UK assemblage

[Samildanach]

Would any fellow UK TotSers be at all interested in putting faces (and other things) to names at some point? No imminent plans; I'm just sounding people out about the prospect of meeting, since we've known each other for years...

[Beowuuf]

It's a possibility, isn't it!

[Doomy]

I'd be up for that, geography and funds permitting!

[Samildanach]

Again, I'm not trying to make any solid plans or anything. Just thought it might be worth keeping in mind for some point in the future. I'm glad there's a bit of interest.

Of course I'd be delighted to meet TotSers from other countries too. Sadly I can't stretch to that for the foreseeable future.

[Doomy]

Planes have been known to fly TO the UK, y'know.
Though with the number of active posters we have these days it would take a remarkable amount of dedication to travel to Blighty for what would likely be more of a pub crawl than a convention.

I don't see us needing to book a hall, let's put it like that.

[Simey]

A TotS pub crawl? Beginnings of a plan there! ;D

[Doomy]

So...

TotS (UK branch) Gathering, Planning Stage 1:

Will be a pub crawl, because conventions look kinda silly with just half a dozen attendees.

Stage 2:

What town/city has good transport links, a central location and cheap pubs?

Stage 3:

Curry or Chinese?

Stage 4:

When?
The difficult bit, because we have to a) resolve the arguments from Stage 3, and b) find something mutually convenient.


For Stage 2, I'd mention York as having at least 2 out of 3 (a few hours on the train from Glasgow, or almost anywhere else), while being less rowdy than a "stag/hen hotspot" like Newcastle or Liverpool. At least, they were rowdy stag night hotspots when I was there on stag nights, er, being rowdy. ;D

I also know a decent, inexpensive-ish hotel.

[Beowuuf]

I've done this before with another forum meet up. For that we picked London, and did have a few international people come along. I want to say we picked the Sherlock Holmes or something like that in Westminister, and the reason it got chosen was because it had a little outside-like covered area where you could seat a 10 - 15 person group without actually being in the pub itself. Basically a private room. It was pretty cool, and all we needed to do was promise to spend like £75 (easy with food) and we picked an off-night (Thursday I think) to have it.

Anyway, other than having no familiarity with York, it is pretty central rail wise. I would suggest picking a single place, as a crawl leads to splitting off or just walking around aimlessly for a while. If there's somewhere with a small private room, you might find it is easy to book it and doens't require any real commitment.

That same weekend I got a convention room in a small hotel booked too, but that one was like £300 so I doubt is an option. Was nice to have a space to prat around in, but we didn't really do anything with it in the end.

[Doomy]

York's nice, it's quite Magnamundy with its narrow streets and Medieval buildings. But there are a million pubs (rough estimate), we could easily pick one as a base, and with that many I'm sure we could find one with a private room. Also plenty of magnificent architecture to marvel at (hey, a bunch of us took a time out on a stag do in Milan to visit a cathedral, so you never know).

I hold regular trade union meetings in a pub (not in York) and they're happy to let use their private room for free as long as at least some of us spend money, ie buy lunch or a pint. Admittedly, that's a couple of hours rather than a couple of days.

That said, having our own room would let us set up RPGs or tabletop games or something like that. If anyone wanted to get some videogames going they'd likely need to bring everything including TVs/monitors, so they'd need to drive.

If we were able to agree a date and nobody has a better suggestion than York, I'd be happy to make enquiries with the local alehouses.

Heck, if someone does have a better suggestion than York that isn't where they actually live, I'd be happy to make enquiries there too!

[Samildanach]

Nowhere is very close to Menai Bridge, so it doesn't make much difference to me.

[zipp]

Currently I've only met one other TOTser, the elusive Silent Storm. It was a great experience!