Orciversary

(A well-earned break from the G8 stuff…)
The Tuesday that just ended, 5 July 2005, is the second anniversary of ORC Edinburgh, the Open Roleplaying Community here in Edinburgh. When I leave here in the not-so-distant future, this is the most significant thing I’ll leave behind.
I’ve been into roleplaying games most of my life. My aunt and uncle were to blame, but once I got a taste I never looked back. The mix of creativity and collaboration seized my enthusiasm like nothing else. Those two words are still fundamental to who I am – creativity and collaboration.
I want to spread the love of roleplaying games. I’m an evangelist for the form, and I genuinely believe it offers cool fun you can’t get other ways. I’m always looking for avenues to push RPGs to a new audience or in a new way.
When I came to Edinburgh I noticed a chain bookstore, Ottakars on George Street, carried some RPGs. One day I went in and noticed they’d set up a small noticeboard to be used by gamers looking for people to play with. This, needless to say, is a huge rarity. I seized my opportunity, contacted the lovely woman responsible for the noticeboard, and asked if I could run a demo day instore. So I did. And it went well. Not too many people came by but those that did became the core membership of what was to come.
What was to come was the Roleplaying Club, which inevitably became known as the Ottakar’s Roleplaying Club. Eventually we realised we’d created one of those cutesy acronyms quite by accident, so ORC it became.
Two years of regular Saturday meetings, with an all-welcome vibe and more young people than I’ve ever seen involved in gaming before. With some tremendously creative folks stretching their creative muscles. With a bunch of people learning new things about themselves and other people. With a whole heap of fun being had.
It’s been demanding. Almost every Saturday for two years I’ve gone along to ORC. For the first year, I structured my holidays around it, and carried a heavy load of organising gatherings and running games. But since then it’s taken off, and it now runs itself fine without input from me. It has hit a critical mass of people, acquired a niftykeen website, and generally matured into something really solid that should be on the scene here for quite some time.
I’m really proud of what I’ve started here, and I’m even more proud of all the people who took that small thing I kicked off and through their enthusiasm and effort made it so successful.
I’m going to be back in Edinburgh some day. It’s my second home and I’m going to miss it horribly when I’m gone. I hope and trust that, when I arrive here again, ORC will still be going strong.
http://www.orcedinburgh.co.uk/