Ep8: Starting a Gaming Non-Profit with Alexandria RPG

Join Josh on The Business of Gaming podcast as he visits with David from the Alexandria RPG Library in Seattle, Washington. This episode discusses the process of starting a non-profit in the tabletop gaming industry, why role-playing games are important and what challenges you can expect to face.

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Hey, y'all. Welcome to the Business of Gaming podcast. I'm Josh from Gaming Haven Guild, and today we're at PAX West with David, the founder and chief librarian of the Alexandria RPG Library, a nonprofit focused on sharing RPG history and gameplay at large conventions and community-focused events. David, can you tell us about the history of the library? So, history of Alexandria RPG. We started at Emerald City Comic Con in 2017. I was the deputy manager of gaming, and one of the other gentlemen that works with the library, he was the manager of gaming, and I had off pan said about two three months before the events and you know we always have these board game library why is nobody done a role-playing game library and then about two weeks before the show an entire room of small vendors uh dropped some dropped out some moved to another part of the show and then we ended up with a room that we didn't have anything for less than two weeks before the show and he goes hey can you do that role-playing game library you said you could do my brain i'm going that's not what i said but i was like yeah sure so that night i talked to a friend who lives in Iowa, and I said, I'm going to be doing this role-playing game library. I'm just going to be pulling all the books off my shelf. I don't know what to do. And then he was like, can I mail you some books? Sure. So his books got there, got to my house the first day where I was already up here in Seattle, away from my house, didn't know that they got there. I had 348 books out of my house that I just stuffed on a shelf and said, role-playing games are cool. Let's talk about them. And then that night got his books. They came in the day, so we got shelved the next day so we were like over 400 books now this is awesome and everybody kept coming in like hey can you bring this to our event so we had like small events that were locally that wanted us to come because they were like nobody's done this before and then there were two little fun things that happened one there was a young man that came in he came running in he had three friends he had them by their hands running in there like stumbling behind him and he just exuberantly goes explain role playing games I was like uh okay and so I started explaining what role-playing games are. And a young lady that was with him was like, so we can make characters? I was like, yeah. So I grabbed a game called Deadlands. And I thought it was going to be fun because it's very interactive character building. It's done with a deck of cards. And they just sat there quietly for like two hours, these four teenagers making characters. And they put the books back and left. I was like, oh, you know, they looked like they had fun. You know, mission, mission success. Next day, one of the other teenagers, he came back and he's like, hey, the game that we made characters for you, Yesterday, we went and found the books last night and we bought them and we're going to be playing that game. I was like, oh, that's awesome. So, you know, the kid that was excited, he had just heard and found out about role-playing games. He had gone back east for a wedding and a family and like his cousin's like, hey, let's play a role-playing game, D&D. And then all he could remember was it was a role-playing game and couldn't remember anything else. And now because of that cousin introduced him to it and then he drug his friends in and through the library, we We introduced him to role-playing games, more of them, and then they went out and played. And I was like, that was really awesome. And then I think it was on the Saturday of that event, there was a dad who had his 13-year-old son, and it was like six or seven friends of his son. So Emerald City Comic Con is pretty big. It's about as big as PAX. So on the weekend, you're at like 90,000 people that come through. So at any point, there's tens of thousands of people in the building. And here's a dad... hanging six or seven 13-year-old kids around this giant convention. And I think he just saw, you know, like the little sign we had, it said role-playing game library and a shelf of books. And he was like, great, this is a break. They come in, they're asking a million questions. And one's like, can we play? And before I could say no, my volunteers are like, look, we know where you're going to be. If we need you, you'll be right here. Let these kids play role-playing games. So I grabbed all the D6 Star Wars because everybody knows Star Wars. All you need are six-sided dice and then there's characters already made in the back of the book. So one kid would like took picture of the character sheet so he just had it on his phone to use and we could pass the books around. The other kids were writing them down. And an hour later, none of them survived. We started in a cantina because every RPG starts in a bar or a tavern or a cantina. So they didn't even make it out of a cantina. All the characters had died. And I'm like, oh man, this is horrible. And then I get hugs from these kids. They were like, That was awesome. They give me a hug. And then, you know, they were out in the hall like, oh my God, just see when I did this. And they were just like going over the top. They were doing what we all do, playing role-playing games, telling stories, retelling the stories that we just created together. And then I looked at the dad and legit had like a tear in his eye. I was like, hey, is everything okay? He's like, I've been trying to figure out for a couple of years how to interest my son to role-playing games. And you just did that for me. I was like, oh, now I really have to actually make this thing go. And so we started going to events that have first year, you know, that was 2017, started Emerald City. And I think we did like eight events that year, just kind of like, and it was me just dragging books to places. We did packs that year and it was bonkers. You know, I was just like, okay, here I am setting up a, you know, I, by then I had, uh, like 1100 books. Uh, so going from March of 2017 to September of 2017 went from 300, 348 books to like 1100 books, uh, in just that short amount of time. And, you know, I'm like, okay, I have a room here at PAX. Like, what? And then, you know, we just keep growing from there. We're over 10,000 books now. And we're in the process of making plans of how to set up a second location in the Midwest so we can get to East Coast and Midwest stuff because... trying to get to that stuff from here in Seattle is just insanely expensive. Let's talk a little bit about the logistics of that growth because 10,000 books, 10,000 anything is difficult to move around. So yeah, it was absorbing my living room and dining room, literally. I was stacking stuff on the cheap foldable plastic tables and broke a few because they're like, oh, it's over. I'd come home and all the books are just in this V and they're like, oh God, I got to do better. And so buying shelves and when I could afford them. And then we're like, I got to get you storage. So then we got a 10 by 10. And now we've got two 10 by 10s that are stuffed full. And we're looking at either getting a 10 by 30 in climate controlled storage, or we're trying to see if we can partner with another nonprofit that they've outgrown their space, but they can't afford to go to a bigger space. So if we can work out a deal with them to go to a bigger space, and then we're helping each other out. But it's always, we're in a constant need of funds because where that was kind of the purpose of going non-profit is yeah I had a friend's like you were stupid for going non-profit I was like paperwork's not horribly hard we're a library so we were able to put it down in that and we went and that went fairly quickly but you know other people they're like oh I you know talking to some gentlemen that are trying to do similar what we're doing but with TCGs trading card games and collectible card games and they're they're going through a much more difficult process than we did because, you know, it's like we literally have books for our library. We go places and share books with people. So our paperwork on that, it was pretty simple. And with that, you know, uh, it, it, it's easier to solicit donations. I've had, I had somebody donate like 50 limited edition, uh, role-playing game books and, you know, he would, you know, that's, that's how I think we figured up the value. It was like$1,800, uh, in those, in those books, uh, you know, And so I wrote him a tax letter with the names of the books and, you know, thank you. And then he was able, you know, he went and got the values and then his, uh, uh, his, his accountant figured it in. So he got a tax write off doing that. And that's kind of the entire reason to do the nonprofit for us. Because we we've never made money. In fact, for many years, we were out of pocket 10 plus thousand dollars a year. So myself and other people, you know, putting our own funds in it to make it go. And, you know, people were like, oh, When does this go from a passion project to an actual thing? I'm like, it's always been an actual thing. It's just us figuring out how to get to the people and get more than just books. I tell everybody we operate off of three types of donations, time, books, and money. Doing good on books. And as we expand, many of the companies that have been donating books to us, new books, understand that now as we're expanding, instead of, hey, here's a copy of our new book, they're going to have to do a couple copies because we're going to be in multiple places. And they're excited about that. Getting volunteers, that's been a long road, but why we can expand to a new location is we have a really great set of people that volunteer to come do these events with us. So like for PAX West, PAX gave us a 50 by 50 booth space with 15 tables and then gave us, I think we had 50 badges. And so we had people that come in and volunteered as librarians. So they rehau reshell books. They talk to people about role-playing games and then the like, then we have our GMs or we call them game hosts because we have a variety of games. And so our, our game hosts will sit down, you know, they're running a huge variety of games, uh, sometimes D and D, but you know, like a big one this weekend has been dagger heart. Uh, geez, uh, do, uh, what's it dread. Uh, dread is super popular. Uh, we usually have that one run in the evenings. Cause it's supposed to be a little more, you know, horror suspenseful. Yeah. That's not really when you were on earth, you know, like 10 o'clock in the morning show open, let's play dread. Um, we have a lot of star Wars. There's a ton of like classic games and super fun. So those are all those, those fun little logistics pieces and getting the, uh, the volunteers and getting the books donated. We're been good on that. And you know, we always struggle on that money piece. Uh, some of the events pay us to come. Uh, it's not a lot of money, but they see the value that we add. Cause they're like, oh, Hey, we give them this space. We give them a few, a few bucks to make sure that they can get here, get parking. Some, some, sometimes events will give us hotel rooms and stuff. So, uh, we have GMs that are coming from out of town. We can put them up, you know, in that room. Uh, and that helps out because we're not paying for that out of pocket. man there's just so many little pieces that you never thought you would be dealing with and I mean the first two years was just me going places like hey I have 1500 pounds of books I'm going to put these shelves up and I'm going to set them up and then I'm going to run a couple games then I'm going to get the attendees to run games and we still do that to this day but like here we had 170 pre-planned games going off before show opened so volunteers coming in, running those games. And then we still have tables that set aside, oh, do you want to run a game? Great. You saw this cool game, Vasen, from Free League. Here you go. Here's the books. Here's pencils, paper, dice. And then we help find them players. And then they sit down and play the game. And they're all like, yay, we played a game. And then it's value added for the events. Because not only is it our hosts running games, then and they have attendees running games. So everybody's walking away with that cool, extra special memory. Like, oh, I played this role-playing game I never played before. And then we did this. And then they'll start into the role-playing game stories because it's what we all do when we play role-playing games. Why the emphasis on role-playing games? Role-playing games are awesome for a bazillion reasons and the gaming industry. So whenever I message on social media or whatever, I always capitalize game because It doesn't matter who you are when you come into the library, what you sit down and you're gonna be gaming. You're hopefully another friendly face, but in this day and age, everybody, they're just angry people behind their thumbs on a phone. You don't know what the other person is or why they said what they did, but if you can sit down and game with somebody, you're gonna leave that table a better person because you've spent time with somebody you know nothing about. You could be a Republican sitting down with a Democrat. You could be a Communist sitting down with a, whatever you are, and you're gonna sit down and game with someone you know nothing about, and you're gonna have a good time, and that's somebody that you might have been angry at because of how they posted something on social media, and you're like, oh, you're a horrible, evil person, and then you don't know any of that, and you sit down, and oh, man, that guy was great. She had some cool ideas, and that got us through a sticky spot in this adventure. And... We used to be like that. We've always been people angry at other people, but sitting around telling stories around a campfire, we've been doing that as humans for hundreds of thousands of years. We're just doing that with rules and somebody to direct us, your game host, your GM, whatever you want to call them. They're just directing the story and everybody sitting at that table is building us up. And just sit down and go out and game with people and just be a better person. That's what the role of But can you walk us back through kind of the basics of setting up a nonprofit? How's that different than running for-profit business? Oh, well, for us, there is no way that we could do what we do for profit just because, I mean, how do we do that? So, yeah. Our options were to exist as a non-entity and just trust that organizations would give us space. As a nonprofit, it gives an avenue for the books and time donations. So if somebody's working for Google or Microsoft and they volunteer hours for us, they actually can register those and we get paid for their hours, which is super cool. So they come to an event, run a four-hour game. We get paid, depending on... the organization we get paid uh for that four hours which is nice it's a win-win for you know us and but yeah there's no way we could do this as a for-profit thing because we just like everybody's like oh are these books for sale and it's like no no they're not please you know we put signs around like this is a library none of these books are for sale uh because if we're doing it for sale uh we i don't think we'd get the support uh setting up as a non-profit uh i went through an attorney who sat me down And he's like, okay, here's what we need to do. And anything, anytime you're doing anything, legal paperwork, guys, spend a few bucks to get an attorney. Find one that, I found somebody that specialized in nonprofits. So, and he's looking through, he's like, oh, well, you're a library. So this is easy. We can do, you know, and he ended up, uh, actually giving us the, his time for free because he's a role-playing nerd. He was like, I really like what you're doing. This is a neat idea. So kind of lucked out on that one. But, uh, you know, he sat down like, how do we classify you and seeing that. We have books and we, you know, loan books out and talk to people about books. It was easy to sign us up as a, uh, uh, as a, uh, like we're education library is like, I think of it, how the subset goes. Nonprofit or for profit. It's still a business. We don't sell anything. And so therefore all the money we take in our donations. So we have little bits and pieces out and we do it. They, we, we jokingly call it the PBS model. So somebody donates$5, they can get a sticker. You donate$15, you can get a cool pin. Uh, we started a cool little thing. Hey, we, in our, our, uh, board member group, we're like, what about an adopted die? You know, it's like pet rock. So we got these little boxes, put paper in them, uh, uh, companies that had donated dice to us. We put those in the different boxes and then we came up with little back names and backstories for all the dice. So just like the humane society. Yeah. Here's Alfie. He's adorable. Little kitty, blah, blah, blah. You know, and it's like, he's, he's good. with other pets. He came from a hoarder's home of 100 cats. And so we do something similar with all the dice. It's like, this is Chad. Chad is a winner-take-all type die. He will do good in a home that loves backyard wrestling. And so somebody makes a donation, and we suggest about$20. There's time and stuff, and we do need to get funding. So we have to do all the things that a standard business does, like, okay, how much do those stickers cost us because I can't take a$5 donation for a sticker if the stickers cost me$5 because I'm negative funds at that point. I actually had somebody complain like, oh, you're taking donations for these? This is kind of expensive. I was like, do you kind of understand what we're trying to do here? I grew up in a comic book and game store as a kid, so we got people all the time like, what are you charging so much? Well, sir, that's the cover price of the comic. So Marvel said that's what we should charge. So I'm going to charge you that much. I always love that one. Like, can I get this cheaper? No. Well, it's last month's issue. Okay. So it's now a back issue. Let me go grade it and price it and it'll be more expensive. How about in terms of running the business then what's, but some of the surprise you as a challenge. I mean, just. The craziest thing for me was I struggled early on letting anybody help me because it was this weird thing that I started. So 2017, 2018, literally everywhere I was going, I was doing everything by myself. PAX 2018. two weeks or less than two weeks prior to the show um Wizards of the Coast and Paizo both pulled out so I was now the only role playing game thing at PAX West 2018 and I had a room with like 10 tables and all the stuff and then I just said uh I'll run a couple games and then everybody you know I just I ended up that entire weekend being the crazy scheduler like somebody's like oh hey I want to run 30 edition Gamma World at two o'clock tomorrow. I was like, sir, I don't have the third edition Gamma World. I do. I'll bring all the stuff. So, you know, hand jamming these signup sheets and taping them to the wall outside of the room we were at in the Olive Eight. And so we were in a hotel away from the main show and we ended up hosting well over a hundred games that weekend. And almost all of that, I think I ran two games and all the rest were attendees. It was just mind boggling the reception we had from individuals. And after that, the showrunners were packed. So a lot of the people within the organization, they've been really awesome to us. And they were like, you really pulled us out of a fire on that one because they didn't know what they were going to do because they'd advertised there was going to be role-playing games. And well, we did role-playing games. At one point, we had like 20 games going and none of them were the same game, which is just super cool because you're like, oh, there's D&D 5th edition, 3rd edition, 1st edition. There's Star Wars. There's Deadland. And there, you know, you're just looking around and you're like, nothing is the same. And you're like, that was so fun to see. And because we only had 10 tables, there were people like literally sitting on benches out in the hallway, like four players sitting on one end and a GM sitting on the other end and playing. And then it was like talking down the row of players. And, you know, that was super fun to see. And it was like, and how dedicated, you know, we as gamers can be. What do you see coming up for the library? So where we're headed is, is so we've grown so much and because of that, uh, we can't get to all the shows East coast because like the last time we did Gen Con, it costs us, uh, just to get me and the books out there was about$5,000. And so that, that$5,000, yes, Gen Con is awesome to get to, but that limits, we can't get more books. That's, you know, that's several months, you know, between all the things we do, that is several months of acquiring books, uh, get paying for the climate controlled storage because the books don't go into the standard public storage that's out stores and everything gets moldy and wet. It goes into an indoor climate controlled storage. We've completely filled two 10 by 10 storage units. I have to move stuff out of the way and roll shelves out to curate a new thing. So We've been looking at all the events that we want to do. And for the last few years, like, how do we do those? So, um, my wife and I are literally going to move from Seattle to the Indianapolis area in the next couple of years and set up start fresh ish there because. Everything is still going to go here. I have a great crew of people that are up here. I trust them. And because of that, I know that I can take the core of what we're doing here and start going. And from Indianapolis, we can get to Gen Con because it's right there. We can get to all the events in the Chicago area because it's a three, four hour drive. We can get to PAX Unplugged up in Philly. That's a 10-ish hour drive. Just everything. had three people uh inviting us to events in uh um upstate new york uh massachusetts and it's like all these people and not knowing that we're gonna we're trying to do this expand and they're like how do we get you out there i was like you guys got to pay for the ship, the ship, the books. And they're like, we might be able to swing that. And I was like, okay. And a hotel room. Uh, and food is like, how far can I push this? But, uh, so the, our midterm goal now is getting, uh, my wife and I moved out to the, uh, the Midwest so that we can set up that next hub so that we can expand to all the shows in the rest of the U S because man, we, we get asked all the time. Like, can you, come out to different shows. It's like, no, we want to. What are things you think the tabletop industry in particular could do better to support nonprofits in this space? So we're not the only, I mean, we're the only thing that does what we do, but there are other nonprofits. There's a lot of like mental health nonprofits that need just people a few bucks in games and dice and stuff so that they can keep their outreach to veterans and the groups that they're servicing. They can try to help set up in cities like youth gaming groups because getting to kids, especially teens that are starting to get in a little trouble, and if you can sit them down at a role-playing game table, we get to teach you teamwork, social skills, communication, all the things that we're kind of bad at teaching kids nowadays. We can do that through role-playing games. And if we can get companies involved, you know, doing that in their local areas or reaching out, you know, Hey, we've got a game designer that grew up in, you know, um, Scranton, uh, you know, and you know, there's no, no game company there. So it was like, Hey, you know what? I grew up in Scranton. Uh, let's find a, uh, find a, um, uh, uh, like a teen center. or a local store and partner with them so they can set up these gaming nights for teens. Those are great ways to reach out to, you know, some like small local nonprofits, work with nonprofits that are trying to work with individuals in prison and the, you know, people that are released from prison now on parole. And it's like here in Washington state, up until our current secretary of state came in, role-playing games were banned in prisons here. And secretary of state came in and he's somebody, you know, I, I know through gaming, he's a, he's a big nerd. And I had said, you know, I was trying to figure out how to get into prisons here in Washington state. And he's like, why can't you? And I was like, I've just, everyone I've talked to is kind of no. And then he like his second week in, uh, in the position as secretary of state. And he was like, okay, why can't we do role-playing games in prisons? Oh, it was just a standing order from way previous, uh, uh, secretary of state from the eighties just said role-playing games are banned from prisons in Washington state. And he was like, done that, that band's gone. Like, he's like, I control the prisons and stuff in the state. So I can rescind that, uh, you know, that standing order from 40 years ago. And so we like here in Washington state, we, we, we have people that are getting role-playing games into prisons, but once they get out, a lot of people, while they're on parole, there's restrictions. Like you can't be around, uh, you know, certain people, people that, especially we've done stupid stuff with. But a lot of people on parole, they have a drinking restriction. And a lot of the game stores you go to nowadays, they sell beer. So you have somebody who's gotten away from, you know, like, hey, trying to rehabilitate in prison. I'm playing role-playing games. Now that I'm out, I can't go to a local game store and play because they sell alcohol. I don't want the stores to stop selling alcohol because that's actually great for adult, late-time gaming, and it's really good for the stores. But there are nonprofits that game companies can reach out to say, hey, is there a way we can do parolee gaming? It's like, hey, come here. It's a nice, quiet place. There's going to be no alcohol, no drugs. It's a nice, controlled place. And you have that continuing... care. Game companies should be reaching out with addiction centers. Because the best way to fight addiction is finding a replacement. And role-playing games are great. I have worked with a couple addiction centers and taught some of their individuals how to play role-playing games. And they show that and play with the people, not as a therapy thing, but as like, hey, have you thought about playing these? And then when they get done with their treatment, they're now like oh I got an itch and then they write write something write a new write up a bunch of NPCs or write a new scenario and then oh next Tuesday I have a I have a you know I got a game with the with with my friends and it's like and then you know after that game if they're having runs like okay next Tuesday I have a game so they they have that thing to look forward to every week they have all the little things that we can do with role-playing games scratches itches so those are a lot of little things and I encourage game stores to do that as well so if you're a local game store, you can reach out to find the addiction centers in your area and give them some copies of role-playing games and find a way for them to help grow your community and give them a new avenue to be a productive member of society. It's amazing what we can do with these fun, silly storytelling games with rules. It's just collaborative storytelling with rules. Well, to someone listening who's got an idea for some sort of non in the tabletop space, what advice would you give? have a passion. Uh, I know, I know a bunch of people that have done like political type of nonprofits and they literally started them because they know they can make money off of them. If you're going to do something in this space as a nonprofit, you probably not going to make money and you have to want to do what you're going to do. So it's have that passion and make sure, you know, you accept the help from others. Because if I, if I wouldn't have accepted help from others, I, this would have been a gone long time ago. I probably would have burned out I deployed to Iraq and Syria in 2019 and 2020. And for the library to keep going through that 2019 and early 2020, I had to have other people help out. So my wife stepped up and took over a bunch of stuff. And then there was other, I was doing interviews with game designers from various locations in Iraq. And then in 2021, I was in Ukraine. So I'm in the middle of nowhere Ukraine in the dark on my phone, doing an interview, a live interview. Uh, and it's like, okay, I can do this at like two o'clock in the morning, Ukrainian time so that we can live stream it at a, at a reasonable time in, uh, in the US. So, you know, and, and, and all of that was possible because I had that passion and I was able to accept the help from other people that had offered it. I didn't know how to accept it. Let's, uh, let someone else help you, especially if they should share a bit of that passion with you. You'll burn out if you don't. And whatever you're doing, you know, you're not going to make money off of it. You're not going to do it for very long. And whatever you've started may have been the most awesome thing in your area, and then it's gone. And, you know, somebody's like, well, that didn't succeed, so I won't do it either. Any last thoughts for us? Always support your local game store. Sometimes you may have a bad game store. Support them until you get a better one. But You know, we've always joked that you can't play, you know, you can't play Magic at Walmart. And then it was, you can't play D&D, you know, in Amazon. But, you know, there's online tools. Use them as tools. But, man, it's just so much better when you game in person. Support your local store. Yeah, you may be able to find D&D for cheaper on Amazon. Go ahead and pay a little more. Buy it at your store. If you see a cool game, you know, go to your store like hey are you able to order this it'll take a little longer but you know what you're going to go there and you can put up a message like looking for looking for people to play this obscure role playing game I just acquired you know and you you'll make new friends you'll meet new people you'll grow your community and you know the local game store is a wonderful place to do it and we've you know again it's just an extension of sitting around the fire telling stories so please I'm always adamant about support your local game store. In fact, early on, Amazon was still doing the little charity thing. So we had a link that if you bought stuff off Amazon, we'd get like, you know, two cents off your purchase, whatever. I actually stopped that because I was like, uh, and I, uh, I don't know if the video is still up, but I was like, Hey, you know, we're not going to do the, uh, Amazon nonprofit thing because I, you know, I feel that it's, you know, hypocritical that I tell you, go, go to your local game store, but you know, also, Hey, I'll, I'll take pennies from Amazon and like you know people like oh well we're buying other stuff it's like it's just not you know i want you to go i mean even outside of supporting a local game store shop locally you know go to that mom and pop hardware store over you know home depot or buying you know uh on on amazon or whatever it everything is better when you support your local uh your local individuals and your local game store it's it's where the vast majority of people in gaming have got their start awesome dave thanks for your time oh no worries thank you very much