We’re excited to finally start doing our weekly meetup again - Tabletop Thursday - every week - Underline Center, Indiranagar
TL;DR
- Tabletop Thursdays will be every week from 7pm to 11pm.
- Tickets are Rs. 299/349/399. Up by Rs. 100 from the earlier 200/250/300 pricing.
In a lot of ways this is a follow up to Tabletop Thursdays are changing a bit (from April 2022).
Tabletop Thursdays are weekly again
We used to be weekly until March 2020, and then when we reopened after covid we switched to twice a month. We are excited to be back to a weekly schedule, which will hopefully let people plan their schedules around this a lot better.
Why are prices up?
We understand that increasing ticket prices is not ideal, and it’s something we really thought about, because ultimately any price increase will make this inaccessible to some people, either by being outright too expensive or making it something they can’t do as frequently.
You are paying for a better event (hopefully)
This is something easy to say, but I do really think attendees will see the value when they actually attend. It’s in an accessible location for cabs, there is better seating, it is fully air-conditioned, has purpose built tables and lights, and a larger collection of games. We are open longer, until 11pm. We have a great terrace, and will have someone who’s running a little popup for snacks.
We’ll also have regular new games, themed events, tournaments, and a bunch of stuff we’re investing in during Tabletop Thursdays.
To put it another way, we encourage you to come attend atleast one and see for yourself.
We don’t want to price ourselves out of business
@inputj and I are funding this new venue ourselves (with some help from friends and family ofcourse), and we don’t want to end up in a place where in 3 months we realise Tabletop Thursdays is not self sustainable in how it’s priced. This is a conservative pricing that ensures we can do this every week for years to come, and reduce the pressure to manage when we have rains or a long weekend or other situations where there is a drop in turn out.
We’ll try other pricing models
We are also kind of doing some guesswork with pricing, because while we know what our costs are, we don’t really know what people are willing to pay. It’s inherently subjective. This might be a reasonable price for someone who comes once in a while, but may not make sense if it’s a group of friends who want to come every week. We can look at a group discount or a pass for multiple events together. Please talk to us about this, and over the coming weeks we’ll try and find something for everyone.
May seem kind of silly to talk about “competing” board game meetups, but today people have so many different options for board game events - on different days, different locations - many are likely cheaper than ours. So this is a good check and balance to ensure we actually make it worth it for people, while also giving folks other options should this genuinely feel out of their price point.
We can be the first to take the risk
It’s important for everyone to know that almost every board game community is ultimately subsidised by the people who run it. This is probably true for most interest/hobby based communities in general. Many organisers have their own collections that they let everyone use, they may not include their travel and food costs when have to run the events, etc. They are likely spending more than they are making.
We think we have a unique responsibility to help set expectations from the community for other board game events (and other similar events in general). If we are able to make a case for how much this kind of event should cost, and how to structure phased tickets, we hope it makes the community more open to it and gives organisers some confidence to copy it if it makes sense for them.