Tracer Rounds: The Local Game Store – Guild Hall, Saloon, and Crack Dealer, all in one
Your FLGS probably deserves more respect that you’re giving it ~
Brant, 02 May 2016
I had to take a few weeks off. Sorry. The fallout from the last Tracer Rounds column cost me a good friend who thought I was (indirectly) taking shots at him and I hope that in time, we can reconcile our differences and become friends again. But while I’m sticking by everything that I said, the last 2-3 weeks have really reconfirmed why I was so reluctant to wade into the topic in the first place. 
There was another discussion that popped up on my online radar that wanted to explore, though, and it involved the role of the FLGS in our hobby. The genesis of the discussion was a new policy by some companies to release certain games through brick-and-mortar stores before making them available to online retailers, or setting certain pricing minimums for online stores, to keep them from undercutting the physical stores too much and driving them out of business.
For those of us where the brick-and-mortar stores serve a vital social role in our hobby, this is a Good Thing™ to help keep the community cranking along. It’s somewhere that gamers can discover new games, meet new gamers, casually watch games being played to gauge their own interest, and generally socialize with those that share the same hobby. It also gives us a local business to support that’s almost always run by fellow gamers.
