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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5548663" data-attributes="member: 82106">Seriously, the US Army is a giant hive of gaming activity. Certainly was back in the late 70's and early 80's. From 78-80 I lived down the road from the main gate of Fort Hood. You had 2 divisions full of young guys living in barracks with nothing they needed to spend their money on. Sure, there were 8 bajillion bars, 12 bajillion pawn shops, and surprisingly enough MANY gaming stores. Seriously, Copperas Cove is a town of maybe 10k people, at most, and the locals weren't exactly rolling in it. There were at one point THREE gaming stores in this one town, all large and well-stocked. Down the road in the bigger town, Killeen IIRC, there were another 2-3 large gaming stores. It was enough of a hotbed that we were constantly doing playtest groups for Steve Jackson, Metagaming, ADB (later Star Fleet Battles), etc. There would easily be 50 people in the store all weekend and there were 12 large gaming tables. I can attest to having played with the most prototypical versions of GURPS, many of the more well-known mini-games, all the TFT stuff (before GURPS), and several other games that never saw the light of day.So yeah, if you're in the Army and you can't find a game it is like Las Vegas and you can't find a hussie. Just doesn't happen. May be different nowadays I suppose, but I expect not. If I were going to run a game store I'd very definitely look closely at plopping it right near a nice big Army base.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5548663, member: 82106"] Seriously, the US Army is a giant hive of gaming activity. Certainly was back in the late 70's and early 80's. From 78-80 I lived down the road from the main gate of Fort Hood. You had 2 divisions full of young guys living in barracks with nothing they needed to spend their money on. Sure, there were 8 bajillion bars, 12 bajillion pawn shops, and surprisingly enough MANY gaming stores. Seriously, Copperas Cove is a town of maybe 10k people, at most, and the locals weren't exactly rolling in it. There were at one point THREE gaming stores in this one town, all large and well-stocked. Down the road in the bigger town, Killeen IIRC, there were another 2-3 large gaming stores. It was enough of a hotbed that we were constantly doing playtest groups for Steve Jackson, Metagaming, ADB (later Star Fleet Battles), etc. There would easily be 50 people in the store all weekend and there were 12 large gaming tables. I can attest to having played with the most prototypical versions of GURPS, many of the more well-known mini-games, all the TFT stuff (before GURPS), and several other games that never saw the light of day. So yeah, if you're in the Army and you can't find a game it is like Las Vegas and you can't find a hussie. Just doesn't happen. May be different nowadays I suppose, but I expect not. If I were going to run a game store I'd very definitely look closely at plopping it right near a nice big Army base. [/QUOTE]

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