My anti-D&D LGS

[joethelawyer]

I live here on the other coast...CT to be exact, and I have seen 3 or 4 gaming stores come and go from our area, all that allowed D&D games, but I also watched as some would charge per hour for table space..ect. Now up on the boarder of Waterbury and southington (not sure witch city it is in) there is a hobby shop that has been there forever...The guy that runs it is the owner and he wants nothing to do with RPGs and CCGs, even though he has sold them in the past.
He once told me that the last thing he needed was a group of young anti social losers cloggin up his shop...needless to say that was the last time I bought train supplies there.

hey man. i am in ct too. is there a good gaming store anywhere in this state? i have resorted to going to ny city to the compleat strategist for my fix.

where do you live? ansonia here...

 

[Asmor]

I feel like people might be missing the most obvious (to my mind, at least) answer: they don't view RPGs as a significant business source for them. The OP said they only have a small shelf of D&D stuff, after all. Maybe they just want to keep the focus on board games and card games.

 

[thalmin]

Possibly the owner didn't understand the term "pick-up game"? Running a family oriented business, he didn't want people trying to pick up one-night-stands in his store.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Perhaps he's trying to maintain a certain mix of games, and there are already several D&D games in his store.

Or perhaps its an unusual case of "Edition Warzzzz" breaking out of the internet and into loud discussions that make the store an unpleasant place to shop.

These are just possibilities, but I'm really curious, though, as to the actual reason.

 

[Treebore]

Nothing to be sorry about. My relationship with my parents was fantastic.

It's simply that at that age playing games with them wasn't something I was interested in.

Good. I did think you may have been hinting otherwise. Still, maybe if they did play D&D with you, you may have still felt otherwise.

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

If the store is more geared towards a certain clientele, it's reasonable that they don't want to mix that up - especially if the owners have seen the same kind of game groups I mentioned at other game stores.

I think Tewligan might be on to something here. This is Queen Anne Hill in Seattle after all. The median home prices in this area are around $500,000

 

[JeffB]

These are both pretty likely, in my opinion. I've seen multiple gaming groups squatting at game stores for hours and hours, and they aren't always really big on appropriate noise level, language, and...well, hygiene.

All too often the case. I don't blame the store owner if those are his/her reasons.

In addition, it's his business, he can do things the way he wants, when he wants, how he wants (within the law), no? Not sure why this is an issue with some posting in this thread.


Side Note- CT game stores- one of the oldest gaming shops in the country is located over by the Submarine-base in Groton-not far from Mystic and the Casinos. The Citadel -I remember the ads in Dragon magazine when I was a kid. I've been there a couple of times, but it's been sev years- I'll say this, he could have made a mint on ebay with alot of the old OOP gaming material he still had sitting on the shelves. I drove by it about a year ago and it was still there (though as I said, haven't actually been in it in 5 years prolly). P.S. he has weird hours, call ahead.

 

[Mighty Halfling]

Just to put this out there: Many modern board games take several hours to play, so I don't know "the time concern" is valid.

 

[Blue Highway Games]

Hi All,
Thanks for inviting us to join. I have to say, I’m impressed with the level of thought that has gone into this discussion.

We have two owners, and both of us grew up playing D&D so we certainly don’t have a personal bias against it. Over the years our interests have moved towards board games and we decided to create a store to help expose these new games to a mainstream audience that has probably never tried them before. As a new store, we feel that is important to define a personality and we have chosen to focus ours around board & card games, not RPG’s and Mini’s. We aren’t trying to say there is a “right” or “wrong” type of game, but that is simply where our passion is right now. Originally we didn’t carry RPG’s but we did add D&D with the release of 4.0, will continue to add to this section as 4.0 expands, and I can imagine our support for D&D expanding over time as well.

Scott

 

[JeffB]

Hi All,
Thanks for inviting us to join. I have to say, I’m impressed with the level of thought that has gone into this discussion.

We have two owners, and both of us grew up playing D&D so we certainly don’t have a personal bias against it. Over the years our interests have moved towards board games and we decided to create a store to help expose these new games to a mainstream audience that has probably never tried them before. As a new store, we feel that is important to define a personality and we have chosen to focus ours around board & card games, not RPG’s and Mini’s. We aren’t trying to say there is a “right” or “wrong” type of game, but that is simply where our passion is right now. Originally we didn’t carry RPG’s but we did add D&D with the release of 4.0, will continue to add to this section as 4.0 expands, and I can imagine our support for D&D expanding over time as well.

Scott

Thanks for dropping by to give us your perspective/reasoning, Scott.

and welcome to the boards