If you have been on our facebook page or our community over there, you’ll have heard me talking about an event we’re calling Tavern Con!
Tavern Con will be our very first fundraiser for the ministry. As we have recently been approved for non-profit status as a 501c3* and our Gencon trip right around the corner, we are looking to raise the money we need in order to continue to expand the work we are doing. That is not just limited what happens here on the InnRoads site. As we go forward, we want to continue to move into the world at large.
When we thought about what this event would look like, there was only one logical course of action. We’d do what we do best! Put together a whole day of tabletop gaming, food, prizes, and fun. Sounds like a plan, right?
The event will be held on JULY 11TH, so just over a month from this post. The doors will open at 10AM and will stay open until 7pm for NINE HOURS OF GAMING at Covenent Chapel in Basking Ridge, NJ. If you would like to join us for the event, the address is:
127 W Oak Street
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
What will the event look like and what will this money be going towards, you may ask? Well, let me show you what we have in store.
The Event:
GAMES!
We believe that there is something special that happens at the gaming table – so we plan on having a lot of them. We’ll be bringing the entirety of the InnRoads Ministries traveling game library to the church so that you can play. Not much of a gamer? Haven’t played one of our games before but want to learn how? We’ll have game leaders on site that will be able to help you with recommendations for games that fit what you’re looking for and even teach you how to play. We have a wide variety for different age ranges, play times, themes and depths of strategies. We may not have your favorite game (yet), but we will have something that strikes your fancy.
FOOD!
photo credit: Falafel wrap with fries via photopin (license)
If this isn’t your first time attending an InnRoads game day, you’ll be happy to know that the incomparable Liz Komline – who has made all of the wonderful meals at events prior to this – has signed on to help us out again. We’ll have lunch and dinner options available at the event. There will be a suggested donation, but we promise you that we won’t let anyone go home hungry.
There will also be desert items and other snacks available for purchase throughout the day. The prices on these will vary depending on what the items are, but I promise you’ll want to make sure to leave some of your budget for them.
CONTESTS AND PRIZES!
We’ll be raffling off prizes throughout the day. We will also have a last-person-standing competition of the meta-game Pretense by Jason Tagmire. Whether you show up at the beginning of the day or later on during the event, a donation will get you a role card for the meta-game competition (cards will be available as supplies last). The winner will be the last person with their role card after all the cards have been distributed. If there are multiple players that still have their cards by the close of the event, the winner will be chosen randomly from the remaining contestants
And that’s just some of what we hope to see at Tavern Con. Be watching this site, facebook and our twitter account as more updates come out in the month leading to the event.
What will your donations do:
We’re a fledgling ministry. The site is about a year and a half old now, but we’ve only officially been registered since the beginning of this year. Up until this point, things like hosting costs, adding games to the library, printing materials, traveling, microphones/cameras, and all the other things we do have been out of our four man team’s pockets and free time. We’ve been really blessed with opportunities to go to Gencon for our 3rd year running, raised thousands of dollars in support of local charities and children’s hospitals, and connected with gamers of all stripes across four different continents. But we’ve gotten to the point that without funding and the ability to devote more manpower to the ministry outside of the internet, we’ve gone about as far as we can go. We need your help to reach more people and connect with them across the table. Here are just a few of the things we want to do with the money we hope to get from this and others like it:
- Provide materials and training to help churches and community leaders use the games we love to build lasting relationships with long-reaching effects in the lives of those in their communities
- Develop products like tabletop rpg modules that we can provide to people FREE OF CHARGE that are interesting, well produced, and interact with key concepts like self-sacrifice, faith, and others without being preachy.
- Create new and better content for the site on a regular basis by getting the gear we need to produce better videos, more podcasts, and other projects like this
- Travel to more conventions and be available to create and lead more events in churches. Currently we are limited to New Jersey and parts of California because that’s just where we live. Being able to cover travel expenses grows that perimeter.
- Develop a program to help those willing to volunteer with us cover their expenses to come with us conventions. It takes a lot of work to be part of the convention team, and that doesn’t even include the fund raising. We want to help those who have said they want to help us.
- As previously stated – the team members all have day jobs families, and responsibilities outside of the ministry. Our goal is to have a paid staff member whose soul responsibility is to do the work of InnRoads within the next 5 years to devote himself to the work.
These are just some of the ways your donations will help. Games connect people across a disconnected world. They bring people together and tear down boundaries that would otherwise keep them separated. We have seen God do amazing things through the work we have already put into this ministry, but the team believes strongly that He’s just getting started. We hope that you’ll come to the event as a partner with us in that work.
If you would like to donate* to the ministry, but cannot attend the event – you can send your donation to:
InnRoads Ministries
75 Washington Valley Road
CN 753 #270
Bedminster, NJ 07921
If you plan on attending the event – please email us at contact@innroadsministries.com, sign up at our facebook event, or simply provide your name and email in the contact form below. We will not use this information for our newsletter or contact you in any way unless otherwise requested. This only allows us to make sure that we have enough volunteers and food to make sure everyone’s experiences is the best we can make it.
*Note: InnRoads Ministries is a qualified non-profit organization under Internal Revenue Code 501c3. Any donations made to InnRoads Ministries are qualified as tax deductible.