ROLPUNK: Reconnecting with Geek Roots

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in a Starbucks a few doors down from where Wargames West used to be. It was a cool game store, Wargames West, with a huge selection of roleplaying games, board games, and the biggest selection of non-Games Workshop miniatures I’ve ever seen. I’m talking about a big store with an entire wall dedicated to miniatures. I worked there, briefly, 21 years ago, the first time I lived in Albuquerque. I pulled orders for their mail order business (see, kids, in the days before teh intarwebs there were these things called catalogs, and people would call the company to place an order). Even after I stopped working there, I still shopped and gamed there. Great place. Wayne and Shirley Godfrey, the owners, were wonderful people.

I can’t be in this area without getting nostalgic about games and campaigns past, and players I’ve since fallen out of touch with. It wasn’t a perfect time, to be sure, no golden age, but it reminds me of what game stores used to be like. Among the slick, well-produced products with great art were amateurish, self-published works sold in ziplock bags (you kids today call them small-press PDFs). I loved the low-budget, DIY stuff as much as I loved some of the professional stuff. Sometimes, I love it more. It had heart. It was made with love.

The Godfreys retired years ago, and sold the store to new owners, who changed the name and moved the location. It just wasn’t the same. There was something about being in Nob Hill, a nexus between the university and the military base, in the midst of an arts community, that brought in a wild, wonderful mix of customers. The storefront that used to house Wargames West is now an Asian-fusion restaurant. The Starbucks I’m sitting in used to be an Arby’s, until they built a brand new Arby’s right next door (I kid you not). There are other game stores in town now, and they’re very nice, but they just don’t have the same vibe. Sigh.

For a variety of reasons, I haven’t been feeling like a geek lately. It’s a topic for a whole other post, but in short, my priorities have changed, my values have changed, and the way I need (and want) to spend my time and money has changed. Moments like this allow me to recapture some of the feeling and meditate on why I love roleplaying as a hobby. Even though the way I enjoy it has changed, I still enjoy it, and if my passion isn’t as forceful and overt, it’s deeper and more mature.