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Message: <blockquote data-quote="3catcircus" data-source="post: 7697211" data-attributes="member: 16077">I dunno - my own experience (going back 35 years or so) isn't that it is smelly FLGS play space with unfriendly staff; it isn't CCGs taking over from RPGs in terms of shelf space; it isn't a glut of awful quality product for popular gaming lines sitting on shelves for years.Based upon my experiences, the single biggest factor in the decline of the FLGS is the inability of most of them to stock up on obscure items that no one thinks of until they see it and then realize they can't live without it.  Example - in the 1980s, while perusing The Armory and Warrick's Custom Hobbies on various weekends (both South Florida game stores that I don't even know if they exist any more), I found The Compleat Adventurer, The Compleat Alchemist, the Compleat Spellcaster as well as The Arcanum.  To a teenage boy looking for more depth in his AD&D games, these were amazing products.  I had never even heard of Bard Games before I found these products sitting quietly on the store shelves.  Fast forward to oh, about 10 years ago or so - quietly sitting on the store shelves at Jester's Playhouse here in South Jersey were these interesting little AoE templates from Steel Sqwire.  Other "finds" for me due to browsing at various FLGS over the years (all across the country from Florida to Hawaii and in between):  Dangerous Journeys (ok - the rules were unwieldy, but the premise was intriguing), Dark Conspiracy, DC Heroes (the original version), Delta Force, Twilight:2000, metallic dice (copper and nickel versions), terrain, etc.Compare that to another local game store (All Things Fun).  They had a sad little section of RPG products consisting mostly of old 4e and Pathfinder releases, WFRP, FFGs's Star Wars product, and Dark Heresy.  Tons of shelf space devoted to comics, CCGs, geek "toys" like overpriced Mcfarlane figurines.  Heck - they had more shelf space devoted to used paperbacks than they did to RPGs.  They had friendly staff and quite a bit of gaming space.  Yet - when I went in to pick up a copy of Ed Greenwood presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms, they had sold off the whole 2 copies they stocked in less than a week and I didn't get a call until several months later that they had more stock.  They've now closed their location closest to me with only the one near McGuire AFB remaining.  Give me a place where I can discover new and interesting products</blockquote>

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