Forest BB

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Hi there,

I'm contacting you to query about the facilities at The Forest Cafe which might be available to ourselves. I represent the Open Roleplaying Community (ORC) in Edinburgh which has been running for the past four and half years. We currently have around 25 regular members who turn up every Saturday afternoon to chat and play games. Our membership has a wide demographic in age ranging from 14 to 38 and is predominantly male although we have had a recent intake of female gamers.

We are a free community in that we have no membership charge and as such need to utilise free venues to get together and play games. Up until recently we were using the Three Tuns public house on Hanover Street but that has closed it's doors for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, irrespective of that situation we had started to consider alternate venues as the Three Tuns wasn't exactly the best for us when it comes to attracting new younger gamers. In the interim we are meeting and playing in Cafe Nero on Rose Street where the space available isn't ideal but is suitable in the short term. We'd be looking at regularly using 4 tables big enough to sit 6 people at each table but with space to expand if possible.
Prior to the Three Tuns we had use of a private room in the Royal Engineer's Club on Great King Street but they changed their policy around admitting under18s into the premises.

Ultimately the purpose of this email is to see whether The Forest Cafe is suitable for us and indeed whether we are a suitable candidate group to utilise space available. As I've suggested above we need a venue which has appropriate licensing for under18s and is free.

We have a website which I manage - http://www.orcedinburgh.co.uk/ - and meet up to play every Saturday between 12pm and 5pm.

I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me on this and if your venue isn't an option would also appreciate any advice you can give me in locating a similar venue.

If you need any more specific information about ORC or indeed myself and the other members I would be more than happy to supply that.

Kind Regards,

David Wright

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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

who pays for the computers and games?

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It's like God's vagina!

Maybe they don't use computers?

I think it's cool but do we have that much space, 4 tables big enough to sit 6 people at each table but with space to expand if possible at that time of the week very Saturday between 12pm and 5pm?

Maybe we could suggest Sunday to them. Or in the morning.

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I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Two dozen people pretending to be dwarfs is not a pretty sight. I can't imagine any regular time when we want to have an extra 24 people in the cafe. They couldn't even fit in the gold room. Unless they have cloaks of invisibility. Or they really are dwarfs.

These will be board games played with oddly shaped dice, and players with small rucksacks according to their FAQ!
As occasional users they could add some geek chic to the space, but I don't think they could use it on a regular basis as there are sometimes events on a Saturday afternoon. On the plus side they probably wouldn't be moochers and would buy food and drink, we just need to start selling Ent-draught and Lembas.

It might be a possibility for the new workshop/meeting room?

Yeah the meeting room could work for this.

Maybe we only exist in one of their games! The Forest, The Cave, The Gold Room, The Bearded Ones...

i agree the meeting room could be good but we keep fobbing stuff into that space which, really doesn't exist yet.

do we reckon they inflated their numbers to sound cool. i think that 20+ is really big.....

how busy are we on sat. at 3pm?

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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

No I don't think they are exaggerating their size, they exist far and wide and their numbers are legion.

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Pep Up The Turmoil

I reckon we tell them they can´t reserve space in the main cafe, but they are welcome to come in and try their luck. We can also tell them about the space we are working to open up as a future possibility and suggest that they might like to help in that process to speed it up??