The Definitive LAN Party Guide Part 1

Hello residents of the interwebz! Today is the beginning of a 3 part series about LAN Parties. With the DSL generation in full swing, many people today forget their fond memories of a LP past. If you want to get your party on, here are a few tips from LAN Party Pros. I'll tell you where and how to throw the best shin-dig around. Topics range from Games to Girls, Pizza to Players, and many many more topics. Sit back and get ready to take notes.

TOPIC 1 - Getting Started

• Set Date and Time
• Date of Party and Begining/End time important
• Where da party at?
• Tables and Chairs
• What should we bring?
  

First thing to do is to decided to have a LAN Party. If you live with roommates and/or parents, please discuss with them before having a party on the premesis. Next would be to decide when to have the party? Should you do it on a weekday, weekend, holiday? For me, having it on a Friday/Saturday or a Saturday/Sunday usually works the best. Everyone is off work, its a weekend so noone has obligations to fill. However, holidays work good if you want to come up with a fancy name for your LP. We like to use "LANsgibbing." Thats trademarked BTW so don't think about using it. So now that you have decided what day your party will be on, now its time to choose a time. Choosing a time is not as important as the date, but it still can give you a tactical advantage by choosing a good start time. Now, I don't know your friends, but if they are anything like mine, they don't like to wake up early or show up on time. So here are a few tips when setting your start time. Tip1: Schedule doors open around noon. If you take your friends into account (mine for this instance) 12noon gives us plenty of time to set up in the morning/evening before, late enough not to have to feed anyone, and early enough to get the slowpokes playing by 3pm.

Where Da Party At? How do you let your fellow gamers know you are having a LAN Party? Lets discuss some ways to get the word out about your party. We can start by the most obvious methods: E-mail, IM, and Hand Out Fliers. Fliers are good when you need to get the word out to massive amounts of people. This is good if you are having a very large LP at a school or a public gathering, not so much for your living room LAN. For most of us, E-mail and IM are going to be the easiest and safest alternatives. You should email your cohorts approximately a month before hand. This will give them time to talk to their boss/employer to take time off, clear their schedules of other crappier things to do etc. I suggest Email first with a list of things to bring, general rules, and an RSVP date. If your friends are like mine, noone will RSVP to the email, but everyone will RSVP one way or another. The RSVP makes it easier to do a head count for pizza or for our next step, securing tables and chairs.

Once you have the people taken care of, now its time to secure the seating arrangements. For me, its easy since I have all the equipemnt. I have long tables purchased from Staples and HomeDepot for approximately 30-75 dollars. Square tables allow you to maximize players in a given space. In the early days of LAN Parties, everyone had a CRT so monitors were a concern for table owners. Now, most people use LCD flatpanel displays so that is no longer an issue, and helps to allow more gamers per table. Chairs can be purchased at Staples/HomeDepot for approximately 9-15 dollars. If you can, try to secure enough seating/tables for a 10% overflow population (I.E uninvited guests, boyfriends/girlfriends of attendee). The more the marrier.

Ok, so you have your seating arrangements situated, now its time to focus on the food. What to eat, what to drink, who brings the beer, who brings the chips and salsa. Alright, all I can say here is Pizza. You can order alot of it at one time, it can be delivered, and its not that expensive. We have tried BBQ LANs, we have tried just about everything under the sun, but Pizza always turns out to be the easiest option. If you don't want to be out the money for pizza, put a cover charge on everyone who attends. Usually between 7-10 dollar will cover the pizza option plus any expenses that you incurr while planning the party. Just a tip, there is always someone who doesn't pay, make sure you have some extra dough on hand to cover for a douchebag. Party-goers should be encouraged to bring snacks and soda to share with other gamers. This way there should be something for all tastes.