D and I hit a bunch of game stores in Sacramento (sometimes, I need to leave San Francisco in to really appreciate it. Sac has a way of really instilling in me a profound appreciation of the bay area).
The gaming scene is HUGE! in Sac (could it be because there's nothing else to do that doesn't involve a strip mall?). The game playing areas at the back parts of the stores are much larger than their SF and e.bay counterparts. The shops themselves are, on average, ten times more spacious than their SF counterparts. I guess business owners get more bang for their buck in the land of endless-endless-endless-endless-endless-endless-endless-endless sprawwwwwwwwwwwwwwl.
I've been to many game and comic book shops, all over the western world. And I've never seen them as large as they are in Sac.
I also noticed older (much older) players. Thirty-something men. And middle-aged men. In San Francisco, I had only noticed teenagers and early twenty-somethings going at it with their miniatures and terrains in the seedy rear sections of wholesome game shops.
Some of these dudes were super geeky (of the middle-aged, big gut, bald with a ponytail variety). Others were young and jockish (and quite handsome, I might add) in that all American baseball-cap-wearing, pseudo redneck (but not really redneck) marginally geeky way (the kind of guys you see a lot of in the central valley) . Others were kind of alterna, but not in the Bay Area way. Alternative in a more home-spun Sacramento county type of way. Like maybe an Invader Zim t-shirt , but otherwise clean cut (short hair) sans tattoos and facial piercings to the naked eye (as opposed to the more grimy/grungy/sickly/displaced/ you-wouldn't-want-to-use-the-same-towel-I-did look that many SF alterna/goth boys sport).
Women were actually working the counter in a couple of stores. In both cases, the women were youngish feisty Gen Y (possible Z) gothy alterna chicks (suprise, surprise), also not of the Bay Area variety (more wholesome overall, like girls who actually live at home with their parents).
My overarching observation was that of a complete absence of Burning Man overlap in the Sac. gaming scene. This was most welcome.
Note to foreigners, non-native English speakers, and the clueless and/or uninitiated: if the above makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever to you, don't sweat it. I'll attempt to explain it in a future posting [STAY TUNED].
D and I were on a minor mission to locate a certain type of RPG literature. We returned empty-handed. The Sac gamers are hardcore and had already cleaned the establishments out. We also surmised that Sac isn't a good place for us to search for the limited-edition stuff we're looking for, because those Sac dudes (yes, 99 out of 100 of the demographic in question are male) would certainly get to it before we did.
Nonetheless, the trip was not in vain. I interviewed D (for a web design class assignment) about his exciting work on incorporating miniatures into a fantasy themed adventure board game.
Some good photos of his miniatures were gotten. I got the scoop on painting miniatures, buying miniatures, and forcing one's self to like miniatures. The assignment calls for formatting the interview into a simple web site with links. I'll probably repurpose it into something else down the line.
Millions of fantasy board game miniature painting hobbyists can't be wrong.
