The topic of job search kept me occupied for several months now. During this whole process I often thought about which jobs would be a great fit for me other than those to which I usually applied. In particular, while I was in Berlin two weeks ago for an internship that is about to end, I visited a small board gaming club, and inspired by that, an outrageous idea started brewing inside of me. It made me think about what I would do with my life if I had unlimited funds and wouldn’t need to worry about my career. Actually there are several things I would love to do in such a case, such as volunteer for or run a shelter for dogs, horses or other animals. However, the idea that came to me in Berlin was that I would open a board gaming hub in my city and that I would be the manager for such a project.

Does that sound like a board game café to you? Well, a little bit, but not quite. A couple of years ago, two friends of mine and I actually did some serious research into the possibility of opening a board game café in Germany. We made a business model canvas, we researched locations, we visited a board game cafe in a nearby town1, and we did the math. And the math is where our idea went to die, because board game cafés are simply not profitable in Germany. The costs WAY outweigh the income, and due to the nature of board games, people stay for long periods of time, keeping tables occupied. If you want to profit in any way from a café or a similar kind of establishment here, you need to make sure people don’t stay long, and that there’s a high turnover of tables. Obviously not what anyone would be looking for in a board game café.

What I would love to see instead of a profit-oriented board game café though, is simply a somewhat utopian board gaming hub with a nonprofit club structure2. This is obviously not realistic, hence the title of this post “Castle in the Sky” – translated from the German “Luftschloss” which means something like “chasing rainbows”. One can dream though, and I imagine this would be just a really cool place for gamers, like a cooler version of a community center. And with unlimited funds, such a place could be absolutely amazing. It would need to be a place with several rooms, one larger room for events that can hold at least 20-40 people, and a number of small rooms for private groups3, that hold 4-6 people.

The large room should have indirect lighting in general, but also good lights above each table. It also needs to be decorated in such a way that the acoustics dampen the noise if many people are playing at the same time. This is a huge problem at many meetups I’ve been to, and it can be countered by adding sound-absorbing structures on the walls and ceilings, for example in the form of uneven wood panels or living moss walls. Plants or some other kind of decoration would also be great to create dividers, to make the different tables a bit more isolated, while still keeping a sense of togetherness at bigger events.

The large room would also contain the impressive library of board games: anything and everything that our members would want to play from BGG’s Top 500, and other hidden gems. This whole project would be English-friendly, as my city has a large community of expats, and non-German speakers frequently attend board game events here. Therefore, a lot of games should be available in English, as well as in German. The collection of games is available for any guests to play at events, but club members are also able to rent them out for a small fee, mostly as an incentive to treat the game well. In addition the the game library, there would also be a library of RPG books that can also be rented by members.

The small rooms would each come with their own, very nerdy theme. There might be a room at feels like you just walked into a castle, a room that feels like you just walked into a spaceship, a room that feels like you just walked into a jungle, or a room that is decorated like a pirate ship with walls that give you the feeling of looking into the vast ocean. These rooms don’t need to be very big, just big enough to hold a decent size board game table that can hold 4 to 6 people. Obviously, good lightning on the table itself is important here. And these rooms should also be usable for RPGs, so perhaps some of them could have board game tables with integrated tools for RPGs, such as DM screens.

Aside from these gaming related rooms, it would also be great to have a small kitchen with a microwave, that allows people to bring their own food. There should be fridges and snack bars that are regularly stocked, and that offer soft drinks, beers, etc. and all kinds of snacks for a small fee of ~2 EUR each. In addition, a workshop room would be amazing, with a station for miniature painting and other board gaming related crafts. Finally, an outdoor area would also be amazing, where you can just relax and take a break, and where there may even be purely social summer events for the club members and friends. That, and personally, I think a quiet room where you can relax and take a break would be great, as I’m the kind of person who easily gets overwhelmed especially at larger events.

So what kind of events would this gaming hub offer? For one, regular events according to a weekly / monthly schedule. For example, every Tuesday and Thursday there would be a general board game night, Wednesday might be a gateway game night for beginners, and there might be bi-weekly or monthly events for party games, etc. Every month or so there could also be events and workshops such as an introduction to mini painting, RPG speed dating, one shots to introduce people to RPGs, playtesting of board game prototypes, and many more. Obviously club members and guests can always suggest ideas for new events.

The community would be able to organize themselves on an online platform, most likely a discord server4. Or maybe even its own app, because if there are unlimited funds, why not? I would imagine this whole place to be smart anyway. With a good smart home system, access to the place can be automated, as well as lightning and heating. Members would be able to access the place anytime, day or night, with their authorization. Once the smart home detects that someone is present in a particular area of the place, it would automatically turn on the lights and heating (if it’s dark / cold) in the corresponding room. If people would like to book rooms for gaming sessions, only one of them would need to be a member of the club, and everyone else can be let in by them. Since rooms are limited, there would need to be a booking system though in which you can select a room to book, and if we would have an app, the app would remind you of your booking and send announcements.

As you can see, this is would be quite an impressive castle, but quite obviously it’s not something that will ever see the light of day. Even when opening a nonprofit club that charges reasonable membership fees (I would deem ~40-80 EUR/year reasonable and I imagine the club would have between 80-140 paying members) there is no way to finance the monthly rent for such a huge place, even with state benefits for nonprofit organizations. And that’s merely the rent, not even counting all the initial cost for creating, furnishing and decorating the place, as well as acquiring a collection of games, books, and other accessories. But one can dream, right? 🙂