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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7642510" data-attributes="member: 996">So you've got a smaller sample size. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  But, yes, you do get a lot more new & casual gamers in-store than at conventions, for instance, and stable groups are quite another story.In my area the last play-in-store what we'd now call an FLGS, The Game Table, closed in, I think '87, yeah, that sounds right. In that one there was D&D, Champions, & Traveler being played regularly (among many other things irregularly - and wargames were still significant, M&M, SFB &c - I didn't pay that much attention, but M&M's hard to miss, they take up a lot of space), and only Traveler was run TotM, D&D was painted minis on a grid, Champions! cardboard heroes (standies, I think we'd call 'me now) on a hex battlemat.  It started coming back in the oughts, but just outside my stomping grounds - I worked conventions with a club that was centered round a shop like that in Oakland (cheaper rent, I guess), for instance, but nothing to speak of in the South Bay.  By the time I joined Encounters, 2010, there were three FLGSs in the area - two running Encounters, one Warhammer & PF(S? I think it was a thing by then?).  One of those closed, but Isle split off from Illusive in early 2014 because gaming had outgrown the space (we'd have one or two tables of Encounters overflow outside) in what was originally a comics shop.In college the groups I was in also tended towards TotM, for one compelling reason: no space.  I even ran Champions! without a battlemat. Isle of Gamers, Santa Clara!  I'm actually back to gaming more or less regularly (not quite every week) after a pretty terrible year, health-wise.</blockquote>

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