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== Home LANS 101 ==
You have probably been to a few house lans or small lan gatherings, some can suck and other can be totally awesome. The success of your own lan party will come from planning and consideration for your lanning friends. LAN Parties are about zero hassels & fun moments with your peers in a close environment (DM, team games)

Below is a list of things to organise/consider prior to the lan.

* Think about the number of people you can fit into your house (including desks, chairs, computers). Most houses power circuits will not support much more than 20 computers.
* Now think about the types of games you and your lanning friends enjoy (new or old). Discuss what the majority of the invitees are keen to play, well before you decide who is comming.
* From that list consider which games are best suited to a lan environment with the given number of people.
* Draw up a list of invitees with a separate smaller list of backup people. Your invitees will all generally enjoy the games you have selected to focus on. There is no point having 11 FPS fanboi's and one RTS nerd. RTS nerd will just sulk and play C&C Generals by themselves, takign up valuable space and having a negative affect on the rest of the lanners.
Backup people should be friend that you know will drop everything to attend your lan with < 1 days notice. Invite people you are sure wont sulk when no one plays their obscure favorite game. If it is a gamming lan, avoid inviting people you know are starved of movie downloads who will spend the whole time trying to leech everyones computer looking for episodes of startrek the original series.
* Organise real tables. Dont count on using your breakfast bench or coffee table as a substitute. If all you have is 1 wonky table from the backyard, you will need to hire the right number of tressel tables from a party hire joint.
* Organise the right number of chairs (plastic party hire ones are suitable). It can be unwise to count on friends to bring their own.
* Arrange to borrow networking equipment and have it in your hands well before the lan. Dont count on your computer savvy geek friend to program some uber router management configuration to optimise performance.. keep it simple, but avoid obvious network bottlenecks. Make sure you have a switch (not hub).
* consider the network configuration for your lanners. Get your DSL router to act as a DCHP (if you have one) to automatically configure peoples IP addresses and internet. Most people will then be able to plug in and play.
* Organise / connect networking equipment and power boards and tables and chairs prior to people arriving! (WARNING you may have to get out of bed before 10am!!). consider how many will be on each table and put a chair, power connection and lan cable there for them to just plug into. 
** tape down any cables crossing over the floor where people will walk..
** avoid overloading a single power point.
* Send out invites at least 2 weeks before hand. Remind everyone personally a few days before the lan. "ie. hey man looking forward to the weekend?" is suitable. 
** Remind invitees what games will likely be played. Make sure everyone has everything installed and ready to go before they arrive at the lan. There will be someone who has to totally reinstall windows or rebuild their machine for some reason. Help them as much as you can but dont sacrifice too much time if its 'game over' for them. 
** If a new patch came out the night before the lan, download it and make it available on the network for everyone to grab.
* consider what food you might provide. When everyone is getting hungry, call a food run. People can go to the local takeout joint or you can provide some staple food like BBQ sausages, sausage rolls / mini pies, or packets of potato chips. Then there is "the pizza order". You will need to take charge of this because people are slack. Get money first, get orders, make the call and dish out change afterwards.
* have a website URL in the invite. it will have all details of the lan so people can get access to it without bugging you. It will have address, start time, games likely to be played, what they need to bring and what the rules are. maybe a list of everyone comming (to get people excited and talking between themselves about it).
* have several spare power boards, lan cables of various lengths, spare switch (if possible), masking tape / pen. People '''will''' forget things. They are only human. You want to be the man on the spot when things start going pear shaped for them, you'll have a spare cable, or a spare power board. Do not abandon them and continue to play your game. 
* consider the cooling / heating requirements of the lanning rooms. If its going to be 40 degrees outside its going to be hotter inside. Can you run an airconditioner?
* consider neighbours briefly, then disregard because you are a REBEL!
* consider where everyone will park. Make sure that if people arrive, they unload and move their cars to the appropriate car parking area (like down the street or whatever)