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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9863056" data-attributes="member: 18">This is a real non sequitur following the rest of your argument, and seems like a very narrow and specific question that I very much doubt even you could answer conclusively (I think it would take serious research to provide a genuinely conclusive answer, in fact), so can you explain in detail what you're trying to say or imply here? I don't need a conclusive answer re: publishers, I'm asking what you're trying to imply/argue - why is the Jan 2000 to Oct 2000 window so important?The rest of what you're saying doesn't seem to disagree with me all that much, which is what confuses me here.Orc's Nest is Orc's Nest, it seems eternal and unchanging. I think it benefits hugely from being right next to a bunch of central London tourist places (which, no insult, may well be why you visited that, and not other London FLGSes). That applies to this day - I was in there before Xmas picking up a couple of presents just because it's so much easier to reach than say, the otherwise-superior Leisure Games (and Playing Games is sadly defunct), and not only was it absolutely packed, but a lot of the people packing it were European and Asian tourists, to judge from the languages being spoken and modes of dress (particularly Chinese, interestingly, I saw multiple small groups of young Chinese people happily buying both board games and TTRPGs, seemingly very pleased with Orc's Nest!). I think if you last visited Orc's Nest in 1994 you would be shocked at how little it actually changed in 2026!Playing Games was where I saw the biggest d20 boom-bust in London (but I also saw a similar thing happen in a couple of FLGS in the US). They had a decent, diverse TTRPG section even the very late 1990s, but when the d20 boom hit, they absolutely went all-in on it, really cutting down on the non-d20 TTRPGs they carried, and filling a lot of shelves with d20 stuff (I think they even expanded the area the RPGs took up, but it's been a long time). However, over the next few years it became pretty obvious a lot of the d20 stuff just wasn't selling, including a lot of 3PP 3E D&D stuff (not Paizo, that was, but other 3PPs). Then they got out of TTRPGs entirely. Eventually they shut down, I think because they were relying on the Eurogame boom and then that sort of petered out. Ironically I think they would be doing pretty well if they had somehow survived today, given both TTRPGs and boardgames have resurged, and their location (very near the British Museum), and the increasing use of the internet to find places might have helped the tourist market find them.(Also re: Playing Games, if you thought 1994 Orc's Nest had a lot of "size and options", you should have seen say, 1997 Playing Games, which was just flatly better TTRPG-selection-wise. Also have you ever been to a US FLGS, in like the 1990s or more recently? Because space is at so much less of a premium, they tend to be pretty amazing in terms of "size and options".)(EDIT - Oh or say, actually - and this is interesting, to me at least, 1993 Oxford Street (or was it Tottenham Court Road, I forget) Virgin Megastore's TTRPG section - despite being just a giant shop mostly selling media and I think clothes, they had a huuuuuuuuuuge TTRPG section, you could find amazingly obscure stuff in there. I found SenZar there, for god's sake, SENZAR!!! In a real shop! A big fancy megastore! And Synnibarr! How copies of those were even printed? I can't imagine it was many! For the record I didn't buy either, just browsed them at the store. Sadly in one of the many Virgin revamps or changes of owner the massive - and surely never very profitable - TTRPG section eventually got eliminated, I think in like, 1999 possibly, in favour of more space for videogames, which were rapidly becoming huge.)</blockquote>

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