One of the guys from my RPG group contacted me during my off cycle while the family was away and asked if I wanted to go for a bit of a drive to a games store with him. Long story short, his girlfriend was training a new crew off in Oakville and since he was off as well he had went with her while she was staying there and stumbled upon a little gem of a store out there and wanted to both show it off and patronage their establishment based off the impression it left. This coupled with the opening of a new bigger established downtown store that I checked out led me to compare the 2 stores.
I will refer to the stores as Oakville and Toronto respectivly.
Toronto had huge square footage, I had been in their previous location and they were in desperate need of the space. I may be alone in this but I hate feeling like I need to turn around slowly for fear of knocking product over and with the shelves/stands and tables this store meant I always had to keep a portion of my mind cateloging where I was in the establishment and my relation to various merchandise. The new location had lots of open room, lots of it was taken up by the MANY (opening night ) nerds but once the place settles down there will be more than enough room to move about.
I can't comment for sure on the ventilation, there being far more bodies than normal, as well as the doors propped open I suspect to help generate traffic. But I suspect that there will be a heavy nerd musk that permeates these places.
Location was great, smack in the middle of downtown and only a minute walk from the nearest subway stop. However parking would be a real kick in the pants, and as I have moved from the teenager dependant on the subway to the "adult" that drives now for the convienence the concept of free parking is a HUGE draw for me.
Now for Oakville.
The store while having less total square footage had what I thought was a brilliant layout. There were 4 "rooms" that had doors and several tables with tabletop terrain held on shelves above. Apparently if you want a private room for tabeltop wargaming or are running a RPG you can I assume book a room or drop in and hope for a vacancy. Now this was just brilliant, I remember seeing RPG's being run in stores before, its almost impossible to avoid being a looky-loo just to see what the system/campagin/characters are being run and while I would feel slightly annoyed by people constantly leering into my RPG it would be a small price to pay for a central location back in the days when none of the players could provide. The actual issue that I have with this comes when people either set up shop for 20 minutes to audit your game and start interjecting into your game, asking questions is fine;
"Hey this looks neat what are you guys playing?"
"Oh this is Shadowrun, imagine the worst parts of Corporate America given steroids and a few decades to run rampant, we each play members of what amounts to freelance wet-works guys."
"Looks like fun, could I try?"
"Sorry we have a full table right now, but if your'e interested there is a sign up board over there where people looking for a game can join up."
The guy that runs the store almost always runs one-shots too. It helps newbies get into the game and they can buy the books generating income.
But invariably I have always seen spectators either start injecting their own non-sequiters into a game where players do this all too frequently, or even worse start providing their own "advise";
"Hey, your Wizard should cast a fog spell to give your guys concealment"
".......I dont have concealment"
"Oh well any Wizard worth his salt should always stock up on......etc"
The private rooms in Oakville eliminate these pet peeves of mine as well as reduce the distracting din of conversations that make listening to the DM difficult. Now you don't get the advertisement that seeing people play gives you, but any kid that spends any amount of time in the store will eventually see people setting up in one of those rooms for a RPG and can have his introductions, it just takes a bit longer.
Oakville also had quite a few board games for sale, and the best part was they had an opened copy of all the ones they carry to play test. Check out some game that looks neat but not quite sure how it would play? They will break it out and play test it with you. This actually led to my friend purchasing more as he was on the fence about it before but after playing a game found he really enjoyed it.
The A/C was running in Oakville and when it started to pick up you could sometimes catch a whiff of nerd musk it was always momentary. There was pleanty of parking, which while a bonus for myself particularly beacuse I was coming from out of area was unfortunatly a neccesity as I think it was more than a bit out of the way. But were I a teenager out in Oakville I would be willing to make the 10-20 minute trek from the nearest main bus route or wait the extra 20 minutes to catch the infrequent bus that went closer.
All in all, I find myself thinking back on my Oakville experience with better and better memories than I have gotten from any of the local stores I have gone to. Here's hoping that you have a place that resonates with you the same way this has with me.
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