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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7647859" data-attributes="member: 22779">Another thought occurred to me regarding the number of gaming stores in America.  From Ryan's comments, we have a situation with a presumption of 5000 stores before the 90's, in the mid-90's where we have about 2500 gaming stores.  By the late oughts, we have around 5-700.  Wow, that's a big drop.However, like many of these numbers, they're only snapshots.  It's really, really difficult to extrapolate any real interpretation from these.  Let's put things in context for a moment. Take the 5000 number.  Where did that come from?  I'm going to take a stab and guess TSR.  Yeah, there's a credible source.  :/  Considering how little market research was done before WOTC did any, it's pretty safe to say that any numbers were of the "throw a dart at the board" variety. 2500 gaming stores in the mid-90's.  Ok.  So, during the largest boom in the American economy in the 20th century, we have lots of gaming stores and this drops to (for ease of typing) 500 in the late oughts where we have one of the worst economic downturns in decades.  The thing to compare immediately would be, how do other brick and mortar retail specialty stores compare?  I mean, does anyone actually think that there should have been growth in brick and mortar specialty retail stores in the last ten years?  Between a garbage economy and the HUGE growth of online retail, every single brick and mortar store type is having problems.Let's also not forget something too.  How many of those gaming stores in the 90's were being floated by CCG's?  The Magic and Pokedollars that were flowing in were keeping lots of people pretty flush.  Again, the bottom drops out of the CCG market around 2000 or so.  Another big blow to brick and mortar specialty hobby shops.It's easy to point to the hobby and say, "The hobby is dying!  Look at THIS!"  But, like the claims that SF is dying (it's been on its deathbed for a couple of decades now) because print SF magazines have had to change formats or have gone out of business (guess what?  So have EVERY SINGLE print formats out there), claims that the hobby is dying is based on very little actual evidence.------------Eyebeams - you asked what a VTT could provide?  That's easy.  Imagine having modules pre packaged for play on a VTT.  Every die roller automated in an easy macro, every create pre-formated for the VTT.  Being able to play D&D without any prep beyond reading a ten page module.  FAN FREAKING TASTIC!</blockquote>

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