things that can happen at any given meeting depending on who shows up.

In late 1994, both Pat Dowd and I decided to give up our posts as Treasurer and Newsletter editor respectively. Steve Cameron and Jim Brackin, two long-time club members took over these positions. Jim will be helped out on the newsletter by Steve Kyle. One of the traditions within EPGS is that all officers are volunteers and the club has been well-served by all who have taken up the torch. Philadelphia will have the gaming spotlight focused on it in 1995 at Origins, the National boardgaming convention, will be held at the city's new convention center in July for the first time. It is being run by Gary Smith of Andon Unlimited who ran a very well-organized convention that I attended at Pittsburgh last year. Steve Cameron has already brought him to one of our meetings and is in contact with him for Origins. In closing, I'd like to say that the high quality of the people who help run our club and game with us is what makes this such a rewarding experience. I look forward to a bright future, gaming at EPGS.