Demise of the FLGS

[Iron Guardian]

For me, I personally do not want anything to do with playing my favorite games online or by post or by mail. I have been playing D&D online for about 3 1/2 years or so now, and am slowly growing tired of it due to too much repetition, continual issues with the game for each new game release or update in spite of getting a new PC recently, and the cost. I haven't touched my X-Box 360 in three years and I will not get into the smart-phone trap. Call me a neo-luddite, but for all the new tech, I am really tired and disgusted by all the rudeness and disrespect I get from younger people, having new technology constantly forced on me (i.e. Blue-ray and Hi-def -- I could care less about these things yet my choice of not getting them is being taken away from me as the stuff I want disappears, thus forcing me to either forego any future watching of new movies and such by not buying them, or having to pay lots of money to watch them), and having to constantly re-learn the same types of things all over again...assuming they bother to include instructions of any sort and in laymen's terms (I am not an IT person or a mechanic). Like I said before, I will try to enjoy the remaining years of "old school" rpg'ing for as long as I can. :x :x :x

 

[AndrewW]

Well, still the same game in my case just played through online chat rather then around a table or something. Not refering to any MMORPG or anything.

Newer then what I've got, no xbox, PSx or Nintendo game consoles here. Not to mention no smart phone or cell phone...

 

[GamerDude]

Never did any that way myself. Good old Fidonet.

mmm yess Fidonet, before any real people had access to Internet, USENet groups, etc... there was Fidonet.

I miss the day of running a popular BBS on Fidonet and about six other nets all at once.

Then there was the Starcraft community on the MSN Network, I was friends with the 'host/owner/sysop/whatever you call him" and I actually ran a Starcraf RPG - squad of Terran marines guarding an installation - which even included combat and me putting up a map of where things were after each turn.


mmmm the good ol' days

That said nowdays it's hard to find RPers at all, let alone GOOD RPers. People here are more into how freakish they can make their characters, demanding they be coddled and have a super high power curve in their chars advancement, some even prefer to play while getting snockered (one bad experience of mixing alcohol and RPing and if you have one the other ain't happening, etc.

To note: After getting past the insanity of people calling me names because I won't run or play in D&D 4th (it is not freaking four-point-oh dammit) or Pathfinder, I get crap for not letting them start above the book's starting character. New (to them) GM, new (to them) system, new (to them) setting... and already they're bitching "but i can't do what I want, my character I don't know what he wants to be at (equivalent of 1st level in D&D).

These are the people that make it hard to actually RP instead of it being just a fest of character twinking and endless combat (or game stalls while people look up what they want to do/and bs).

It's like they expect to walk into HS at 12 be handed their degree, then walk in to College get handed it at 13, and then walk into Microsoft offered a job for $750 k a year at 14. And then not have to do anything but sit with their feet on their desk.

 

[AndrewW]

Then there was the Starcraft community on the MSN Network, I was friends with the 'host/owner/sysop/whatever you call him" and I actually ran a Starcraf RPG - squad of Terran marines guarding an installation - which even included combat and me putting up a map of where things were after each turn.

I did an ANSI map for some combat in an AD&D game I was running on a BBS once upon a time.

 

[rust]

Demise of the FLGS ... in my experience with the FLGS over here
in Germany, yes. It started many years ago, with a trend to stock
more and more trading card games, miniatures and comics and
less and less roleplaying games, especially of minor publishers. In
the next phase many of the shops ceased to sell roleplaying games
at all, others opened an online shop and moved the roleplaying ga-
mes there or closed down their brick and mortar shop and went on-
line only. Many publishers created their own online shops because
there were no longer enough FLGS to sell their products to the ga-
mers, especially outside of the major cities. In the current phase
the various online shops have to compete with the online supermar-
kets like Amazon, and are doing badly in that rearguard action.

There are still some good FLGS which stock niche games, too, but
they are almost only to be found in the major cities where there
are sizeable communities of more or less well organized gamers,
otherwise the FLGS have disappeared, and even the number of on-
line shops which are not run by a publisher is in decline.

On the other hand, thanks to online shops and online supermarkets
it is now extremely easy to get almost any roleplaying game within
two or three days, and I have no idea whether the disappearance
of the FLGS really means that less games are sold, it could just as
well be that the number has remained unchanged and only the sup-
ply chain (partially online shop, partially PDF) is now a different
one.

 

[IanBruntlett]

Well... on Grainger Street in Newcastle there are 2 FLGS - Travelling Man (which I buy my games from, including a Bits and Mortar PDF) and Forbidden Planet.

http://www.travellingman.com/page/23/Our_shops
http://forbiddenplanet.com/events/for-location/newcastle-store/

 

[billclo]

It's like they expect to walk into HS at 12 be handed their degree, then walk in to College get handed it at 13, and then walk into Microsoft offered a job for $750 k a year at 14. And then not have to do anything but sit with their feet on their desk.

Good old Millenials, and their entitlement mentality. Mommy's special snowflakes, all of them.

 

[Apep]

Well... on Grainger Street in Newcastle there are 2 FLGS - Travelling Man (which I buy my games from, including a Bits and Mortar PDF) and Forbidden Planet.

http://www.travellingman.com/page/23/Our_shops
http://forbiddenplanet.com/events/for-location/newcastle-store/

Nearest FLGS (Static Games – Glasgow) – 300 mile odd round trip

(I know there are a few others in Scotland - Dundee, Aberdeen, Stirling, Edinburgh etc. don’t find myself much in these areas nowadays)

One of the “games stores” I visited recently – not so much games – Mentioned Mongoose / Spartan / Warlord / Battlefront(FoW) / Privateer – the owner looked blank.

The only good thing is we now have a local GW store – which should support some of the younger generation into gaming.

 

[dmccoy1693]

From my prospective, the single biggest challenge facing most FLGS's is that most do not know how to run a business. Most start their store out of a love of the hobby and want to make it as widely available as possible. They make bad choices, but they do so because they always wanted to do so. They do not know how to control expenses. And eventually see they simply give up instead of seek formal training in business.

Mind you, the exact same can be said about most publishers.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

In my state, store owners will be seeing another hike in taxes/fees/rentals. So all of the stores will be cutting back on spending in some way, like closing down a store if they have two.

 

[rust]

From my prospective, the single biggest challenge facing most FLGS's is that most do not know how to run a business.

This is certainly often a factor. Another one is that a store has to generate
a minimum profit to pay for its rent and for the owner's subsistence income.
Over here this minimum profit is approximately 3,000,- Euro for a shop so-
mewhere on the outskirts of a city. If the store earns about 10,- Euro per
item sold (it is usually less), it has to sell 300 items per month, or a dozen
of them per day it is open, just to be able to continue to exist. Without a
sufficiently big community of customers to guarantee that number of sales,
even the perfect knowledge about running a business cannot help, except
by providing the insight "don't".

 

[dragoner]

Nearest FLGS (Static Games – Glasgow) – 300 mile odd round trip

(I know there are a few others in Scotland - Dundee, Aberdeen, Stirling, Edinburgh etc. don’t find myself much in these areas nowadays)

One of the “games stores” I visited recently – not so much games – Mentioned Mongoose / Spartan / Warlord / Battlefront(FoW) / Privateer – the owner looked blank.

The only good thing is we now have a local GW store – which should support some of the younger generation into gaming.

We have a few FLGS' in town, many a cross between games and comics, and similar to your experience, at a fairly good sized one near my house: http://thesagesshoppe.com/ which does a huge amount of business in mini's as well as rpg's, they haven't heard of Mongoose. This is fertile ground for gaming as well, right across the street is a very popular pub called Hunter's Pub, owned by an old D&D'er, with a logo of an elf woman with a stein and bow, just to show how ingrained it is in the culture.

 

[Somebody]

Another reason is that "going PDF" gets more and more interesting. Why carry multiple books at 5+ kg when I can carry ALL my books at <1kg on a tablet(pc) AND have additional benefits like "never loosing the notes taken / maps drawn during games" and "having the character sheets" as well. And once I go PDF - why visit a store?

 

[IanBruntlett]

My local FLGS (Travelling Man, Newcastle) does do RPGs. However their distributor is Esdevium Games and they take forever to ship new Traveller books to Travelling Man. I'm still waiting to buy S13: Star Port Encounters and S14: Space Stations