Come and hear how it began
The story of Drop Bear Squad, told by the person who first unlocked the club room door, and by the volunteers who keep it open every week.
Open the door and see who comes
My name is Dominic Duncan, and I started Drop Bear Squad in Mount Barker because I missed having people to play with. The site is operated by WAFFLE ADVERTISING LTD, 85 Great Portland Street, London W1W 7LT, United Kingdom. The club itself is run from day to day by volunteers who live in and around the town.
For years I played alone: a console in the lounge room, a shelf of board games that nobody had time to open. Friends had moved away, or had stopped playing, or felt that they had fallen too far behind to begin again. I suspected that many people in the towns of the Mount Lofty Ranges felt the same way, and I decided to find out.
The first evening was modest: six adults, one television wheeled in on a trolley, and a stack of light board games I had been carrying in the boot of my car. Two of the six had not touched a controller since their twenties. By nine o'clock they were laughing so loudly that a neighbour came to see whether everything was all right.
That evening decided what the club would be. It would be for adults who wanted company more than competition, it would never cost anything, and every night would have a volunteer whose only task was to make sure that nobody sat alone. Everything we have added since, from the league to the chat server, has had to pass the same test.
Six players
That was the first night, with one television and a borrowed trolley.
Always free
Volunteers keep the room open, so there is nothing to pay.
Adults only
Every night is for people aged 18 and over.
Meet the people who keep the lights on
Jessica Nash
Guides editor
Jessica came to the club after a long break from games and now edits every guide on this site. She writes in plain language, tests each explanation on a first-timer before it is published, and keeps a notebook of the questions newcomers ask most often. Her favourite genre is puzzle co-op, and she always takes the left end of the couch.
Cassandra Blake
Moderator
Cassandra moderates the chat server and greets every new member by name. She started as a regular on Thursdays, took over the chat when it grew beyond one person, and still reads the house manners aloud at the start of each league season. She is also the one who makes the first pot of tea every evening.
Jacqueline Murphy
Event organiser
Jacqueline plans the weekly program, keeps the club room booked and decides which game goes on which table. She spent years organising community events in the hills before joining, and she keeps a laminated map of the room so that the couches, tables and tea corner are always found in the same place.
Deborah Elliott
League referee
Deborah referees the league and settles questions about the rules with a calm voice and a well-thumbed rulebook. She joined to learn the board games and ended up writing the club's fair-play notes. Her habit is to read the rules of every new game twice, once to herself and once aloud to the table.
Look at how the club room grew
Within a season the six players had become twenty, and the lounge-room television was no longer enough. We found the hall on Hutchinson Street, a room with high ceilings, a creaking floor and a heater at one end, and a handful of members spent three weekends carrying couches up the steps and arranging shelves along the wall.
Mount Barker is a town of commuters, tradespeople, shift workers and people who moved up into the hills for the quiet. Many of them told us that the evenings felt long and the choices few. So the club room opens on weeknights, once the freeway traffic has thinned and the town has gone still, and again on Saturday for the league.
Today the room holds two couches, three long tables, a wall of shelves and a tea corner. It is run entirely by volunteers, and what it needs most is time: someone to teach a rule, someone to put away a box, someone to say hello at the door. If that sounds like you, the volunteers are always glad to hear it.
Two couches
Both face a screen, and both are rarely empty.
Three long tables
Room for three different board games at once.
One tea corner
Where most of the real conversation happens.
Questions about who we are
- Who runs Drop Bear Squad?
- The club is run by volunteers, with Dominic Duncan as its founder. The website is published by the operator named earlier on this page, while everything that happens in the club room is organised by the people described above.
- Why is the club only for adults?
- The evenings are late, the conversation is grown-up and the cooperative games we choose are aimed at an adult audience. Keeping the room to people aged 18 and over lets everyone relax and be a beginner without an audience.
- Is the club linked to any game company or shop?
- No. We are independent, we do not advertise products and we do not take instructions from anybody who sells games. The shelves hold donated and club-owned boxes, and every recommendation in our guides is made on its merits.
- How can I help run the club?
- Tell any mentor, or use the sign-up form and mention it in the box for a few words about yourself. Jacqueline will find you a role that suits the time you have, whether that is greeting, teaching or simply packing up.