Yeah I actually met my wife at a dungeon. Though I think for a lot of people thinking of your local scene as a dungeon is far more of a hinderance than a help. Unless you’re in a fairly big city you probably don’t have a dungeon and even then dungeons can describe two wildly different things.

Some are a place dedicated to hosting play parties and other community events. They often host a lot of events that would be held elsewhere in a smaller city or town like discussion groups and board game nights. They’re often run by people who are involved in the lifestyle and the local scene. You oftentimes have options of membership (that may be required). But they can also have a lot of community drama especially if the people running it aren’t exactly the best people. There’s often a scene on the side that doesn’t take part in it for some reason or another. Sex workers are not allowed to sell in such spaces as the goal for play parties and events tends to be community focused and they can quickly turn that space into the other kind.

The other kind is more dedicated to being a place for professional doms to work. It’s like a brothel for dominatrices. Not much more really can be said about them.

But beyond dungeons, smaller cities are more likely to have a group that rents out a swingers club or something for a bdsm night once a month or some other way to have a play party not at someone’s house (though those also happen). But standard play parties aren’t the end all be all of bdsm scenes. They’re nice and fun and I regularly attend them, but the real guts of the community is typically other events.

The default community event is the munch. A bunch of pervs go out for dinner and chat, usually not about bdsm since it’s typically in a restaurant (though you may if it’s in a private room). People should start there. It’s how you build trust and learn who seems trustworthy. But there’s a variety of other stuff depending on your location. There’s probably a leather bar night (that’s how you typically begin the process of joining a leather scene but that’s a whole other thing), though there may be like a women’s leather group or something too (it’s typically default or explicitly gay like most leather groups). There’s probably a MAsT group which is a discussion group, similarly there may be round tables where doms and subs are split up to talk. There’s possibly a femdom group, a rope group, etc. Odds are someone hosts a board game night.

Power exchange is absolutely a big thing, but for most people it’s a sometimes thing. Groups like MAsT exist but they’re more niche for good reason. Power exchange, especially as a lifestyle is hard and most people won’t want to do it more than occasionally in the bedroom. Especially because you quickly get past the fantasy aspects and into the real life is hard and weird aspects. Like I’d love to serve my Mistress coffee every morning but I have to get ready for work then. Add in the many people who just are not emotionally mature enough to do it well or aren’t willing to put in the time and effort to build the skills. And high protocol is hot and fun and also it’s exhausting to do for more than an hour or two at a time. And also a lot of people don’t really know how to act around stuff like high protocol even in the community especially since it’s like a specific cultural thing that they don’t know and may feel judged for not doing.

But more than anything I’m happy that people who aren’t into power exchange are feeling less and less like they need to in order to partake in the other aspects of the community especially because it usually meant women feeling pressured to submit and men feeling pressured to dominate. Many Dommes realized they weren’t into power exchange before later realizing that actually no they just weren’t into submitting.