The Guild Hall Tavern: Board Game Cafe

Why I'm Building The Guild Hall

Some of the best communities I’ve ever experienced have started around a table. I’ve always loved gaming—not just because of the games themselves, but because of what happens around them. A board game gives people who might have nothing else in common a reason to sit down together. Dungeons & Dragons can turn strangers into an adventuring party. A game night gives friends an excuse to keep showing up for one another.

And sometimes, having somewhere to belong matters more than we realize.

That is the heart of The Guild Hall.

I want to create the kind of place I’ve always wanted to exist: an immersive fantasy-inspired tavern where you can grab a drink, pull a game off the shelf, join a campaign, or spend an evening doing something you never thought you'd try. One night that might be a board game tournament. Another could be miniature painting, an introduction to lockpicking, sword-making, leatherworking, potion-themed drinks, a Texas foraging class, trivia, or a local maker teaching their craft.

You shouldn't have to already consider yourself a "gamer" to walk through our doors.

The Guild Hall is for people looking for their table.

But there's another reason I'm building it.

My professional career has been spent working in child and family wellbeing, alongside families navigating foster care, kinship care, reunification, and other incredibly difficult circumstances. I've seen extraordinary people doing everything they can to keep families together. I've also seen how fragmented and intimidating support can become.

Families are sent from office to office, provider to provider, appointment to appointment. Help often happens in places designed around systems rather than around the people using them. And I kept coming back to the same question:

What if support could exist somewhere people actually wanted to be?

That's where these two parts of my life came together.

The Guild Hall isn't a social service agency with some board games in the corner. And it isn't a tavern with a charitable program attached so we can say we give back.

The goal is to build a social enterprise where community and family well-being are part of the same ecosystem. The public-facing Guild Hall will be a real destination: games, drinks, private gaming rooms, memberships, classes, workshops, community events, and a calendar full of reasons to gather. Alongside it, we'll build programming and services for children and families—creating opportunities for family connection, parent support and coaching, resource navigation, professional training, and innovative approaches to strengthening families.

Some of those experiences can even use what we're already good at.

Games can help families communicate and reconnect. A private gaming room can feel very different from a traditional meeting room. Community events can reduce isolation. And a parent or young person walking into The Guild Hall doesn't have to be identified by whatever system brought them there. They're just another person at the table.

The business also creates something traditional programs often struggle to achieve: sustainability.

Every game night, membership, event, drink, workshop, and gathering helps support a business designed from the beginning to create community impact.

That means you can come to The Guild Hall simply because you want to play Catan with your friends. You can come because you've always wanted to learn how to make a sword. You can come because you need somewhere to meet people. You can come because your family needs support. Or you can come because having a tavern full of games sounds like a pretty great way to spend a Friday night.

All of those people belong here.

That's the Guild Hall I want to build in Austin.

A little strange. A little nerdy. Welcoming to newcomers and lifelong gamers alike. A place where there is almost always something happening and where it's perfectly normal to walk in without knowing anyone and leave having found a group to play with.

And underneath all of it is a belief that has shaped both my love of gaming and my work with families: People do better when they have a community around them.

We're raising $250,000 to help take The Guild Hall from an idea to a physical place—to provide the initial capital that can help us build an immersive tavern with private themed rooms, host an extensive game library, and support building community in Austin. 

If you've ever found your people around a gaming table, wished there were more places to meet them, believed families deserve better ways to find support, or simply think Austin could use a fantasy tavern where you can learn lockpicking on Tuesday and join a D&D campaign on Saturday—

I'd love for you to help us build it.

Every tavern has a story about how it began.

This one starts with the people who chose to pull up a chair.