Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 5094873" data-attributes="member: 5122">Aside from my fumbling attempts at DMing for my friends in junior high, my first long-term group met in a game shop -- the long defunct Games Galore in Louisville, Kentucky.  The owners -- an older couple named Roger and Libby -- were fantastic, friendly, and funny, and the highlight of my week for those years was Games Galore on Saturdays, from 10 AM to 5 PM.  I bought all of my gaming stuff from them, shamelessly embezzling from my paper route money.After that, I went a long time without really using a game shop for anything but the occasional purchase.  And I usually made those at my comic shop, which carried RPGs on the side.When I moved to San Francisco I started going to GameScape on Divisidero.  They were okay, and I knew a guy who worked there, so I gave them my business.  That ended when I caught the employees shamelessly cherry-picking the WotC D&D miniatures boosters.  They couldn't even understand why I didn't appreciate the behavior.  Service there had already gotten almost unbearable, so cutting ties didn't take much.When I took up the skirmish game (DDM), I started playing weekly at GameKastle in Santa Clara.  They rented a suite in an adjacent building, and we had some great league nights and tournaments there.  I met some people I still hang out with occasionally, and I really liked the staff.  They've moved since, but I think are still in Santa Clara somewhere.While I was still active in the DDM scene, I moved back north to SF and frequented Endgame in Oakland, which is the first shop since Games Galore in which I actually played games, if you don't count GameKastle's adjacent suite.  (Endgame has a fantastic loft with half a dozen big tables, and they were reasonably friendly.)  At this point I bought most of my stuff online, because while I'm willing to spend lots of money I still like to get things cheap, but I went out of my way to buy something there pretty much every week.  Then came DDM 2.0, which killed my interest in DDM (and eventually killed the local scene completely), and that was it.Endgame's the last game shop I've been in.  I buy everything online now.</blockquote>

Verification