So, how's things gaming-wise in your neck of the woods?  Do you have a FLGS you like?  A ready pool of gamers?  Gamers who are into the same sort of games you are, or are at least willing to try something new?  Or perhaps you're just gaming online these days, and couldn't care less about how many gamers are in your town.  How'd you rate your local gaming scene, 1 being Dismal, 10 being Outstanding?  (Feel free to give general location, if you're comfortable doing so).

I guess I'll help get things started:

Location:  NE Indianapolis suburbia (Noblesville/Pendleton), Indiana

FLGS:  I do have a good FLGS, Reader Copies Two, which isn't huge, but has a cool owner, clean store, a growing selection of RPGs, CCGs, comics, and board games, gives discounts on orders, and, more importantly, has plenty of gaming space and regular crowd of avid gamers.

Availability:  I've had no problems recruiting folks for my Rifts game or for needing folks to show up for demos.  There are a lot of one-shot informal games both weeknights and weekends (a mix of everything), and generally gamers I know are willing to jump right into a game.  We hear about a lot of other groups in the area, too, who seem to be running everything from Star Wars d6 to Hollow Earth Expedition.  I would like to see more regular, longer-running campaigns available, and a few more open games, but by and large, I consider myself blessed.

Compatibility:  Not a lot of the gamers here are active in online RPG discussion, and most know D&D, but are willing to try anything.  I've helped to introduce a lot of Palladium to gamers around here, and they're fun-loving and relaxed enough in their gaming styles that we mesh pretty well.  Best of all, even though there's plenty of different gaming backgrounds, they'll give just about any game a shot--Coyote Trail, In Harm's Way, and Roma Imperious have seen some fun sessions!  Folks are getting excited about our upcoming C&C campaign, as it seems to fix some of the things we don't like about D&D 3.5.  


All in all, I'd rate the local scene a solid 8/10.

Interesting idea!

Location:  Lexington, Kentucky

FLGS:  LGS seems poorly run.  Interior is dark and has a gamer funk.  Old stock lingers and no sales occur.  New releases immediately covered with thick finger prints from being used by gaming groups that play in store.  Of my five visits, the employee on call just left the store for a while during one of them.  A bad gaming store, in my view, and one I make no use of today.

Availability:  There's a moderately active D&D scene, a local gaming club that plays D20 games and Exalted, and a smattering of folk who play RIFTS and a few other games.  I could find a D&D game or recruit for one within a month.  I could recruit for, or possibly find, a different non-specific mainstream RPG within two months.  I've had generally poor experiences in the local gaming community and tend to keep to myself now.


Compatibility:  There are, perhaps, three people in the area other than myself that actively contribute to online forums.  Of those, one shares the broad interest in RPGs that I have.  The vast majority of gamers I have met locally have no interest in trying new games nor in reading about games online.  Nevertheless, I've had a group of people consistently interested in learning new games and playing odd games that I've been playing with for about 6 months now.


I'd call it a 4/10, higher if your interests start and stop with d20 games.

Location: Berkeley, CA

LGS: Great. Here in the East Bay, we've got Games of Berkeley, Eudemonia, It's Your Move, and Endgame, all pretty well-stocked. Over in San Francisco there's Gamescape. (The greater Silicon Valley area also has some good stores but they're not really worth driving all that way given what we have nearby.) Endgame in particular has a great space for gaming, and runs weekly events and minicons. The other three also have a mix of open gaming spaces and events.

Availability: There sure seem to be a lot of gamers around here. The fact the I don't have a regular group and/or regularly participate in pickup games is more a function of my other commitments and degree of initiative than anything else. Nevertheless I've got 48 people on a mailing list I run for local gamers, and the list is producing actual play.

Compatibility: Pretty good. The mailing list is deliberately focused on "trying stuff out", i.e. short-run games either to meet new people, try out new games, or finally get to run that old game you were never able to round up players for. My personal tastes tend more toward the long-form, "traditional" GM & Players type game, but the fact I don't have a group like that has more to do with me gradually getting into the swing of things, than a lack of other players, I think.

At the moment I'm signed up for a GM+3 players short run of 2300 AD. It's supposed to last 3 sessions, meeting 1/month, so that's pretty good.

Overall I'd give the local scene a score of 9/10, but if I were still in a position to game nights and weekends on a moment's notice, it could be a 10. Or maybe an 8 if it turned out that people were always shooting down my campaign/game system proposals. But I haven't tested that.

Location: Victoria, B.C., Canuckistan

LGS: Mediocre. Three come to mind, a pair of Curious Comics locations and Skyhaven Games. Curious Comics offers truly appalling prices (the Red Star Campaign book for $50 comes to mind - and that was three weeks ago) and moderately interested staff, though their focus is on comics. Skyhaven Games is primarily board games and CCGs...and they're got all kinds of board games...but it's also the only store that offers play space, so the typical population includes about four or five traders and a half dozen players, mostly in the range of 10-15 playing Yu-Gi-Oh or Star Wars Minis, and it's a little crazy in there 90% of the time...I spent 20 minutes waiting to order my BW through him. OTOH, I've done some playtesting for the owner's heartbreaker and he offers 20% on RPGs, so I make the trip out there anyway.

Availability: Passable. Our gaming community looks more like a network of terrorist cells, where each member of a group knows a gamer in each of a couple of other groups, and each of them knows a couple others, ad nauseum. That said, I've found a group I like - 8 years ago - and they're the only local gamers I've ever enjoyed playing with. Between working nights and the S.O. I've only got enough time for one regular game anyway, but I could probably put together a group for a short campaign from individuals I know.

Compatibility: Poor, actually. With the exception of a couple CP2020 players I met, it's mostly 3.x and Vampire players around here (mostly old Vampire) with a library of interesting games they never play. There are also a lot of playstyle differences between myself and the players I've met - sorry, no Garou in my games carry hypodermics full of poison without Dancing the Spiral - so I don't get out there much.

I'd say overall it's worth a 6/10 to me, probably an 8/10 if I somehow found another group I enjoyed playing with. We just need a decent FLGS.

Location: Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

LGS: Mixed.  The store I usually shop at is a disorganized mess that's unfriendly to newbies, but as a regular I sometimes get something approaching normal customer service.  The hobby store across town with a single aisle of RPG stuff is arguably a better place for non-hardcore shoppers.  The other dedicated games store is literally a den of thieves.

Availability:  Pretty sweet, really.  I know more cool gamers than I can squeeze into ongoing campaigns.  And I haven't dipped my toes into the university crowd in years, so I know there's a vast untapped source of additional players.

Compatibility: Better than average, I think.  I run a lot of 3.x these days because that makes recruiting so much easier, but within recent memory I've also seen or played in regular campaigns of Savage Worlds, Mekton Zeta, and Mutants & Masterminds.  There's ongoing HackMaster, BESM, Exalted, and Buffy campaigns in town as well.  And I managed to put together a run club over the course of a couple days.

Overall, I give the local scene about an 8/10.

Good stuff.  Hi to everybody after my long absence.

Location: Bozeman, Montana

FLGS: The entire state of Montana has a population of around 900,000; luckily there's pretty active cross-state pollination.  The one local store in Bozeman is occupied by a couple of really cool folks who have a low enough rent to actually be friendly and responsive to a small, but diverse clientele.

Availability: The local U has a LARP group and a gaming club, and there are per capita quite a few D&D and Shadowrun games.  There's also our regular weekly Epic RPG playtest group.

Compatibility: Greg Schneider, who writes for the Purple Site among other things, works out of Helena, which is about 90 minutes away, and he's organized a fabulous game faire recently, and the Helena Gaming scene seems to be going quite strong.  There's a state-wide forum and also Greg's blackshieldgaming.com, plus a couple of cons per year, which create a lot of venues for new and forgotten games.  


I'd call it a 6/10, with 8/10 for folks who don't mind a four-hour roundtrip drive and sleepover for gaming joy.

Kent!  Long time no see (or so it seems)!  How's it going???

Location The Mineral Area (a bunch of small towns that sprouted up years ago due to the mining operations in the area, biggest one being Farmington), Missouri, USA

FLGS:Two and a half shops.  One is a comic shop that caters to gamers pretty well also, has it's own side room for gaming, does special ordering and all that, it's clean and the owner is polite and nice.  The second is one of those shops of legend, piles of trash, over flowing trash cans, bad smell of food decaying in those cans, smelly gamer types who come out of the basement to game here.  It's almost all gaming here but the folks who frequent it aren't the best of the best, nor is the service of the shop as you commonly have to wait for the person running the counter to get off his ass from playing Magic or WWE to buy something.  The half a shop is a mostly video game shop but has a couple of tables and does some CCG and RPG events but it's quite far from their focus, the owners are nice and polite, the place is clean.

Availability:  There are several groups that have little or no contact with each other.  Many are folks who pick books up at a shop and return home.  Judging by the sheer amount of books sold by some of the shops there is a pretty high amount of gamers in the area.  They just don't associate with each other.  Add in the infighting between fanboys of the main two shops and it all becomes worse.  Ever attempt to create a local 'community' of gamers has failed, they won't even participate in such a thing online via forums or listserve.

Compatibility:  Well most of the groups that make themselves known and take in players are those who run Dungeons and Dragons (not D20 games but just D&D) or White Wolf WoD games.  Few of these groups have a good reputation of any type and trying to get them to play anything else is akin to pulling teeth without painkillers.  Others games sell rather well in the area (Sla Industries, Cyberpunk, the odd D20 game here and there) but nobody seems to know who buys them.  

In the end I give the gaming in this area a 3/10.

Location: Oxford, United Kingdom.

FLGS: Gameskeeper is an excellent shop run by the ever-friendly Carol, who's always willing to order in anything they don't have in stock. It's bright, airy, and clean, the complete opposite of the sort of grimy, dirty game shops you usually get. Also, Oxford has easy train/bus access to London for Orc's Nest, Playin' Games, and (if you're willing to go on an expedition) Leisure Games.

Availability: There's thriving gaming scenes centred on the two universities (Oxford itself and Oxford Brookes), as well as unaffiliated groups. Plenty of adverts on Gameskeeper's noticeboard, plenty of stuff going on.

Compatibility: If you are willing to look around, you can find people willing to play almost everything. That said, Oxford University's society isn't very good at providing support for tabletops (although it does run large-scale LARPS - both combat-based and social freeforms) and can occasionally be cliquey.

Final rating: 9/10 by UK standards.

Gaming-wise, things in Denver are pretty fantastic.

Location: Denver, CO

FLGS: Very friendly, and lots of them.  I think there's four of them definately in the area, with a fifth opening up soon... and that's not really counting Black & Read, which sells rpgs but doesn't have gaming space.  (B&R is really a used book/music store with a sideline in games, also.)  Actually, that may be six soon - I'm not really counting Bonnie Brae, I think.

Availability: Very high.  There's two mailing lists for the area that I'm on, one focused on Living Greyhawk (very active) and the other for general gaming.  Lots of D&D 3.5, but you can find gamers for other systems without doing too much work.  Plus, there's three local yearly gaming conventions.

Compatibility: As I said under A - lots of D&D 3.5 players, but I've found people to play Call of Cthulhu - which is popular at the conventions as well, and at cons I've run games in FUDGE and Feng Shui, among others.

Southern Illinois is underserved.

Location: Carbondale, IL

FLGS: Castle Perilous is the only LGS anywhere near Carbondale, which is a shame since Marion (The next town over, to the east) is then left out.   Caslte Perilous is an okay store with large gaming space that anyone can use for free.  The store has a ton of stock, especially old stuff, that's never marked down...ever.  It also sells a lot of anime crap and non-gaming stuff.  I think it makes most of its money off of pop and snacks.  CP has generally very unhelpful staff (minus the proprietor), but the owner who is usually there has strange mood swings.  Sometimes he's very friendly and helpful, and sometimes he's really angry and surly.  His mood is an indicator of nothing that the general public can see.

Availability: Low, low, low!  There's a gaming club at the University, but they're incredibly cliqueish, or were at least a few years ago.  They're incredibly disorganized, and their Con (Egyptian Campaign, coming up at the end of March) is pretty good but has been losing attendees for the last 5 years.  The store has no open RPG games except D&D, and is not very receptive to anyone but mini and card players in the gaming space.  Those make more money than RPGs, so I understand, but since I'd rather play an RPG than anything else, it's frustrating.

Compatibility: There are two of us that I now of who regualrly purchase and play Indie games (by that I mean Forge games) and there is a good populationg of just about anything you can find. The gaming population is generally amenable to trying new stuff, but there's a very vocal minority who DOES NOT want to try anything that doesn't start and end with "D" or begin with "new."

Final Rating: 3/10, most defnintely.  It would rate higher if I played D&D exclusively, and it would also rate higher if there was a different game store.  Most internet active "uber gamers" like me will be somewhat dissatisfied.

Location: Seattle and Greater Puget Sound Area, WA

FLGS: I'm counting 20-some stores in the area which sell at least some RPGs, plus a few used bookstores like Third Place Books and Half Price Books.  This does not include any of the big book chains like Borders, etc. but it does include some stores that sell few RPGs but live more miniatures, CCGs, board games, or comics sales.  There are two particularly good FLGS for RPGs: The Dreaming in the University District, and Gary's Games in the Greenwood District; they make a concerted effort to offer excellent choice, from indie games to d20 and WW, and from classics to the latest publications.  I hear The Game Matrix in Tacoma is very good too.

Availability: We have at least a dozen mailing lists and meetups groups, some of which are remarkably active.  Many organize monthly or quarterly lunches or game days.  The D&D Meetup Group and the local RPGA chapter tend to be more self-sufficient and to network less, but many of the others do a lot of networking and cooperation.  There is a full-fledged private, member-owned gaming club (Metro Seattle Gamers), and the Seattle Gamers Assemble! group organizes weekly demo games.  In addition to conventions dedicated to sci-fi, comics, anime or computer games where there is also a bit of RP gaming, there are two small gaming conventions (Dragonflight and ConQuest NW).  Many game publishers and writers live in the area.

Compatibility: Not sure how to evaluate that.  There's a portion of the community actively dedicated to creating bridges, to networking, and to trying new things (I'm of that variety); and a larger majority (several hundreds) of gamers who want to play a specific game, do a little connecting and searching until they have a group, then disappear from sight until the next time they need to look for players.

Overall Rating: As dynamic or more than what I knew in the SF Bay Area during the 90s, but much smaller.  Better choice in FLGS than anywhere I've seen since Montreal, but the stores themselves are not snazzy-looking, just friendly and with good choice.  I give it a 9/10 'cause it's not perfect but it's damn impressive for its size.

Quote from: Zachary The FirstKent!  Long time no see (or so it seems)!  How's it going???

Hey Zach!  All's well here: writing, gaming, living (sometimes it seems like its in that order).  Great to see you back, too!  

Location:Minneapolis, MN

FLGS: The Minneapolis area is the jackpot of good gaming stores. Within a half-hour drive we have: The Source,Phoenix Games,Unicorn Games,Misty Mountain,Village Games,several Shinders stores(chain store),Phantasy Hobby, Gamers Den, Monsters Den, Dreamers, and a couple others. The Source is the biggest and most well known by far.

Availability: You can find someone to play any game you want most of the time. If you play D&D or WW game you will have no trouble finding people. There is also a rather large amount of indie gamers here as well.

Compatibility: There a quite a lot of MN gamers online @ rpg.net and ENworld, not so much here AFAIK.  So yes, you can find like minded people here pretty easy. There are several gaming organization that run various RPGs for the public as well.

Overall Rating: 9.5