Thoughtful Nerd

A profound change came over RPG shops in the early to mid 90's. White Wolf. Certainly where I was (Lancaster and then Nottingham) the game shops were ever more dominated by the World of Darkness setting, because thats mostly what people were playing. I suppose there were plenty of reasons why this was so, but mostly because it was well written, well thought out, and quite interesting in an era when AD&D was in a catastrophic decline. TSR found they could sell a campaign setting quite well, so they kept producing more of them. Which meant each supplement or adventure for a specific setting was selling fewer and fewer copies. The incessant 'splat books' in the middle of the decade meant that even the die-hard fans were finding it hard keeping up. It seemed for a while that not only had playtesting gone out of the window, but basic proofreading seemed beyond TSR - as each product sold less they created more and more of them the quality declined and margins were squeez...

So there was a brief discussion on Twitter among some old school pen and paper podcasters talking about game shop memories, and it got me thinking about the game shops and spaces I've frequented over the years. Now the thing is, as a RPG gamer in the '80s and '90s I had no cash. Like, sometimes literally, I was skint. The '90s was my sixth form and degrees, the 80s was being a kid. But from as soon as I discovered D&D way back in, what, 1983 this was something I was out looking for in the shops even if I couldn't afford to buy anything. There was a dedicated RPG shop down near the Worswick Street end of Clayton Street in Newcastle, and there were two hobby/model shops Beatties (also on Pilgrim Street) and Liesure World. Today of course there's the splendid little Nerd cluster with Travelling Man, Geek Retreat and Forbidden Planet - they're light, fun, and full of people. But I'd have said that the game shop  back then was sort of was seedy, ...