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After completing a daring quest you stride triumphantly back into town and make a stop at the local armoury. The constant clang of hammer on steel rings in your ears but does nothing to dampen your spirit as you carry the loot found in your most recent adventure. The shopkeep invites you to browse his wares and a magical shield hanging on the wall catches your eye, beautifully embossed with tales of past triumphs and polished to a sheen, imbued with the power to protect you against both flames and poison. With a grin on your face from a fortune well earned, you place your pouch of coins on the counter with a heavy thud, only for the shopkeep to fix you with a hard stare and proclaim:
“That’ll be £5 for charity thanks”
When I stumbled upon this premise at a local game day I thought it was a genius idea to bring a community together for a good cause and have a great time doing it. So I set out on my own quest to talk to the man behind the Charity Gaming Guild to find a little bit more about what these heroes do and shine some light on a group of DM’s making a real difference.
Thank you for taking some time to speak to me Ash, would you like to introduce yourself?
[CGGAsh]
Hi! My name is Ash and I am the founder and Chairman of the Charity Gaming Guild. As with all of the trustees and people who do things for the charity, I am a volunteer and in my day job I run a small group of companies with my family - skills which I transfer over to the charity all the time! My work history and hobbies and interests really paved the way for the charity, working for Games Workshop as a store manager and in the head office design studio has allowed me to run events and have a hand in product development. I have been a tabletop gamer since the age of about 9, enjoying painting miniatures as well as playing games like Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Magic: The Gathering and, of course, Dungeons and Dragons.
For everyone’s benefit, can you tell us a bit about the Charity Gaming Guild?
The Charity Gaming Guild is, to use the technical term, a Grant Awarding CIO. That means that throughout the year, our members nominate charities to the trustees. Once the trustees establish that the charity meets our criteria, they then vote on who will receive a grant payment in the following December. Our criteria are that they have to be a charity registered with the charities commission, that they serve a local community and that our grant payment will have a "significant impact" on the charity and the people that they set out to run. Throughout the year we run a number of events to generate this grant pot including one off events, sponsored games and sales of products, and other people fundraise for us too. It's an amazing feeling to hand over the money at the end of the year, and our annual general meeting is always an incredible celebration of all the hard work and funding we have had through the year. Our grant payments started with £1214.00 to a palliative care hospice, then went to around £4,804.31 for the development of a children's ward at Ipswich hospital, and last year was around £6,179.20 for a youth support charity. This year (2024) our grant payment is going to a charity that supports the families of seriously ill children in Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital, Adapt.
[CGGDonation]
It’s fantastic you have already raised so much for good causes. What inspired you to make a charity that uses TTRPG’s to help people?
This is a story that many of our members have heard before, and it is one I am more than happy to tell again! My grandad was very unwell and spent some time in St Elizabeth's Hospice in Ipswich towards the end of his life. The hospice where beyond amazing, supporting family and making the last weeks and days of his life as comfortable as possible. When he passed away, I decided to run a small game of D&D to raise a few hundred pounds as a thank you. When I started asking for players over 60 people responded. Not one to shy away from a challenge, I enlisted the help of some other DM's and we were off! Everything grew from there really, COVID forced us to adapt and run online games, something we still do now, and our events just get bigger and better every year! We have a core of players who have been with us since day one, but new people join all the time. We have had players fly in from as far as Singapore for our games. The sense of community is amazing and when I started this, I could never have imagined what an amazing community and journey it would be, and it really does feel like we are starting to find our stride.
I’m sorry for your loss although it’s heartwarming to hear how many people showed up in support. As I implied in the intro I was told on top of entry fees you also allow donors to directly influence the game, can you tell me more?
You're absolutely right! One of our event formats is a 12 hour sponsored game. We typically run 2 of these a year - one at our "home" in Suffolk in November which is the largest event in our calendar, and the other up St Helen's in the North West at the end of the summer. Players get sponsorship money and in return, earn certain rewards which unlock as they raise more money. These rewards range from healing potions, to stat increases right up to a free choice of magic item if they raise over £200 on their own. This has proven to be incredibly popular for our players, making their characters more powerful and allowing them access to items that are oftentimes hard to get in campaigns. For us, it encourages fundraising. At registration if a player is only a few quid off the next reward, I will always let them know. As a result our 12 hour games raise huge amounts for our grant and our players get to use some seriously powerful characters!
[CGGGroup]
What an inventive way to reward your donors! How on earth do you keep your energy for 12 hours of DM’ing?
Apart from copious amounts of Monster and Haribo... Feed off the energy of the table. When your players start to get excited about something, respond to it, feed off the energy and explore it together. This way the energy of the game stays high, If things feel like they are slowing down, chuck a meaty or surprising random encounter in to spice things up! Truth be told, running a 12 hour game of D&D is hard work, but if you stay engaged you really only feel it at the end and the 12 hours just disappears....
I imagine it leads to some great moments as well, any particular highlights you would like to share?
Wow now that is a hard ask. There are lots and lots of in game moments - five legged stools, waffle irons and repairing ship wrecks to name but a few, but for me personally, when the 12 hour games are underway I am in the privileged position where I get to step back and look at what's going on. To see 50 people all playing D&D at the same time, playing an adventure that I have written, raising money for a fantastic cause and having an amazing time always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside!
In terms of the charity side of things, the launch of Patreon is a stand out for me too. I launched Patreon as a way to manage our memberships expecting there to be a few people take up the lower tiers, but, as usual, our members went above and beyond selling out of the highest tier (Obsidian) right away, and making it a huge success. Without our Patreon members, we could not do what we do and I am forever grateful to all of them!
So what’s next for the Charity Gaming Guild?
There are so many plans it's hard to know where to begin! Next year's events are shaping up to be bigger and better than ever, with a focus on making the games a proper experience. Our podcast is in the works too - a community focused podcast playing D&D and dealing with issues that are important to our members and their communities. We have recently opened our webstore and will be attending conventions in the future too so you might even see us there. And all of that is just the next 12 months! It really is such an exciting time to be a part of the Charity Gaming Guild.
And more importantly, how can people get involved and help you out?
Get yourself onto our Facebook page and discord server and check out the events sections. Tickets for our events are available through Eventbrite and we have so many amazing events coming up. We have two adventure days, one in Suffolk and one in Nottinghamshire, a narrative event in Suffolk called The Acolyte, our 12 hour event in November is called The World Anvil and is the next huge narrative event and all of our online offerings on top of that! The single best way to support us though is through our Patreon and there are a wide range of benefits for the different tiers of membership.
Thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me Ash and we wish you all the best with your future campaigns!
I recommend you go and check out all their socials. The Charity Gaming Guild can be found on Facebook and Discord as well as their own website here, so get involved and have some incredible adventures while doing some good.