We Are The New Flesh
Quick re-cap: Melsonia's warehouse suddenly got a lot more expensive. While at a very small independent glasses frame shop (shop local!) we got talking to the owner about how on earth something like this survives in London, she explained and told us we should do the same. We did that. Now Melsonia and Iglootree are sharing a FLGS in Lewisham/London. Books upstairs, publishing in the basement, echoes of early Games Workshop.
Andrew (Walter) was quick to push for running games in the shop and is 100% responsible for getting us moving so fast on it. We'd get all sorts of locals coming in with no idea about RPGs other than a general curiosity and willingness to learn. I say "willingness to learn" 'cos they all withstood be talking non-stop for an uncomfortable amount of time, so they're tough. It's a nice surprise that, almost 20 years out from it, I still have the Games Workshop training burned into my lizard brain: "HEY GUYS WHAT GAME DO YOU PLAY!? WANNA JOIN OUR INTRO GAMES?!". It works, especially if you actually mean it. The intro games are cheap, a fiver, just enough to make people second guess any urge to flake out. Yes, paid GMing should charge more, but we're "vertically integrated" so can use this as the thin end of the wedge for people playing more games and buying more books. So far so good. More people learning RPGs means more customers and more people making more customers. And all outside the 5e walled garden! It's all just a healthy thing to do for everyone involved.
I'm reminded of an idea I've wanted to pursue for years now: Open Troika Westmarches Megadungeon. I already have 2 huge levels ready to go. The first one served as a 10ish game campaign in our home group when I first tested it out, so it ain't little. It would be a perfect fit for a FLGS, with rotating players (or not, as the case may be). We'd need to charge proper paid GMing fees per head, since it's an order of magnitude more work than a bunch of one-offs. I'm thinking £20 per head, or free if you're a Friends of Melsonia subscriber (but still having to book a spot 'cos our basement isn't huge). Something like that. I hear a similar campaign nearby charges way more but at a certain point I feel like the amount people pay puts unnecessary pressure on me to be good at it. £20 for 3-4 hours out in London is a bargain by any measure. Plus it's not like I don't have secondary benefits: people come to the shop, people playtest my nonsense, I learn to chill out on running games, and I get to stress test the Troika rules for the semi mythical second edition.
Regarding the megadungeon: When i ran a free wheeling Troika hex crawl last year and wrote it all out on index cards per hex. I like this system, makes it easy to update things as players interact with them, forming this mechanical persistent system. I will try doing this again for the megadungeon, but on a much larger scale. Doing it this way opens the possibility of sharing the GMing with someone else who can also use and add to the cards as they push people through the dungeon. This is both fun to do and also echoes an art project I am absolutely obsessed with: see https://www.jerrysmap.com/
I am intensely enjoying running a quiet FLGS. I am either arranging books on shelves (awesome), talking to fellow enjoys of things (amazing), or writing something for an upcoming book or game at the till (!). It does no good for my email or admin tasks, but they are definitely no worse than before.
If demand stays high, I will push myself to run more games until it is sated. Only good can come of it.