cranewings wrote:
Charlie Bell wrote:
It's not smart business on his part, either. Players who come to PFS games buy books and dice and minis. PFS games are bringing foot traffic into his store.
This isn't necessarily helpful when it comes to RPG players. When I worked in a game store we made our money on war games > CCGs > board games > comic books > RPGs. No one ever made as big of a mess, had as much of a problem with language, or stayed as long as role players.
We never had an accountant come in and check it out, but it was pretty clear the RPGers were a drag. My LFGS, either of them, have less TTRPG material than anything else they sell in discourage table time for RPGers in favor of a tournament or night of almost any other game: magic, pokemon, flames of war, warhammer, even board game night. Weekly RPGers get last pick on the tables. I do not blame them or ever wonder about this.
When i owned my own game store, our biggest problem was the collectible gamers. No other group made as big of a mess, yelled louder, took up more table space, or spent less money than the TCG players. Also, RPG books have the highest markup of near anything else in the store at 53%. TCG markup was between 20% and 0 depending on the brand, and Clix you were lucky if you could get $2 a pack over cost. Also TCG Players usually had this mentality of "i already have what i need, so i dont want to buy the new stuff" where RPG players would typically buy the new books the first week it came out. Typically the only way for TCGs to justify their restock cost was to charge entry fee for tournaments and give that money as store credit. Role players on the other hand would buy drinks and snacks every session.
Now this is coming at it from the financial side of things. Each store owner looks at things differently and has different priorities and "hierarchies of gaming" as it were. If a particular owner dislikes RPG's or thinks of RPG players as freeloaders or campers (maybe because they are buying their books through Amazon instead of his store) then they are more likely to give preferential treatment to where their money is coming from. Fortunately it is not difficult at all to organize a player base to go to another store, or even open a new one if no store is accommodating. Even if you dont want to run a retail store, you can still rent a small building for a "gaming group hangout" and charge a small membership fee (depending on your area. here would be approx $10 a month, the group in Memphis charges $40 a month) and with the appropriate licenses you can get distributor accounts and completely bypass the Unfriendly local gaming store.
I guess things look a lot different if you are a store owner, or simply just work at one.
