Tell me about the RPG section of your local game store

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

Also, tangentially on topic, am I the only one who feels conflicted between buying directly from the publisher (WotC, Paizo, Kobold Press, etc) and the FLGS? FLGS needs purchases to stay in business and provide space for the D&D Adventurers Guild and Pathfinder Society, but buying directly from Publisher (the people ACTUALLY making the content for the games we love) should leave more money in their pockets, right?

You are not alone.

My partner works in publishing (which is not exactly the same) and they shared some tips. According to them, whoever you are directly purchasing from will receive the most direct financial benefit. So yeah, if your goal is to make sure the bulk of your money makes it to the publisher, you should buy directly from the publisher. If your goal is to support your FLGS, buy from the FLGS.

That said, buying from FLGS can benefit the creator indirectly. FLGS will likely buy more from the creator, and there will be less returns (i.e. unsold copies being returned to the publisher).

Another tip from my partner for supporting the creators: your local library. You don't even have to check anything out. If you see something by a creator you want to support, just pull it out of the shelf and put it somewhere else. The library will interpret that as demand for the item and act accordingly.

Final tip from my partner—please don't buy from Amazon.

 

[Hex08]

There are a few in Columbus, OH but only two I visit. The one I go to the most is The Guardtower but I don't go often since I have as much RPG material and boardgames as I need currently (not want, but need) and they moved to a new location that is further from me. They are mostly dedicated to boardgames and a lot of space for Warhammer, when it comes to RPGs it's mostly D&D (I think just WOTC stuff) and some Pathfinder (maybe Starfinder too, it's been a while). They do have a small set of shelves dedicated to other games but not everything associated with the games; Call of Cthulhu always seemed to be stocked regularly and if I remember right some Savage Worlds plus a small selection of other games.

 

[djotaku]

thanks for the info. Amazon is my purchase of last resort and, unfortunately, my family has a VERY hard time (like it shouldn't be this hard, but :: shrug :: ) with wishlists anywhere other than Amazon. So I usually have some stuff on there (including TTRPG) for holidays/birthdays. I guess in a bit of a silver lining - Diamond Distributors going bust did get me to force one of my brothers to get me the Starfinder Player's guide directly from Paizo instead of Amazon.

 

[MGibster]

Also, tangentially on topic, am I the only one who feels conflicted between buying directly from the publisher (WotC, Paizo, Kobold Press, etc) and the FLGS? FLGS needs purchases to stay in business and provide space for the D&D Adventurers Guild and Pathfinder Society, but buying directly from Publisher (the people ACTUALLY making the content for the games we love) should leave more money in their pockets, right?

I really like my FLGS, so if the book is available there I'll purchase it. But it usually isn't, so I buy my books online without feeling the least bit bad about it.

 

[Hex08]

I really like my FLGS, so if the book is available there I'll purchase it. But it usually isn't, so I buy my books online without feeling the least bit bad about it.

I end up buying most of my RPG stuff online too. I don't play D&D or Pathfinder and the games I play that are among the few my FLGS stocks are missing the items I am looking for.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I own my store, but I will be honest - I am often disappointed by my TTRPG section. It's not for lack of trying - we have a bunch of non-D&D titles. They just don't sell very well, so I can hardly justify getting too many more. To be fair to my customers, we're only 1/3 a game store, and 2/3 a comic store. I am proud of the comic store part - I pretty much hand curate about 200 people's comic collections! I generally know what they want better than they do!

But the game part is harder. It's not that I don't love games - I wouldn't be here if I didn't, right? But we're less known for them, and what we are known for is primarily D&D and Board Games. (And a bit of Magic and Warhammer). It's a vicious cycle! We have to cater to what sells, and therefore, we in-store play more D&D than anything else - not enough people show up otherwise. But the flipside is, it's difficult to build the audience for other games, and fans of those other games generally go elsewhere.

On top of THAT struggle, we have a hard time sourcing many of the current favorites. For example, I kickstarted A5e, Shadowdark, Draw Steel, and Daggerheart - but I didn't make any money doing it! I got them for the love of it (I get the PDFs for myself, and sell the books, even though I personally prefer print books). They sold, which covers (most) of my costs, but they're hard to justify getting in more copies due to two big hurdles: 1) Usually, you need to get them in bundles of something like 6 copies. That's often more than I expect to be able to sell in any reasonable timeframe) and 2) The shipping costs are usually prohibitive, in particular because I'm in Canada, and getting stuff from the US can often result in extremely high Duty + Shipping + Exchange costs that you can't just apply to the price of the books (not if you want to sell them).

The traditional model of things being available from a Distributor works best for us. It's becoming less fashionable, because it makes for more middle-men, but the benefit is that the distributor takes care of the biggest part of the shipping costs (because they essentially allow multiple stores to share the cost, and more copies cost less on a per-copy basis).

At any rate, I'd love to have more games (I do my best) but the realities of the business prevents it. This is being critical of myself - some people have said that we have a decent show of it - it's simply a matter of perspective.

 

[Marc17]

The one I go to, Wizard's Keep, has 20-30 feet of shelving that is all new and used RPGs mixed in together. Range seems pretty good as I notice lots of game lines in there. Still, when I'm there, I'm usually looking for older D&D stuff but go there because they have so much used games hoping I'll see something I decide I want. Still, that is about as much space as they also give to board games and less than the miniature gaming. Most of the space is tables for MtG and 40k although I have seen other gaming go on with them.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Don't have any local (as in my hoemtown), but there is a store in Gothenburg, which is like 1 hour away. THe have sadly cut down their number of game a bit. Last I was there , they still had decent selection in terms of different games. but I felt the space for both board games and rpg's had been cut in half or even less. Of course, their main focus is fantasy and science fiction books, and those shelves had expanded quite a lot. Also lots of manga.

 

[djotaku]

I forgot I wanted to add that another thing that causes issues for me - the medium to larger publishers - eg WotC and Kobold Press give me a discount if I buy the book and PDF (or dndbeyond access) at the same time from them. This disincentivizes me from buying from my FLGS if I want the best bang for $. Only the smaller ones - like the publisher that made the Chew TTRPG - allow you to get the PDF free with proof of purchase. I have 2 real life examples - one a KP book and one Daggerheart - where I didn't buy the book at my FLGS because I wanted to have the PDF at a discount. And before the new Paizo store, for Paizo if you were going to get the game on Foundry, it was better to buy directly from them than from the new Foundry Marketplace because the PDFs was discounted (or free? I can't remember. I have only bought Paizo from humble bundle so far, but I hurried to get the corresponding Foundry modules before they switched to the new Paizo store)

 

[GrimCo]

There 2 game stores in my city of 770k people (1 million if we count whole county). One of them only has wotc 5e and pathfinder. Other one is 70% wotc 5e, some CoC, some Pathfinder, and starter sets/ core rulebook for other games (walking dead, alice is missing, bladerunner, the one ring).

TCG are bread and butter, so that part is covered pretty good. Board game selection is very good. Miniatures - Warhammer only.

Most tables are for people that play TCG, sometimes there is organized play, but again, it's - 5e.

Funny enough, we have cool caffe in town, owner is my friend from HS. It has great selection of board games, great selection of ttrpgs, 2 game rooms that are separate, but people play also at "regular" tables. Great quality coffee, great cocktails, and it's nice and cozy place in historic city center. They have small gift shop where you can buy games also ( small selection for now, but it's more like side business). That whole place is pure labor of love and it shows (it not main business for owner, but it's profitable enough).