Here in the Twin Cities, the OSR is alive and well--if not a little slow to get to my FLGS,
Source Comics and Games. Here's a few finds over the last few weeks. Saw this one today:
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| Core rules baby! |
This is the first time Swords and Wizardry has made it to the Source (I'm pretty sure anyway, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a while). There have been a few Labyrinth Lord products for sale (like the time I saw a few copies of the
Advanced Edition Companion), and they are always snapped up in a week--and for some reason never reordered again. While some of the crew at the Source are hip to the OSR, most staff seem to be down on the "clones". This isn't surprising considering the store is a 4E selling machine:
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| You should see the dice! |
That's just a sign--not a box! And yes, it's an extremely cool sign, but still. 4E of course has tons of events to support it like the weekly D&D Encounters, the Annual D&D Day, and it looks as though they're starting up a D&D Essentials event (not sure if that's regular or not--but they were asking for DMs to sign up).
A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to see this pop up for sale:
Has anyone played Sorcery and Super Science yet? I'd be interested to know. That's gone too now. Expeditious Retreat seems to show up on shelves more often, but again, the same products never appear twice. I'm beginning to think the store isn't keen on smaller, indy publishers.
In the last five years, the Source has held a handful of indy comic creator events--but never one for game publishers. There's several local game houses in the area--some smaller like
Atlas Games, some larger like
Fantasy Flight. But there's not been an event to celebrate or promote the start-up or even local game scene. Part of the reason for this might be that
FF has opened it's own store a mere 3 miles/8-minute drive away, and the Source still sells a lot of FF inventory. To be honest, I don't know the reason.
Well it is good to see that the OSR is represented, and heartening to know that when products are sold, they disappear quickly. But it would be nice to see a them be treated with a little more staying power to help enhance their impact.
3 comments:
Wow, what a cool store. I never see any indie/retro stuff like this at my local shops...
Yeah, I have to echo Margaret's statement. I hope they're getting sold and not just rotated back to the distributor somehow.
@Margaret, here's hoping your local store starts realizing the value of the homegrown market. I can see the argument against them in that customers might not go for something that appears less polished, but I think if the store shows support, customers will learn to understand why.
@Ze, I can almost guarantee they're not sent back--I've seen some of the same inventory sit there for literally YEARS. They also don't do sales except for 2 or 3 times a year on Black Friday and, Free Comic Book Day, and D&D Day. So these things are selling at full price (or 10% off if you're an Adventure Club card member).
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