What is CGS?
CGS stands for the Charlotte Gaming Society.  We are attempting to establish a group wherein we will be able to provide resources to gamers in Charlotte and the surrounding areas for finding opponents, GMs, game related information, etc. for face to face games.

How did this start?
Well, the history is far from entertaining reading, so we will provide a succinct discussion here.  Paul Wiegand and Harry Culpan searched the Charlotte area via various Interenet resources to find Diplomacy players.  Among others, Stephen Koehler was one who responded to their queries.  They decided to start a small periodic emailing for Diplomacy and related games.  A face to face game was setup, which was moderately successful.  However, the mailings stopped for several months.  It was Steve who then began circulating the idea of a gaming group idea once again.  The first meeting was planned, and was very successful.  In the meantime, Harry and Paul began to discuss the idea of a more general gaming group.  From Steve's idea for the Charlotte Gaming Society, we began to plan a more formal and general group, and this web site.

Who is involved?
Well, for starters Harry Culpan, Stephen Koehler, and Paul Wiegand, of course.  So far, there are about 25 or so people who have been involved in either the original Diplomacy mailer, or our current attempts to form a group.  Since the beginning of the summer of 1998, several local gaming groups have begun using our resources for their purposes as well, including the UNCC Science Fiction and Fantasy Guild, and the Central Peidmont Gaming Guild.  We are working on an on-line system for looking up gamers in the group, etc.  Keep watching for that.

What games do you play?
The group is meant for people who play all kinds of games, from board games to war games--or from role-playing games to CCGs.  So far, we have only played Diplomacy, its variants, and other war games--that specific interest serving as the origin and catalyst for our current efforts.  But the CGS meetings only fulfill part of our purpose.  As a group, our interests are much broader.  If you enjoy playing a game, email us and let us know.

When do you meet?
Good question!  Currently there is a mailing list which we are circulating which contains the discussion about when we meet.  The first official meeting was nothing more than a game of Colonial Diplomacy, and it occurred on Feb 7th.  Since that time, CGS has met once a month, but not under a pre-established period.  The CGS web site and the mailing list both serve to inform memebers of the up coming meetings.  If you would like to be on the mailing list, please see the following page..

How can I be involved?
If you mean the mechanics of the group--so far there are none (or very little), so we will have to wait and see what comes of this before getting into too much recruitment.  If you mean just being a member, well--you can start by joining the mail list and/or posting some information about yourself and your games on our site.  See our game information page for details.

We are trying to build a database of players in the area.  We have begun to post the information for people to look up players and games.  If you have information concerns (info you do not want posted versus info you do), please let us know what you want and we will abide by your wishes.

Also, you can come to our meetings.  Watch the site for info.

How can I join the mail list?
CGS has a majordommo mailing list.  See our information page.

Why is this page so useless and pathetic?
Hopefully it will not always be useless.  We are wanting to provide a more interactive mechanism for accessing a database, both for entry and search--but we are still working out what we want and how we want to do it, for now.  As to the pathetic part...sorry, I doubt it will become to fancy a page.  Our general attitude has been to keep the pages small, simple, and easy to load--informative rather than spectacular.

We hope that it will grow more in the near future.  Ideas are welcome, but there are some things you probably will not see such as lots of large graphics, sound files, and annoying pop-up browser windows.  If you are really into the flashy parts of HTML, then I doubt this site will ever impress you.  It will become more informative, though, we hope.

Who runs this web site?
Currently Harry Culpan and Paul Wiegand sponser it from their www.tesseract.org web site.

Do people really ask any of these questions frequently?
Not really, no.

This page last updated February 16, 1999.