Making a Verein/Association - Knowledge Thread

Off Topic
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At WoW keepers, there are different Vereins associated with it. The way it works is that you pay an entry fee of 6€ if you’re not a member, 3€ if you’re a regular member and 0€ for the full member. For an idea of numbers, at the card Club (ONE of the Wow Keepers Vereins that plays on Thursdays only) the regular membership is ~25€ and full membership ~150€ PER YEAR. I’m not 100% sure on numbers but @cat4laugh should know.

Soooo… If you want to have your own venue for RPG Vienna you would need a sizeable amount of members to cover costs.

And to add a bit to the discussion - would it hurt to do a poll if people would be up for this now before you start with all the work? I’m not one of the key members of RPG Vienna by any means, but I do attend the Friday evenings pretty regularly and there I haven’t heard many reasons for wanting to change things, especially since we’re settled at WoW keepers now (thanks to Cat). What I appreciate most about the community is that it’s casual and barrier-free. You respond to the post, you show up, you play, you have fun, and you go home. If a Verein is established it might be harder to access for newbies and that’s pretty much the opposite of what you want to achieve as far as I understood.

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That’s part of my point: why are paying Verein dues, to a Verein that is not RPG Vienna focused?

thankfully at least this question is easy to answer:

:point_right: because we get a location and with all fees included it is cheaper than hanging out at a pub

  • bonus point 1: the tables are bigger
  • bonus point 2: it is more quiet

I compl. agree that having our own RPGV location might be better … in theory,
but in RL I don’t think charging a 900+€ membership fee per anno makes much sense :thinking:
we just don’t have the numbers

and the :point_up: € estimate includes, that the gamers who currently play in a park :deciduous_tree: ,
would pay that sum as well … which I am pretty sure they won’t

details
  • Lagerhalle mit WC & Heizung (~100 m²) = ~1300 €/month
  • gas (incl. ‘Frostschutz’) & electricity for such a location = ~ 400 €/month
  • add internet (not much thankfully)
  • divide by currently “perma-active” members = ~22
  • multiply x12 to get the per anno per anno amount
    = ~930€ without any reserves

edit: to end this post on a postive note:

you can def. start a “Night of the Rolling Dice” Verein, if you want to
(just don’t call it “RPGVienna”)
that would also be easier by definition, since you don’t have to incl. all of the branches of this open community
as long as you do not underestimate the work that is needed for running a Verein, you will be fine :+1:

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we would need ~350 regular members, who are on board with this idea, to comfy pull that off
(as a rough estimate)

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I tend to ramble so I apologize that (imo) my points for why a Verein is a good idea got lost.

  1. Renting a space/having an agreement with a bar
    This is was my initial point when we got the first warning from 1070 regarding drink consumption, lack of free tables and when the bar was booked for another event and we got a couple days notice regarding that. Our numbers tend to swell heavily during Spring and Fall (at least that’s what I saw post Corona). I would like to avoid the unpleasentness we have experienced and have a formal arrangement with the location(s) we play at.
  2. Stuff left at location
    After leaving 1070, did anyone get the stuff we stored there? I also know the Chessex Map I donated disappeared at some point. I would be happy to store my books and extra dice and stuff if I felt secure in the knowledge that they wont disappear. This requires some entity to be responsible for things and I dont wish to put this on any individual. Honestly, I am unsure how to solve this with a Verein, but my gut instinct is that SOMEHOW a Verein would have better odds at success then an egalitarian community (Quoting H, because I thought this was a very pleasent way to describe us xD)
  3. Funds, Donations, Money
    I personally dont feel comfortable having money involved without some written agreement and responsible parties (not necessarily Verein). @Darthbinks brought up costs and required Anno Membership, I would really like to poll and find out how many people would be willing to pay for the Verein. We were getting 60+ during our peak and that was not all the same people. Very crude estimate would be closer to 100 people who attend often enough who would pay reasonable dues.
    I’m not saying we found the Verein with the intent of getting people to pay dues, but with the intent of gauging actual interest and having a plan to execute before we even consider asking for money. Even if all we do is have a Verein that then plays at WOW Keepers, I think that would be a step in a direction of opportunities. I think it is not unreasonable to gauge what kind of financial possibilities exist, but that is not a discussion I feel comfortable having without having a structure in place to hold people resonsible.

Regarding a “Night of the Rolling Dice” Verein, I dont want to split the community and I am fearful of doing anything NotRD without RPG Vienna, having already used RPG Vienna logo and name for the first event. The community of RPG Vienna is important to me and I would like to do something for the community, not start my own thing.

Regarding running a Verein and the administrave work, some background on me:
I’ve been Project Manager on 2 Concept to Turn-Key 9-digit projects, coordinating over 5 countries/legal jurisdictions and 3 languages. I also run a small, financially involved gaming community since 2011.
I work slow, but precisely and do not promise something I cannot deliver.
Ethical work is more important to me than getting work done cheap or quick.

My initial proposal is a pro forma Verein (again quoting H, because why invent, if something else works), with the intent of having a skeleton structure to build upon and gather statistics with which then actual proposals can be processed, voted upon and such.
Part of the reason why a legal entity is (IMO) necessary, is that I would like to collect membership data (Screen Name and an email is enough, IMO) to have a bit more oversight. This kind of data SHOULD NEVER be processed by an individual who has no legal liabilty!

Right now, we are hearing (including myself in this) from a vocal minority.

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Admittedly I’m not up to date with reading up on everyones opinion but an idea just struck me? Why don’t we do a Verein for “Night of the Rolling Dice” and leave RPG-Vienna as is. Any excess funding from events we can just pool directly into Neil as a thank you for hosting the site and giving us the communtiy or something.

We could still keep using the Logo from RPG Vienna on the “NotRD” posters and whatnot. Just say that we’re “in co-operation” with them rather than merge them into one single entity. (Which sounds more of a hassle than it is worth atm imo)

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I am not advocating for the immediate rental of our own venue, but if there is never a START to finding out what we can do, there can also never be a RESULT.

To do that, we would need to know WHO to poll as just relying on Forum Posts will deliver bad data.

And I have heard the opposite from people, both of our points are anecdotal and hearsay and I do not trust or rely on either of them. I would like to gather hard data to find out what the ACTUAL interest is, vs what people say during conversation.

It is what I appreciate about the Community as well. As I said before, there is no intent for the immediate paywalling and there is no intent to guarantee the paywall. Right now, it is the data gathering stage, but one can’t gather data without a formal structure to gather, process and release the data.

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As mentioned above, there are Vereins that just meet, play and pay dues to WOW Keepers, I certainly would propose we maintain the Status Quo, while gathering data and formulating a plan.

You value being able to play without having a minimum drink requirement
I value being able to order food and drinks when I want and not have to carry shit around with me.
Neither of our positions are less/more important. We can guarantee one or the other as a group of individuals. The best way to guarantee both is to negotiate as a Verein.

I know at 1070 there was a 2 drink minimum. I generally downed 5 Spritzer in the evening, but my extra drinks didnt carry over to folk who only drank Soda Zitrone cause the waiters looked at and complained about individuals. As a Verein, we can negotiate a minimum for the group, where those who order more cover the minimums for those who dont want/can’t afford to.

Getting a good location would be easier/possible with a Verein doing the talks and not a group of individuals. Whether bigger tables, a quieter location or any of the myriad nitpicks we have, no location will negotiate with a group of people, none of whom are legally/financially liable for the agreement.

My goal is to provide data for this theory you agree with. Your estimate of ~30 and my estimate of ~100 are both piss in the wind vs actual data.

As I said before, my motivation is to provide better things for the community. Think idealistic communism, applied to RPG Vienna xD
Yes, I understand the amount of work that goes into organizing and running a gaggle of gamers xD

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If the intent was to rent our own location from day 1, then yes. That is not the Day 1 intent. That is MAYBE late 2025 goal, IF the stars align.

MASSIVE EDIT CAUSE I CAN’T POST MORE THAN 3 TIMES IN A ROW

Man, I apologize for Wall-Of-Texting, but I am hyperfocusing on this right now and just need to get it out before it goes away xD

WARNING: LOTS OF CORPORATE SPEAK (the difference is, I mean it xD)

I see an opportunity for RPG Vienna to stand independent of other organizations and to be able to fend for itself. Corporations, Organizations, Vereine are created to fill a hole that exists. There is a reason Neil founded RPG Vienna in 2012 instead of joining something else that existed. There is a reason all the people who come to RPG Vienna, come here and not somewhere else.

If we dont capitalize on the opportunity we have now, some else will (Oooohhh, the greed! The hubris! But also the very sad reality of the world we live in.) If someone else does what we do, but better, people will go there. If someone else does what we do, but advertises more, people will go there.

RPG Vienna’s main points of attraction are English and Nerd Culture. That in itself isnt unique, the algorithm gods have blessed us with a tractable name and something people are likely to Google. From this happenstance an amazing community filled with amazing people has grown.

I would like to see growth and cross pollenation of our community. I know an artist community in Vienna, when I used to work at Starbucks, they’d pop by with 10-12 people once a month and have an artist meetup for several hours. I would love to bring those wonderful people to RPG Vienna, for those who are interested to join us in D&D and board games, but also for the artists who are already here to be able to join these artist meetups.

I have a friend who is in a group of minature painters, but they struggle with finding a location to paint minis that also has an aircompressor for airbrushing. None of their homes are big enough to fit 4-5 people with an aircompressor, but a Verein with one on hand would be something they’d be happy to pay dues to, my friend would be more than happy to bring his aircompressor to a safe location and leave it there for use.

I know our community has 3D print enthusiasts and having a 3D printer on hand for folk to print stuff (under supervision of someone competent) would be cool.

These are thoughts and wild fantasies that I have:
Wednesdays 3D printing
Thursdays Minature Painting
Fridays D&D
Saturday noon 2nd D&D
Saturday evening misc boardgames
Sundays artist meetups
Toss in a cosplay group and whatever else you can think of!
Organizing small workshops for people interested in said hobbies, charging material at cost and space at reasonable prices

An English speaking Nerd Culture community center. These are grand delusions, but they all start with some like-minded people, agreeing on things and moving as an ORGANIZED group.

All of this CAN be possible, but requires commitment and time from folk, commitment and time that doesn’t disappear when one guy doesnt show up, when lack of culpability makes everything vague and meandering.

That is my motivation and objective. That is something I see as a real possibilty. As @Darthbinks brought up, you can’t make everyone happy, some people will drop out if a Verein is made. People will also drop out if they find something else that gives them more value, if an adjacent hobby begins taking up more of their time. I’d love it if those people, instead of dropping out, had a place for their hobby here with us. To share and appreciate together. As a community.

END OF CRINGE CORPORATE TALK

Thank you for reading, I appreciate you. :slight_smile:

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The other day I had to approve a minor application for funding in one of the Vereine I’m in.

This took a phone call … and a couple emails … and filling out a form … and figuring out who else needed to sign off on this … all for 125 clams that had already been earmarked for such purposes by a previous vote in a previous meeting.

And it’s all going to be back on my desk in the fall when I have to audit the whole thing, which I’m technically not even allowed to do, because complying with Vereinsrecht isn’t always easy.

And that’s just me. There are other people involved for whom this is more work.

It’s not a huge deal, but it adds up. It’s worth it, because the Verein lets me do things I no-workarounds-possible couldn’t do otherwise, but Darth’s right: this really shouldn’t be underestimated.

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Just to be clear, by ‘pro forma Verein’ I meant something that exists on paper only for no other purpose than fulfilling the requirement of having a Verein.

What sort of data are you looking for? The usernames are all here, for example.

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Spielbar did.

Klaxons going off right about now …

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Not going blind into this, I am aware that beauracracy is annoying and tedious, but that paper pushing is what lets this be responsible and can be audited to provide a certain amount of safety.

Yes, I do have a smattering of Latin as well as can understand context xD I would understand “pro forma” to include “for the purposes of legal liablity”. So that on paper, no individual is legally/financially responsible (yes, I understand that within the Verein some one still has to have liability, but there is a legal distinction between being liable for the behaivor of the Verein and being individually liable) (brain tired, getting liable and responsible confused, too tired to fix now)

You’ve brought up that YOU dont have issues turning ideas into actions and now Spielbar. Anecdotal proof and (imo) exceptions are a bad form of counter arguement. I dont know the story behind Spielbar, was/is there a signed agreement for Thursdays? Cause if it was all verbal, well we had that with 1070 too, until we didn’t.

Please have klaxons go off, the more open questioning, the (I hope) clearer I can be. IF any paywalling would occur, it would be no different than WOW Keepers: for the use of space and commodities provided. We are far off from this. Like at least a full calender year before it is reasonable to discuss any kind plan.

As to data, again, I’d love to be able to rely on the Members List here, but activity here isn’t a great way to do this. Many people dont check the forum on a weekly basis and I dont want a bunch of polls people dont see.

I’m imagining something along the lines of:
How many express interest in being members in the Verein
Their expected attendance (how many times a year)
A general vote on priorities of what would like to be added (e.g. buy stuff to keep at WOW Keepers or negotiate with WOW Keepers for lower fees for our members) spitballing here

How to poll for opinions best/effective? A mailing list? I dont see polls on the forum working, unless they’re around for like a month and people actively mention them at every VALUE.

honestly too tired right now to formulate more complex thoughts

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more reasonable would be 30 at best

you can look at the number of individual people showing up of the last 4 weeks of FR & SA VALUE and add the gazeebo gamers
… followed by subtracting those who showed up only once in that timeframe

edit: we are ~ 22 players (see below)

…

anyway good luck :+1:

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Regarding numbers, yes, I can see a reduction in numbers due to the paywall of the WOW Keepers. I’d like to find a way to reduce that burden on members. What are your thoughts on that, @Darthbinks?

A secondary component for reduced numbers is summer vacation, lots of people are out of town with family or just going outside to the park. I expect to see numbers surge again in fall, as they did last year.

I genuinely dont understand why both @Darthbinks and @H take the paywall quote out of context. Literally the rest of the sentence is “and there is no intent to guarantee the paywall”, as in, if people arent for it, then it won’t happen. I’m honestly doing my best to be clear, but this feels like a bad faith quote.

This isnt a unilateral thing, it’s an effort to get a proper democratic vote.

Going post by post, here the cons that have been presented:
Having a Verein wont prevent drama/stealing
Not everyone involved in RPG Vienna wants to be involved in the Verein
Vereins are a lot of work
A Verein wont guarantee success of ideas
Renting spaces: bridge to be crossed if a space like that turns out to be the best option for those who want it
Politics in regards to Verein stuff
It’s not possible to make everyone happy with changes

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This is a good post and I’d like to reply to parts of it.

Without sounding too overdramatic here: At that time, nothing else existed. I seem to remember Google + and Facebook Groups were fairly new at the time and I considered setting something up on those. I also had to scour some RPG forums (like enworld) to find people who might be interested. (I think Amlash was the first person I contacted who showed an interest) I ultimately decided against G+ and Facebook as not everyone had access to those platforms and a forum of my own meant that, even though it wouldn’t be ‘free’, I could control it. (I’m really glad I did this. G+ eventually shut down and Facebook Groups is a total mess!)

I personally have no problem with this. It’s a community of like-minded people who happen to have this forum to have a chat and coordinate things. If a better thing comes along, I’d want people to go for it and get involved. A couple of years ago, A few members of RPGV started up a separate ‘dndvienna’ discord which was more online focused and build around the ‘West Marches’ concept. It was a nice idea and I was part of the initial voice chat too.

I don’t remember exactly (of course!) but I’m pretty sure I Googled something like ‘RPGs in Vienna’ before the idea of a forum came up. I thought diefestung.com was probably something close to what I was looking for and I’d visited there previously to have a couple of intro games of 40k (which is why it’s really cool that there’s a link with WoW/Keepers again!) but I wanted to play D&D in English. 4e was out at the time and due to reading some negative opinions of it, I thought rpgvienna would be a better choice over dndvienna as it was more system agnostic.

Absolutely true :heart:

All of the ideas you listed are really cool and it would be great too see them come to fruition. Everything you listed is possible without a Verein. However, transforming RPG Vienna into a Verein could have a negative outcome and I personally believe the cons outweigh the pros at the moment. Once it’s ‘official’ there’s not really any way back. It’s a bit of a risk. I’m proud of how it started and what it’s become and I’m always open to ideas and suggestions.

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Instead of waiting for something better to come along, what speaks against us being better? The risk of the community falling apart? That same risk exists if we don’t do anything.

I agree that it is possible without a Verein. IMO The issues I see is lack of any kind of control from the side of RPG Vienna, lack of legal responisbilty from any individual and would ultimatly be MORE work then doing it with a Verein.

I would parellel that attempting this without a Verein to running a store where no one is an employee and just volunteers. Technically possible, but the lack of reliablity will eventually lead to failure.

However, not transforming RPG Vienna into a Verein could have a negative outcome and I personally believe the cons don’t outweigh the pros at the moment. Once it’s ‘official’ there’s a way back. (Majority vote to dissolve the Verein) It’s a bit of a risk. I’m proud of how it started and what it’s become and I’m always open to ideas and suggestions.

I have attempted to list the mentioned cons above:

Having a Verein wont prevent drama/stealing
Not everyone involved in RPG Vienna wants to be involved in the Verein
Vereins are a lot of work
A Verein wont guarantee success of ideas
Renting spaces: bridge to be crossed if a space like that turns out to be the best option for those who want it
Politics in regards to Verein stuff
It’s not possible to make everyone happy with changes

What other cons have I missed? Because those cons exist whether there is a Verein or there isnt. It’s a matter of degrees that change. I would love to be able to address the cons and hesitations that exist, but am having trouble with processing them. (I have ADHD and am neuro-atypical, sometimes I need to be told repeatedly to get it through my thick skull, I do apologize for the inconvenience) Please be SPECIFIC with concerns

I feel like I’m coming across pushy and naggy (also repeating myself and being annoying). I’m just excited for the possiblities, but dont want to go forward without geniune support. I’m doing my best to present merits and demerits in an unbaised way, but am obviously fallible. I do wish best vibes and feel goods to all.

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For who? Can you elaborate on this a bit more?

I saw one suggestion that the Verein could negotiate with a location more effectively than what’s possible at the moment but I don’t agree with this. H pointed out that as a group, we’d “book” some tables at spielbar and they would set them aside. That worked really well for a long time. Also, I don’t think negotiating with WoW Keepers for a lower entry fee is at all necessary. In fact, it’s extremely rude.

A lot of the reasons you’re bringing up in favor of a Verein seem purely financial and I don’t think that’s a good basis to build upon.

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at WOW/Keepers the first three times are free → so I don’t think that’s the reason
it is just a bit less central than our previous location, but still very accessable
… and as mentioned above after the 3rd time, the cost will be still below a café/restaurant
… and given the costs and efford running a location like this, the price seems reasonable

also there are 3 venues now, where currently gamers run “Open-Tables” regulary
(Sägewerk, WOW/Keepers and Türkenschanzpark :deciduous_tree: )
all with their indiviual advantages :slight_smile: :+1:

numbers have gone up and down in the past before
once we had 6-7 tables in Spielbar too (all playing Indie RPGs :slight_smile:)
that is just part of life

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Hey all I guess I will throw my hat in the mix because I have been pinged twice in here now…I also tried some formatting to make it easier to find what you’re looking for

Wow Keepers Questions

  • @Jackfruitchilli WoWKeepers asks 60 bucks for a yearly membership and then you pay the reduced cost of 3 Euros per week. I paid for that membership and was allowed to include regular members which to me are Dungeon Masters so they also pay the reduced rate. Everyone else is 6 Euros but can individually get in touch with WoWKeepers. There is also a once a year 180 bucks option.

    • This is a very reasonable rate compared to playing at a Cafe and compared to renting out your own space. This is because WoW has the numbers we do NOT have. At our height we had 60 players. And even considering that number it would still be more expensive to rent our own place.

  • As mentioned by @Darthbinks the first three times at WoWkeepers are free so the paywall is no problem. I think the biggest turnoff for most is that it is an old cellar with a really small entrance but it hasn’t stopped from a lot of cool new people joining us.

  • @Rayce_Kaiser we are paying dues to a Verein that is giving a space to Table top Gaming. There is warhammer, numenerra and other dnd groups. You are making it sound like competition.

  • They were also really chill when I made a handful of mistakes in the beginning

How would we conduct a survey on… anything?

That is easy enough in my Opinion… us admins can just cross reference users by their Account age, then we check which of these accounts had recent activity and those are the people we want to include in such things. One would have to define a cut off point kinda like we did with our DM rules for V.A.L.U.E games March last year. Or we just throw a google forms in the discord say only allowed with google account registration and call it a day though that would be pretty low effort…

A loveletter to @Rayce_Kaiser

Hey Kaiser I have been reading your posts and it is very clear to me that you are as passionate if not even more passionate about this community than me. I also want to do more and cooler things, mostly spread the good word of TTRPGs to more people.

However

The idea that a Verein would make us more robust does not hold any water for me. I have successfully revived the Friday games twice now without any backing simply by organizing at 1070 by organizing WoWKeepers with the help of @Stracci and I am certain we will do it again should something happen.

The real reason for a verein is to get funding to do cool stuff

but space in Vienna is expensive, events we can still attend by just acting like one and everything else like merch and stuff is cute but at the end of the day feels very capitalist to some extent.

The fact is that we cannot go under, unless The Forum and Discord die at the same time. We will always have at least some people that are going to want to play at some point that is the beauty of it.

Hot takes from a guy that is too young

  • @H I wouldn’t call us perfectly egalitarian. Definitely a lot flatter than other places and that is beautiful, however we have admins and mods and just a lot of people that have naturally taken to leadership positions. I don’t think it could hurt to carry that outwards more. Especially new people want to gravitate towards someone that looks like they are responsible.
  • I don’t want to get too much into the nitty gritty of Vereinsgründung. I feel like that is what the actual date is for. However it would feel very much wrong to use the RPGVienna label for something that is not approved by the founders per se.
  • I am also not sure how it would work but @Mexikorn 's idea seems reasonable. Keep the legal stuff to a part of our efforts not the entire RPGVienna brand.
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To try and give us a sense of how many of us there are at present, I went back over the VALUE games for 2023 so far (1070, WOWKeepers, Sagewerks) and looked at who registered to attend. Basically it looks like we have a core of ~16 folk who turn up a lot and a big fuzzy cloud of others who sometimes make it.

If we count people in seats throwing dice, there were ~ 420 of them at all the VALUE events so far. Just over half (216/420) times those dice-throwers were the same 16 people. So about half of our activity is coming from 1/6 of the people.

Other bits from what I see:

  • It looks like we have had 102 people show up at least once this year across 28 events.
  • 6 people have been at more than half the events this year
  • If you joined more than 2 events you were in the top half of our active members
  • 26 folk joined more than twice but aren’t part of the “16 most active” group. We saw them 5 times on average.
  • 43 people only turned up once so far this year
  • on average we get 15 people/event at WoWkeepers (vs 20 in the last days of 1070)
  • on average we get 10 people/event at Sagewerk

Caveat: all this exclude the Gazebo, guests that people brought along and walk-ins. Those may make a difference but I do not think it would be a times-ten difference.

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