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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rygar" data-source="post: 7781734" data-attributes="member: 6756765">Retailers exist because prior to the early 00's it was prohibitively difficult for a consumer to purchase things directly from producers, given the number of things any given consumer owns and the number of producers.  This created large complex supply chains to get products to consumers, often with several hops in between the producer and the consumer, each adding to the cost of the item.  The 00's changed that such that there's now at most one hop between the producer and the consumer, reducing prices, and making local stores less cost-effective due to their markups.Eliminating archaic middle men is not a bad thing.  It makes the production chain more efficient and results in no tangible job loss since the retail jobs shift to the production jobs as people have more free cash.As far as "Community" goes, first, let's be honest.  There's no community of sufficient size to make it possible for a store to stay solvent in anything but Magic the Gathering.  A half dozen people at most for one or two nights a week for an RPG game, and maybe the same number other nights for Pokemon and boardgames isn't enough to keep a store solvent.  RPG's and other games are what stores do with their space to make a few dollars on nights when they aren't running Magic.  But hypothetically speaking, if there were enough players, then when local stores go under playspaces would open to meet demand.The harsh truth is that we're watching the death of the game stores.  Their business model is outdated, and outside of a single product line, they don't have anything that can generate significant revenue.  If Magic the Gathering falters, and it will eventually fail, gamestores are gone immediately.But honestly, it doesn't matter.  If RPG's remain relevant technology will advance sufficiently for virtual tabletops and remote gaming to become a reality.  Honestly, it's really already there, screensharing and free tech like Google Hangouts make it trivial to run.</blockquote>

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