We’ve written this little guide to hopefully answer any questions you may have about what to bring to one of our LANs, especially if it is your first one!
If there’s anything missing, or anything you want to know, don’t hesitate to get in contact with the Executives or put a message in the Discord!
What you need to bring:
As you might expect if you’ve been to a LAN before, you obviously need to bring your PC/console, as well as a monitor and any other peripherals you want to plug in.
Things that we provide are:
- Power extensions for you to plug in your equipment;
- Ethernet cables and switches to get you connected up to the University networks;
A few things we do want to ask, are that you bring either earphones or headphones (With a microphone if your game requires it), as we don’t want to have audio from everyone’s devices clashing and so we can make announcements more clearly. This is also to comply with the rules imposed on us by the University when booking the venue so please do respect this, exceptions obviously exist for teams games and such on a case-by-case basis.
We are also only able to accommodate one monitor per person, in order to save on power sockets.
Unlike some venues, we don’t have a game cache to accelerate game downloads, so where possible also please download any games you want to play prior to the event, as we will all be sharing bandwidth with others using the same switch.
A summary reminder of what you need to bring is:
- Your PC/laptop/console.
- One monitor
- Power cables for your devices and monitor
- Video cables (We have none spare!)
- Earphones or headphones (No speakers outside of community games!)
- Keyboard, mouse and other peripherals
- Money for the pizza visit after the General Meeting
- Snacks and Drink (Alcohol is prohibited inside most academic venues across campus)
- Something to carry it all in! (Should all fit in a suitcase or a few heavy bags)
Getting here
Bowland North Seminar Rooms: [MazeMap] BNSRs are located on the way to The County Bar, just after passing the Faraday Building they are located in the 2nd Bowland Quad, and are signified by a red tunnel entrance.
To get to any of these venues from Lancaster, you can catch any of the routes that are towards Lancaster University Underpass or Alexandra Park. Once you get off at the Underpass and exit to Alexandra Square, you can navigate the spine to find the relevant venue.
We strongly recommend not attempting to bring a vehicle to campus as it is already very crowded, and expensive to park so you may end up parking far away from the venue anyway, though there are plenty of taxi services available at reasonable prices – just note that travelling late at night will likely incur an extra surcharge.
Once you’re here
Once you arrive at the event venue, let an Executive know and we’ll sign you in! (This doesn’t apply to the Welcome Week LAN), membership will be purchasable online via the Union Website.
Once in, find a seat, set up your equipment (ask if you need help or any of the provided equipment) and hook into one of the switches to get yourself online!
That’s about it for setup, so just relax and get to know the people around you, especially if it’s your first LAN!
If at any point you do need help, you can ask the Executives and we’ll try to sort it for you there and then, and if not there’s probably something buried in our storage that’ll sort it!
Any food or drinks must be disposed of outside the venue, as a courtesy to the porters so we don’t stink out the room for the students using it for the next week.
Throughout the event, there will be different events that you can take part in, as well as other information such as meeting information that will be displayed throughout the day.
We also have a public music list setup, the link to which will be available on the day, so you can queue up songs to play throughout the event!
The General Meeting where Society business is conducted and elections take place, is usually around 6 PM, after which we usually order food in or go to the campus pizza restaurant!