Officers

History

Dragons on the Hill Roleplaying Club was founded in 1984(ish) in the same year that the Apple Mac first went on sale. It was at a pub that legend has it was called Fox on the Hill in Peckham in SE london. The original members numbering about 20 consisted of groups of table top roleplayers, live action roleplayers and tabletop wargamers.
At that time the pub charged for the use of the room and subscriptions of 50 pence a week were collected by the club treasurer.

In 1986 a new (and more importantly free) venue was found at the Leather Exchange Pub in Leather Market Street
near to the Elephant and Castle Tube Station in South London and the Club move there. It was at this time that I joined the club and also our current chairman. None of the original members remain and only four of the current
regular members remember the heady days of creeping nervously through the dimly lit back alleys of South London to visit this pub. The club was cheap, sold cheap beer had an empty room with a stage and was empty in the evening and so was the perfect venue for 8 years. There was talk of changing the club name to Dragons in the Pub or Dragons in Leather to reflect our new location. In 1991 The pub changed to new management after making a loss for several years. The Leather Exchange was taken over by More Balls R Us (the juggling company) remodelled and refurbished. The upstairs stage room was busy all the time, the price of beer went up, and all the chairs were bolted to the floor: no use to roleplayers. In 1994 we went scouting for a new venue and settled on The Castle Pub near to Chancery Lane in Central London.
The Castle Pub fitted all the requirements of the DOTH roleplaying club, it had an empty room and it was free to
meet there. The beer was still expensive with central london prices. During 1991 and 1992 several club members had moved to North or West London from South London so a central London address became more convenient. It was also more likely that we would be able to find new members for the Club. Also during 1993 and 1994 club members drifted away and in 1994 the live action roleplaying group split off leaving only 6 people to continue the
Club.

In 1996 we found that the Castle was becoming too popular in the evenings and the room where we met was busy too often. Our intrepid chairman went scouting for a new venue near to the Castle and found the King of Diamonds.
It again has the main requirement of a free room and not too busy on wednesday evenings. We also went on a major recruitment drive trying to drum up new members so that we could play more than one game in the evening and to give us more of a choice of games during the club meetings. We advertised in all the local shops, particularly the Orcs Nest at Cambridge Circus. We commissioned one of our members to draw us the dragon you see above (we bought him a pint) and we put advertisements in any periodical which would accept our ad. (particularly Arcane) and put adverts into web sites and the uk.games.roleplay newsgroup. Membership has increased to about 20 once more and we can regularly field three games during a club meeting or with a full turn out up to five games.

Previous venues include the King of Diamonds, where we were valued regulars on a Wednesday evening by drinking our weight in beer in order to justify our free use of the function room.

Our next move was to the Printers Devil Pub since the King of Diamonds was to be refurbished and we no longer had access to their basement room.
Nearly everyone preferred the new venue upstairs at the Printers Devil and the pizza that was often served there. The membership stood at around 40.

After the Printers Devil became earmarked for flats the club sought refuge in its current location of the Kings Store on Widegate Street near Liverpool Street Station: a reasonable selection of beer, a good-sized upper floor function room and decent food have all made for a pleasant gaming environment.  Membership has fluctuated with a 'hard-core' of around 20 gamers convening every week, which reaches in excess of 40 people in the warmer months.