My experience with Big Muddy Historical Gaming Alliance

The Big Muddy Historical Gaming Alliance is a local historical gaming group in St. Louis, MO.  I've been involved with it since 1995.  The club has expanded, declined, and stagnated during that time.  It still puts on several conventions a year.  Barracks Battles/Die Con in June, August Spearhead during the summer, and Command Con in November.  There have been monthly game days in years past.  Now, gaming is ad hoc and localized.  People seldom leave their gaming circle to play in other games.  Hopefully, this is changing. 

At one point, I was an elected officer in Big Muddy.  I gave that up when I moved away.  I now feel no need to be directly involved.  I know the limitations of the club.  Gaming conventions are what I expect.  An occasional Game Day will happen at a local shop.  I've moved on with running my own games at local shops with my own friends.  I always would welcome more players from Big Muddy. However, that usually doesn't happen.  This is St. Louis.  What happened to Big Muddy is just a large microcosm of what goes on in St. Louis.  Other places where I've lived aren't like this.  People are willing to travel in order to game.  People aren't afraid to cross rivers or bridges. 

Big Muddy had the potential for campaign gaming.  There are enough people with similar interests that could support an involved campaign.  Some local campaigns have been ran involving Coral Sea and WWII Pacific airwar.  There's also Napoleonic and ACW gamers.  But people talk more than they do.  The lack of campaign gaming has forced me into annals of WH40K.  If I had my way, I get rid of my WH40K stuff.  I lose many of the games I play.  And I have too many figures as it is.  I play GW games because that is what the majority of the gamers I hang out game.  The only thing I can say about WH40K is that it's miniatures gaming.  The price of the models has gotten to the point where I can't afford to purchase anything.  You can't play 40K if you're broke.  You can if you play historicals...

But I digress.  Big Muddy runs gaming conventions.  There is ad hoc gaming locally.  One has to make a effort to leave one's pond if them want to game someplace else.  I publish the games I'm going to run a year in advance.  I have a feeling I'll probably just wind up gaming once a month, instead of the weekly gaming I now do.  Whether by circumstance or happenstance, that remains to be seen.