Kudos to Mondo Comico. The Nottingham gaming and comic shop made the news today with a feature in This Is Nottingham. Rather than endure the standard press poking fun at roleplaying and the Simpson’s fed ‘Comic Guy’ stereotype Mondo Comico walked away from the encounter smelling of roses.
The hero of our story is David Smith who was made redundant from Travelling Man when the shop closed two years ago.
Here’s David describing the basics of roleplaying to the reporter, Riah Matthews, who leads into this paragraph with a quick mention of Dungeons and Dragons;
“It’s when you have someone as the Games Master and they’ll say something like: ‘You’re walking down a corridor, there’s a right turn and a left turn,’ and then the players will choose, that’s at a very basic level. You generate the play. You can use a board with miniatures so you can see where you are, but you can just do it with a pen and paper.
“You can go into a fantasy world, science fiction, base it on TV programmes or movies – you could even play in the Star Wars universe if you wanted to.”
The press piece mentions David’s need to count on shoppers from the Travelling Man days. Opening a gaming shop is going to be challenge as so many publishers sell directly from their sites these days.
Many gamers want to support their local stores but it’s also tempting to support the grass roots community and get those discounts by buying the books directly.
Looking around the web it looks like Mondo Comico is brand new but doing what I would suggest was a good plan; building that community. They have a website; it’s simple but a WordPress blog is a great idea if it’s updated often enough. There’s a Twitter account and that strikes me as a great way to remind gamers to come back and visit the shop.
Geek Native wishes David the best of luck.
