From Player To Shop Owner with Tony Bogan

0:00 Sometimes talking with friends feels like role playing. Sometimes it feels like comeback, join us at the round table and roll an ish too. This is Curmudgeons and Dragons. Hello adventurers, guys, welcome to Curmudgeons and Dragons. My name is Jason Bortizo. Today I'm enjoined by, of course, mister Jim Crocker. I think you mean Curmudgeons and Dragons. Lie, Curmudgeons and dragon and I'm getting into that. Yes, hello, curtain back. We you peeled it from. Okay, Hello adventures We are Jason and I are ten feet away from each other and it's just I'm a little excited about it.

0:44 And we are actually joined by mister Tony Bogan. That would be me Tony is. We're gonna get through who Tony is and what Tony does. But James right, this is Curmudgeons and Dragons live. We are We are live on site at the Keep in Brick, New Jersey. All the times that I say that I've been running one shots at my my my flgs, this is my flgs. We're set up in the end the back gaming room, taking you over all their tables and just tanking their square footage. Dollars today. It'll be deducted from your face. Yeah that's fine, that's fine. It's a marketing expense, yes, yeah, yeah, they'll call it that. And also fun fact, first time Jim and I have been in the same room together, so this is actually kind of cool. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, I was able to give him other things. I kept saying that I was going to like give him like all the pins and stickers and stuff, and I've been putting it off for too long. So let's Tony, let's let's talk about who you are, what you do, why we're here. So as you were the owner of the place where at right now this is uh, we're over at the keep. You are the man in charge. I am one of the men in charge. One of the store is actually my son's my son Michael, who is working another job today.

1:49 I really did this for him more than anything. We have a few friends that are partners as well in the store, and one of the first people to invest in the store, before there was a store to invest in yet, was one of my friends Dan and another friend Corey, So we have we brought friends in to make this. The idea behind it was we wanted it to be our hangout. This was a place where don't take this wrong way. Profit is a good thing, but as long as the store could self sustain itself, we could literally do it forever. So we wanted to have a place that we could hang out as much as have people come and hang out, especially because my background. You know, I started playing D and D in nineteen seventy six, and there were no stores to go play games in. Sure. Back then, there were no stores to go buy this stuff, and other than hobby stores or mail order was the only way you could even get the books or anything. So to forty fast forward forty plus years later and have a game store where if you don't have gaming space, you're doing something wrong. I think it's fantastic. Yeah. Actually, like building your own space to play in and then just opening it up to others. It sounds a lot like why I opened my recording studio years ago.

2:49 It's like it's it's I believe it's not that different. Well it was. It was something that we talked about when we were playing, you know, and literally in my friend Rich's basement, talked about, boy, wouldn't be cool if we had a place where we could go and play and here we are doesn't exist yet. You're right, But if it's self sustaining, you know you're getting value out of it. If you enjoy being here, absolutely that, you know, no question about it. Doesn't need to make necessarily, you know, make extra income if it's self sustaining, but you know you love being here. The primary point of the extra income is so we can expand yeah, you know, yeah, I want to I want nothing but more. I want more space, I want more games, I want more players. I want more people to come in and hang out.

3:30 And and we've been really fortunate in the sense that my business, you said, who I am and what I do, My actual businesses boats. You know, my family's had fishing boats and river boats and stuff in Brielle and Point Pleasant since nineteen thirty one. So this was something that I had talked about doing, literally since I was a little kid, and I'm fifty four now. And at the same token was something that my son had had been a partner with a friend in another store that had been opened less than a year when the pandemic hit, and the store didn't survive the pandemic. So he had already gotten kind of his feet wet and had a bug for it. So when we decided to do this, it was to me it was something that was totally unrelated to what I do for a living, which is run boats for a living. We have fishing boats, like I said, take people off fishing, and I have a paddle wheel or a riverboat that we do know weddings and birthdays and banquets, things like that. So God forbid anything happened to me there would be something for my family that my wife, my daughter, my son could literally jump right into and still have a source of income. And it's the same token. It's you know, I grew up less than fifteen minutes from work literally my entire life, so when I wanted to open up a store, it had to be one of the requirements was it had to be within a twenty minute radius of my home.

4:39 I wasn't going to work full time fifteen minutes from home and have a side gig that was a forty five minute commute. It just wasn't going to happen. And fortunately for us, we found this space here that not only has our cool vault and everything in it, which was really the that was the selling point, but Also it is literally within two tenths of a mile of exactly halfway between my work and my home. I drive by it every day on my way to work, and I drive by it every way a day on my way home from work, which I couldn't ask for a better location. Not a lot of upsides to the pandemic, but one of them is that if you did want to start a business, there's a lot of commercial space available because of what happened. So yeah, also a lot of new d D players and also a lot of new d D players. Yeah, yeah, you know, one of the biggest sources of new players for decades now has been the military. If I had a dime for every person that I've met over the decades, that says, oh, I started playing when I was in the military. I started playing when I was in the military, and it made sense. Long periods of downtime, you know, accentuated with brief periods of you know, massive amounts of activity and guys that were on ships. I have a nephew that's in the Merchant Marines, and the same thing on there. They're either playing a role playing game, which there are so many to choose from now, but years ago there weren't quite as many, or they're playing a tabletop card game, they're playing a TCG or an RPG. Yeah, because it's a great way to kill those long periods of time. You know, you might work twelve hours on and twelve hours off, but they're not going to sleep for that twelve hours. Yeah.

6:06 And in today's world now, between specifically Stranger Things and the movie coming out, have been two massive increases in popularity for the game. And you can play DND anywhere, right, if you've got you know, you can play PlayStation or something like that, but you need access to screens and electricity and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, you could play D and D with a couple of notebooks and a handful of dice at an fob. If that's what you want to do there, you can do it anywhere. That's one of the beauties of it. Yeah. Yeah, I think I have a few military friends that played well while they were at station. And then now you mentioned it, I haven't really thought about it. One of our first groups we had when we when we opened the store, and we had the private gaming room at that time, which is now the RPG room.

6:47 But we're two of the guys who were military ex military, and I have several friends same thing. They're like, oh, you know, I remember you guys used to play when we were in grammar school and high school and I never never even had any interest in it. I was out on a ship for six months. I was hooked. Yeah, and again, it's a great way to not only to pass the time, but to pass time with friends, not just sitting in front of a screen by yourself. As much of a video game as I am sure. And that was the other thing, because you know, you make those friendships you're if you're in the military, just like if you're working in any job where you have people on your shift that become your acquaintances and hopefully become your friends. Well, when you get to the point where you're on time and off time is not only at the same time, but in the same place. Yeah, it's a great way for people to get together with the same people like. Yeah, so captive audience is the way to start your your next gaming table.

7:33 A lot easier to schedule a group in D and D if you're stuck on a ship for six months in any place else anywhere, Guys, I can't make it. It just jumps off. So yeah, I just actually wouldn't put that past my players. Back in my days as a retailer, when I used to go to trade events and things like that, pretty much just about every store owner had either a university of some kind, university, college, or a military base within ten miles of the store. That was, you know, kind of the main source of customers that they had come into them. A lot of college players. Same thing with the TCGs, you know, with the card games, big college thing for again, for some of the same reasons. You know, if you're in that same dorm and you're in the same place every night and that kind of stuff, it's a great way to pass the time, and it's constantly changing, you know that.

8:22 That was always the beauty for me of D and D to begin with, was the fact that it was never the same game twice. Yeah, never. You could play the same module over and over again and it still wasn't the same game twice, which was also the beauty. And of course part of that's the randomness of the dice. Yeah, you know, the dice rule the world in one way or another, no matter how much emphasis you do or don't put on the dice. As long as you use them in some way, shape or form, they control the game and they add that element of oh, you're kidding me or oh no way, Yeah, you know, dice absolutely tell the story. Man. Yeah, so I want to know what it's like going from the player into the store owner.

9:03 Um, what was it like transition to the other side of the cash register? Uh? An eye opening experience and it sounds like I guess. And the other thing I want to ask is it sounds like you during your time playing D and D, we're mostly a player we ADM. Yeah. Okay, that's interesting because I'm more of a forever DM than than a regular player. So that's another thing that's a interesting goal. Fortunate that you know three of the people that I began playing D and D with. I apologize for back and forth, but since you both ask me questions, I'm going to keep looking at both of you. Three of them. We still play. We don't play frequently, we may still do get together and play. So the fact that my friend Rich was our DM to begin with and it just stayed that way, and it stayed that way for well from nineteen seventy six till now. So forty seven years that it was just a thing. Yeah, and when we played, you know, one of the thing things that I've noticed that's, I know it's a little off topic, but different from playing the game in fifth edition as opposed to some of the earlier editions, especially first edition in O, D and D, which is where I started with with the White Box in seventy six, is we never played just one character because if there are a lot of times there was only three people to play, it was Rich. Sometimes his little brother would come in, who was you know, we were nine or ten, he was seven or eight.

10:22 If you only played one character each and there was only three of you in a D and D, yet you weren't surviving walking out the door, let alone your first encounter. So we always played at least two, if not three characters each, sometimes usually two, so there would be three or four of us playing, so we could have a party of six or seven or five or six whatever it was. So Rich also quite often played a character as well because we simply needed the extra the extra ADVENTURER DMPC. Yeah, yep. So that was not all the time, but when it when it was required, you know, when we reached that point of you know what, there's no way you're going to get through this, and there's only that, Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna throw another concerning all kinds of colors right now. That's fine, that's it. It's a different game. But that translates into from the difference between DM and Lifetime DM and lifetime player is you know, since my lifetime DM was also a lifetime friend I've gotten too, I kind of feel like I was part of the DM two because we helped build the world together. When stuff was over, we'd be like, let me see what you had behind this, and we would check it.

11:22 You know, we could have fun with that. So where that translated into being behind the counter instead of in front of the counter was my perspective change just over the course of time, because originally there was no counter to get most of this stuff. It was mail order when I started playing. It wasn't until Borders Bookstores got the contract with TSR to start selling the books that you could actually go into a bookstore and buy the books. It was a hobby shop or mail order. So I kind of watched that change over the decades too, where it became more than toy stores and game stores. So when we started doing the store that my son and myself, by the way, a couple of our employees or partners too. I neglected to mention that when I said we have partners Mike that works with us, and Rob they've brought into the store too, because it kind of became their thing, you know. So it's it's family, not just first you know, first generation family. It's extended family too. It is. Yeah, But one of the things that I realized was, first and foremost, what I think is cool is not necessarily what the public think is cool. So I had to start looking at stuff that don't just buy what I like does don't just buy the dice to sell that I think look really good variation, don't just buy the book or then you know, one of the things I had mentioned is I love Cobald Press. I love their stuff, and I have a smattering of Cobalt in the store because I can only sell so much of so many things. Sure, and the biggest thing with the books in particular, are there's only so many dms that come into the store. Yeah, so the average player is they they're going to buy a PHB A written at one point

12:56 or download one if they use an electronic version, whatever the case may be. That's, of course far different from what I started with. Two. As much of a computer nerd as I am, there was no such thing as downloading anything. You could. You could have downloaded a text document of a book back in nineteen eighty and eighty one when I had my three hundred BOAD modem, and it took about an hour and a half to download one hundred and forty K disc. One hundred forty K disc. Yeah, you would. You would take the you would take the handset for the phone and into a acoustical couple or nineteen seventy eight, I had an acoustical that was only one hundred and ten board though, so they don't call it bought anymore, and I was bps but bits per second, but it was bought back then. So at any rate, my point was is that you know the books, same thing I'm buying what I would play, Yeah, and I would give it to Rich and be like, we're going to run this, right, so I have to have to adjust what I'm looking for. And of course with the store, one of the things that we wanted to do when we opened the store was we wanted to sell what we know. I can sell a product. I've I've dealt with the public my entire life on the boats, and we sell We have a tackle store where we sell the phishing Town all that kind of stuff. But I wanted to We wanted to be able to not only sell a person a product and tell a person what a product was, but then when they asked, how do I use it?

14:09 What do I do with it? What's going that? We could do that as well. So my son, we'd be buying Pokemon for him for you know, we do Pokemon Magic, the Gathering, Funco pops and RPGs or the four Core products in the store. We do all of those, our Funco collection at home, Dwarfs, what I sell in the store really, Oh yeah, yes, it's a it's a habit. I think I own six Funkos. They're all D and D stuff and I don't care who knows it. I took out the boxes. Oh yeah, well, we see, we have to buy two of everything, so we can have the shelves where everything is split, and then we have the one we keep in the box, one to rock and one to stock. That's right, Yeah, it's absolutely right. Yeah, I found myself a Funko gelatinous cube on a Facebook market for really not the expensive one, one of the one of the con ones that only goes for like thirty bucks, and had a quote unquote damaged box, which I am not into funk enough to recognize this as being a damaged box, right, Pluster boxes are pretty flimsy. I'm surprised that any of these boxes are in better shape than this one. You should see the way they shipped some of them. And she's like, it's like, yeah, the boxes damage, I'd took a bunch of money off.

15:13 I'm like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm super glad that you did. Took it home, Hi, thank you. Immediately I wanted to take it out the box in front of her, just to just to be like be like, yeah, this is uh this, but you don't you don't have to be cruel about it. That's just crinkle the box and be like, well, don't need that shit anymore. So well, that was obviously I'm the D and D guy. Uh. My son's we've been buying Pokemon and he's been collecting since he's twenty six now, since whenever Pokemon came out. I mean we're literally buying him since they first came out. Um, both Nick and Uh and Mike and actually also John that that work for us, all play Magic, Um Nixon too. Pokemon. Rob one of our other both a partner and an employee. Uh. He has the same thing like me, has a real gig, and then he comes here at nights. Rob was huge, and he was our best Pokemon customer single.

16:04 I mean, he has Pokemon tattoos. And then he felt who doesn't have Pokemon? Course of course, it's just me at this table. And then he got into Magic, and he got into Magic and he is no longer our best Pokemon customer anymore, but he is one of our best Magic customers now and he works here, so we give him an employed discount fair So you can literally come into the store and if I'm not here because I'm on the boat or my son's work, because he works with me on the boats as well, we know that no matter whether it's Nick, it's Mike, it's Rob, it's me, it's my son Michael. Yeah, more than one Mike. I also learned another thing too by having employees both at my boats and now at the store. Most of the employees are less than half my age. Apparently my generation of my parents, we weren't really creative in naming because everybody's Mike and John. I have more Mike John's and Chris is that work for me between the two businesses. But at any rate, I know that if they come in, I'm a Jason born in the mid eighties.

16:56 Yeah, I know, right, Yeah, there you go. I went by my last initial until I was twenty. Yeah, that somebody comes in the best example I can give you, and we see quite frequently with Pokemon is h grandma bringing in the grandson or granddaughter and grandma or grandpa know nothing about Pokemon, but they know that's what the kid wants, so they'll come in. And usually the children know, as we know, exactly what makes a kid happy, but they can come in and they know they can come in. Now we have our regulars that come back and forth that know that they can not only bring their grandson or granddaughter in, but then they can go and walk over and check the laundry in the laundry mat, they can turn around and go down and pick up the and leave the child here knowing that they're going to be not only perfectly safe, but perfectly happy because we'll just give them binder after binder of Pokemon cards to go through, knowing that they're only going to buy a few packs. They're not going to buy the expensive singles, but they love looking at them. So that's been one of the great That's that's something a lot of stories don't like, is like the look you lose, like whether whether they're five years old or four.

17:57 Yeah, if they're thirty five, that's but one thing if they pull every card out of the binder, I have your price one hundred different cards and say, okay, never mind. But with the kids just flipping through the binders, it's cool. Yeah. But like I know, I've seen teenagers that like, are new to a game, I want to see what the old cards were like, and like flipping through stuff and like you know, we'll see the board guy behind encounters like I'm just like, here's another one, and we're just like you're gonna buy buy something to get out there, like you know, the old old quickie mart uh mantra. But U. But it's it's it's cool to encourage that a spash you with the young ones. Sure you gotta you gotta doctorate these kids into being nerds early on. And that's one of the things too, is you know, the stigma that used to be attached to some of these types of particular damp dungeons and dragons, but in other games too, those are pretty much blown out of the water in today's world. Um, plus, being a nerd is cool, yeah, and being a nerd wasn't as cool twenty years ago, thirty years ago, forty years ago. So that's made a difference too. But haven't people have embraced um getting into your hobbies? Oh? Absolutely, to a merely unhealthy level. Um, a questionably healthy level. Is that is I think still acceptable? Yeah, that's fine. Well, as long as you don't cross that line from hobby to obsession, right, you know, then you're okay. Which so that was part of the part of the difficult part for us was finding people that had the same passion for the various things that we did, um be a magic or pokemonitor or dungeons and dragons, to be in the store with us and be our partners in the store. But that was also part of the fun part too though, was seeing the look

19:29 on people's faces when they're like, you mean and I can work here too. Yeah. Cool. The challenge is not so much finding people with the obsession, because you can find those, sure, but it's it's the where the ven diagram of obsession and professional enough to trust them with your money and customers, where that overlap comes that. That's the thing that's a little more challenge. We trustworthy part for sure, But part of it from my perspective was was it's one thing that they can know the product, know the game. They might have played the game their whole life. That doesn't mean that they know how to not just sell it but actually educate the people when they ask the questions. Not everybody is a great educator. I don't pretend that I am a great educator, but to be able to say, well, you know what, I haven't done that one, but I've done these other twelve over here, or I haven't played that format because I play CDH or I play Modern, but I don't play Pioneer. If it's magic the gathering, it doesn't matter because they're like, oh, well, what's the what's the commander? Then? Because they didn't know about that, and so well, this is what I do and this is why I do it. Well, my friends play pioneer. So they told me to come and get this and get that. I would do that, but I know Jack over there and Jack's playing. Jack's like, I'm your pioneer guy. Yeah, just like with Pokemon. Iris. Iris is a twelve year old who knows more about Pokemon than anybody else in this store. So when she's here, if the guys that know Pokemon, which I do, not know it like they do because they've been collecting or playing all their lives, somebody has a question, I say, Iris, would you mind? And she instantly no, Here, this is what you want. This is what you want to look at. That's one of the best parts about it. Yeah. That community

21:00 you build as a resource too. Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's a big thing I want to talk about. One of the reasons why you even ask you to sit down is like you know, uh you not even just specific to the store, but even um the hobby as a whole. I want to get into stuff like um building, cultivating, maintaining a community with you know, these these games are hinge on other people playing them with you. There's very few solo games that you're selling them. This store, yes, doesn't really exist in in the TCG world and in the Dungeon Roll RPG world. Sure, So so you not only from a business standpoint, is it isn't important for you to to cultivate a culture, but even just like to keep the hobby healthy. Well, I mean that's the secret, is it's not just business acumen. You could know how to order and sell and market and all that kind of stuff. You know, community management is as important to a gig like this is anything else. I think it's more important because the community will tell us if we're not getting the right stuff. But without that community, you're not going to know. I've seen it somewhat in Pokemon, even more so in Magic because we have so many players Magic players locally that it just Pokemon and Magic are the two biggest sellers in the store.

22:21 Pokemon actually right, and Pokemon is actually our number one seller. Really yeah, with Magic about that far. I mean literally, like wow, any day, if the wind blew in a different direction, Magic would be right on top there. But that's how close to each other they are. Then comes the role playing games, specifically D and D. But you know, we have some other stuff too. We have some one Ring and Route Pathfinder, a couple other things that we have a little dabbling of in the store, and then the funks and then the other stuff that dex applies things like that. But one of the things we're talking about community and building a community is people that come in the store might come to buy stuff, but the fact that they can come and hang here for five minutes or five hours at zero expense to them. Hopefully that won't be zero expense all the time.

23:07 You know, it's like a casino. It's every minute you're on the floor, you generate x amount of dollars, and everything is geared towards keeping you on the casino floor. We ran about out of Harris for six years in Atlantic City, for seven years actually in Atlantic City, so that's when I learned that there's restaurants, there's shows, there's theaters, there's all kinds of stuff, and most of them are either break even or money losing propositions as a business on their own. Their sole purpose is to keep you on the floor. So you can't get from one point to another, from one event to another without walking through the casino floor. Well, and there's a reason for that is, like I said, time on the floor is eventually translates into money. So for us, obviously we want the players to be here and hang out and have fun, and hopefully while they're here, Hey, I'm gonna buy a drink. Hey, I'm gonna I need new sleeves.

23:55 Hey, I need to get deckbox because I just got into whatever I got into. Hey I saw the new book for D and D came out, the new campaign came out, whatever. So that's that's where the profit side of it or the business side of it comes from. But the really cool part about it is that, as we started to talk about before and I mentioned Iris, we can lean on our community because they're not just there are friends now, I mean there's there's people that that we didn't know. Rob perfect example. Rob started as a customer, yeah, then became a part time employee in his spare time, and now as a part owner in the store. Uh. You know, we've built a family outside of our direct family with that, and the same thing with the with the other employees, but also the players. You know, we have Max was as an example, friends with a couple of guys that are our employees. But if we're shorthanded, or somebody has to run home for something, or somebody's running late because they got a flat tire on the parkway, which has happened more than once. And I know Max was going to be high. Maxim mind staying behind the counter because it'd be like you asking you, or you know what I mean. It's it's not just asking random Joe. It's these These are people that have become our friends beyond just the store. Like I couldn't care less if if Max bought anything when he came in the store, because I know I could ask him to go behind the counter while I ran to the bathroom or whatever. And that's where building the community is really really important.

25:14 Plus growing the community is you're going to stagnate if you don't grow your community. I mean, the store is only going to sell so much product. There's only going to be so many one time people coming back and forth. Your regulars are The regulars aren't where your profit is. The regulars are where you get you through the hard times, the dead times, the quiet nights, the winter when kids are in school, there's not as much activity because the kids are in school five days a week. So you need both. You need to have the word spread that you exist. So the average one time here, I come in once a month, I come in once in a while, comes through the store. But at the same token, the regulars also are going to help spread that work because say, hey, my friend my cousins in from Kansas this week and we talk about magic all the time, but you know he's never seen it. Well, then the friend from Kansas was here for five days because they were here every night, like, oh, he's hooked. And I know when they go back to wherever they live, they're going to find their local game store and be doing the same thing there that we were doing here. And to know that you can literally have people from any part of the world and they see that as soon as they see Pokemon, Magic, dungeons or whatever, they gravity towards the store and as soon as they see the games, they're just like, oh, yeah, you know, we're only here for a week. But night, what night's modern? And they're here? When do you have a one shot going on? You have a one shot going on Wednesday night?

26:29 Honey? What were we doing Wednesday night? You know that's up right, exactly right, And all that casual downtime sets the tone for those events you have that are directly revenue generating, like your pre releases and things like that. If people are maybe real casual and would be like, oh, I could never do pre release stats a little too intense for me. But if they're really enjoying their time here, and you know, they trust that you're going to be cool about it and they're going to have a good time and they're not going to be overwhelmed, that you know, will encourage people to do some of those things that do actually bring that money in directly. I'll give you the best example of community that the most recent example that we've had a couple months ago, a local store twenty minutes from here closed down after being open for however many decades they've been open, and we've got almost all of their Magic players came from there to here, because again it was within twenty minutes of us, and the week that the store closed was the week of the set Firexia that has was coming out for Magic the Gathering, and we did there. They did the pre release here instead of at the store that they had been going to, so our overnight, our number of players for doing pre release doubled almost overnight. And I came in here that Friday night. I was working on the boat, so by the time I got off work, it was like six o'clock and that was when the pre release events started. So by the time I got here it was almost six thirty

28:00 and I walk in and every table was full. There were twenty four people back here. There were twelve people or whatever it was up front, and as I looked at every table, there was at least one, if not two, of our regular players for that that had been playing for the past year since we opened, mixed in with the guys from the store that had closed. You only get one shot to get that right. And now again, that was really cool because knowing you had a group of twenty plus people regular that were regular weekly twice sometimes, you know, twice a week that had all been playing together for years at one place. Another group of people here at our store that had some had come from other stores, some were just you know, new to the games, whatever it be, whether it was Magic or it was you know, playing Dungeons and Dragons. They all instantly meshed. And I know with various types of hobbies with nerd groups, sometimes they don't mesh real Well, Oh, that's those are the guys, you guys are those guys? Were these now not not clicky, and like I said, it was literally you couldn't have if I couldn't have seeded them better if I had tried to say, Okay, one from Platinum, one from US, one from Planet, and that's exactly how and it just did that organically. It's great and it was so cool to see. I don't know if I've ever told any of the guys that, so if they ever see this, they'll be like, oh, he's talking about us. But it was so cool. The matchmaking RNG tells us story. Yeah right, it was so cool to see. And then, of course, as a couple of weeks went by and I started to watch what happened on Tuesday nights with Commander and what started to happen on Wednesday nights with Modern. One of the guy any this all comes from the owner's perspective. To answer back to

29:33 your original question. One of the guys that plays Modern every Wednesday night, his name is Joe, And about two sundays before the game, the game store up in Howell closed. Joe and his wife came into this store and it was a Sunday. I didn't know anything about Platinum or that they were closing down or anything at the time, and they spent like a half hour forty minutes here asking about magic at looking at all the d D stuff, looking at Pokemon, and he kept going back to our wall of deck supplies that I showed you before, and so I said, yeah, I said, you know, if there's something you're looking for. Fridays are usually our distributor days where we do a pickup from one of our main distributors. So by Friday said, because you know, our stock is actually the dex supplies are a little low, so we've got a big restock coming on Friday.

30:19 And he looked at me, he said, that's low because the store he was used to go into, that wasn't one of their focuses. It wasn't because they didn't like they just not what they focused on. Well, that's one of the things we do focus on. So I come to find out later that Joe was the scout for the guys from Platinum because they knew the store was closing down and they were looking for another place close by. So he came in to check out the store because they knew we existed, and maybe a couple of them had been in here. I see Joe every week every wednes a few exceptions obviously, but he'd hear every Wednesday, and it was so nice to have somebody that I had no attachment to him, he had no attachment to me. And we instantly were like, oh, yeah, I know where I'm good. You do modern on Wednesdays. I know where I'm going to be on Wednesdays. And as a player, and as they uh uh, really, whatever you game, your game is it's important to find this story that is like that feels like home. Um. And I've had a few over the years, and like you know, and the only reason I really went from one to the others because they kept closing.

31:11 But right, um, but no one one closed because the the the plaza that they were in had this massive construction project that a lot of stores didn't survive through. Um. It just destroyed their parking and destroyed their visibility. And just like you're at the Mercy your landlord always yeah. And I remember, like you know, being one of the last holdouts and being there and then last time, the last night and helping them lock up for the last night. That was what that was what ended my career as a retailer was um our lease was up and I was looking down the barrel of do I want to do this another ten years? Because if I want a lease, that's what I got to commit to. Okay, Yeah, And I said no, I don't think so. And that was that. That was what I think we're done here. Yeah, wound my wound my stores down, nice soft landings. That was I was glad we did that. We mentioned taken some of your like your regulars and Billy, hey, uh, you know something went down. You might just jump behind the register for a minute.

32:06 We trust you. I think there's three separate game stores through where I've been that guy right where like they they'll they'll hire me for a day, like hey, hey, ill three X dollars cash, and just like yeah, I could name me a half a dozen people right now that I would do that within a heartbeat, you know, because Peter and Josh brothers same thing. If one of them is in the store, my son and might do it all the time. Hey, Mikey's alone because John had to go home his mom and need head a doctors or point whatever, and it'd be like Pete and Josh are in the store. But okay, never mind, sure, yeah, we're fine, don't worry about it because you know where he and I are, trum my son and I are trying to figure out how to get from wherever we're We are doing whatever we're doing to get to the store. And because it's Commander Knight and it's busier, it's draft night on Friday, and it's busy, whatever the case may be. And as soon as either I told him or he told me, depending which one of us had stopped by here, I'd been like, well, no, Josh and Peter there, it's like, oh good. So if Maxney, you know, if Nick needs help, he can just say hey, Pete, can you help me out for a second? People yeah, sure, Like they won't think twice about it. Uh, And that's that's a nice thing.

33:05 But another thing back and in that position, like sometimes you're like, oh, I get to help, right, It's not I gotta help. I get to and like I get to hook behind counter. Man, I'm going behind the counter. It's like it's it's like you know, sitting at the sitting at the adults table. So it's kind of I got that kind of feeling. And also, like the phrasees before is like having a place kind of feel like home and like, um, yeah, on on this side of things, Uh, it feels like the venue is providing so much for us and just having the opportunity to just get back even just that little bit. Oh yeah. Um. So many times I've had some of the guys that have been say, hey man, thanks a lot from like, no, you helped me out, Like that's the other way around, helping pick your helping pay my ranks. So yeah, um, but but it is that important and uh and this is why, like I don't think once in this whole podcast episode did we say the phrase customer base or anything like that. It's it's culture and community and friend group. Yeah, and there's there's there's not a lot of other um businesses there business types or types of stores that I really can do that. I was about to say the music stores, but they were usually worse, especially when they put the sign up no stairway to Heaven. I stand by that though. No smoke on the water either. Come on, let everybody learned pay out on the Guitar Center for twenty minutes at one pm on a Saturday in the summer when the kids are off at school, and you tell me you ever want to hear stairway.

34:27 Ever again, I hear you. But for example, when talking about as far as the difference between customer base and community and friend group, etc. Is one of the people that stopped by here on that pre released day after that Platinum I Clothes was one of the two former owners of Platinum Dean came in here, Hey, thanks for taking care of my guys. Not thanks for taking care of my customers, thanks for my guy. Yeah, and that was exactly the way he felt. It was really not. I'd never met him before. Really nice guy, and I just don't I have been to that store. I've done a couple of Pokemon Go tournaments there when when PvP was a thing just before pandemic fact I think got February twenty twenty, we had like our last in person torn to me and they we hadn't started those up again until like two months ago. Yeah, but yeah, I definitely wasn't side there and it was a cool spot. Yeah. I never got to go in the store because my wife works in an alpin so I had to drive past it on Route nine on a fairly regular basis.

35:22 I would go up there quite often. It was right off one ninety five Doctor that was her asthma doctor since she was thirteen years old. She's now been the practice manager for for ten years, so she got a little bit back from that doctor, at least after a while. She Harmon refused go that she's been working for for over a decade now, because every time I drove by it was like if I had to bring her up something the morning, or you know, if she was going for an appointment herself, whatever, and they were always close at that time of day. So while I knew where the store was, I was not familiar with the store beyond that. But it's been so cool, and interestingly enough, one of the regulars that's there another Mike, So now, oh, Mike's in the store. Which one. There's a lot of them about. But it's been really cool to see how the people from various groups move. And of course, like with our fishing boats, everybody has their favorite captain, everybody has their favorite boat. Everybody has their favorite Italian restaurant. The one you think is the best Italian food in the world. The next person I don't like that because they got you burnt toast one time or something. Everybody has their thing, and I've been used to it in my whole life with the fishing boats, where who's running the boat today for me? And my cousin Francis is on the boat today, Okay, thanks and they driveway And I know because he doesn't like the fish with Francis because he went out one time twelve years ago and didn't have a good day. So that of course it's the captain's fault.

36:32 Well, it's no different with any any type of retailer. You go one time, one bad experience can wipe out a lifetime of good experiences from the customer's perspective. Absolutely, that's just the way it is. The beauty with what I've found in the fifteen ish months that we've been opened now with this store is one bad experience doesn't necessarily taint your entire experience at the store because everybody is so far past that. Oh I'm just a customer that just like when you get in an argument with your friend and a week later you'll be like, dude, really, are we gonna Are we gonna hold a grudge against each other? And that can happen obviously depends on what the circumstances. Well, yeah, but in general, there's a lot more of Hey, sorry about that, dude, don't worry about it. I get it, you know, and you just don't usually hear that in a retail store environment. But this is a game store, not just a retail store, and there's a difference. And anybody that tells you there isn't a difference doesn't know what they're talking about, because there's absolutely difference, no question about it.

37:29 Unless you were you know, don't have gaming space, then you're just a retail store. But as soon as you put these tables in that we're sitting at, and you have a regular group of people that this has become a venue that they frequent first whatever reason, maybe Pokemon, Magic, Dungeons and Dragons, that changes the dynamic. Absolutely automatically changes it in a good way. By the way, of course, yeah, imaged the tables that we're at right now. I want to talk at the shop itself. So we are in like you're like, the store is almost divided into like two separate sections. Here. You got a little corridor with at least your RPG book room, right, Um, I should kind of four sections. We'll get to that. We'll get to the fun fourth one a little bit, but we're kind of in your back here. Um, and you gotta one, two, three, four tables over here that can see from what I can see, about twenty four people or so. Yeah, it's usually it's it's a max six per table. Yeah. Um. And this is where I run the one shots that I do here. You have tournaments here, Pokemon tournaments here. Um. You have other dms that are running one shots any ongoing games right now. Um. No, that's the kind of things we're hoping to do too, because I would love to see where the people are coming back, whether it's once a month, twice a month, whatever, and say hey, where are you at now? Yeah, hey, how far have you made it? You know, get some campaigns running yet?

38:42 That's exactly cool. Yeah. So so now that Jim knows is not too too bad of a drive, maybe it was not bad like like a one shot every now and then I could come down to that shore you. Um, I'm I'm considering something. I don't want to like announce something that I can't promise on the show. But we'll figure something out because I do. I do enjoy running games here and the crowd, the regulars that I've been signing up for a game after game at the game again. I got some of them that, like I've run what five or six? Now, uh, maybe maybe you release that, Yeah if we include well, because I was doing two a month for a bit there, so it's probably closer to ten. Yeah, probably about that. Um. And if I'm running two in a day, it's actually the same scenario so but not necessarily the same people. So well, if it's the same people, then we then we run a different scenario. But yeah, so I'm probably about ten or twelve. And then plus the the absolute beginner's UM workshop that I put together.

39:32 Um, so you know I've run a good amount here, and like some people have been coming back for more than half of them. Sure, um uh, you know, will shout out Shannon, We'll shout out Austin who's been coming back. Matt and his family, all three of them have been have been fantastic UM and they literally started like from the ground. Oh I was different, mats I was Matt's first game, right, So having the whole family come back over and over and over again and watching them like coming back with like more gear and more dice, knowing more of the rules, and like knowing their their character, their their class features, more and more and like really getting into the role play definitely, Um, without knowing the trope or the joke or why it was so wonderful for me, we had an actual literal bobblin the goblin moment where they kidnapped, slashed, adopted a goblin that I threw at them and made it their best friend. And without knowing why that was so like that it's like just a thing in the game, right, Um, just like accidentally like threw that one to me.

40:30 That was one of my favorite moments of the last game. But there the players have been fantastic. Um. But so so that's where we run this. Back here in the front of the store. You've got most of your retail. Uh, you walk in, your your phone goes on the right, you got your your accounter on the left. There your accessories a little bit hast to that. You have more gaming tables up front. Yeah, the total seating we could do like forty two people could be playing simultaneously between the front and the back of the store. So one of the things we decided when we when Mike and I say we, it was primarily my son and I that that started everything at least and we had friends come in and et cetera that have helped us build this into what it is. Is we didn't want any product from the whole way back. As you said, it's the vault in the RPG room that make that kind of separate the front from the back. The idea was, this is just to hang out.

41:16 This is just to play, not that people don't play up front. If there's not a need for all the extra space back here. Everybody hangs out up front because you're up front, why I walk all the way to the back. But the idea this was we wanted to have a space that was just for people to hang. Yeah, nothing to do with you know, they're not going to be staring at product on the wall, right, Yes, so that's why there's no product back here. Well, and there won't be product back here. I might eventually move the stocks and drinks. That's just the backstock. That's why I might. Even if you watch YouTube, you'll see in the back of Jim's camera over there. So that was one of the things. But one of the other goals that we had for the store, as I had mentioned earlier, was we wanted it to be our hangout, not just like it's great other people come and hang at the store.

42:01 I want to come and hang at the store. That's why I did this. So we wanted to make it like our whole, like our home is um As I had mentioned to Jim, you know all of the book ends that are on the books shelves, Yeah, they all came from my house. Yeah. Some of the posters and stuff that came from my house. Of course I had to replace them now so I didn't have another one is my wife. My wife was thinking that there were going to be less gargoyles in that room. Now think that. But it all started with the the which you can't see on camera right now, but the patent for Boba Fett was the first thing I bought for the store because it's the fat you know, say no more. And then once I got that and I was looking at I was like, well, she's like, where are you gonna put us? I know exactly where it's going to go, be some front and center right in between the tables there. And what we're doing that we might as well do a whole Star Wars wall. Or if we're gonna do a wall of Star Wars, well let's do something for Magic. Well, we're gonna do that. Let's do something and the next thing, you know, the entire store was we had way more fun decorating the store than we did anything else. Um. That's why I put Team At up behind him right now, because the alternative was to see the it's time for Dungeons and Duties sign that's on the bathroom wall. I think I think the way the camera's position was, say, Team At is eating the back of Jim's head, So that's kind of cool about right. Yeah, that behind me is Zatics patterns behind me. That is how that story would end. The Magic frame up behind me, okay, Um, but it is the hangout.

43:24 But at the same token it we needed to keep it a retail space. Obviously needed as much square footage as possible to put the product in. So it's it's been a balancing act between the two. The beauty of it is that the clientele will immediately let you know what's not going to sell, so then we can move that over to the clearance table and make room for something else. Yeah, and we've changed a few things since we started. You know, we had comics in the Store's going to say, like, I don't know, if you want to even want to like draw attention to it. But you said, sure, you mentioned your your four core products when I met you, if there were five, there were five core products, right, And this was a comic bookstore as well, and uh, and it never was more than a fifth of the store though. Uh. And once we realized what was going to be involved at out and laying laing of money for weekly comics for new stock between both the DC Comic distributor and the Marvel distributor, you were talking over twelve hundred dollars a month minimum order just to carry weekly comics. And they're crazy labor intensive to getting them in and shelving him. And there's that big time pressure to make sure everything gets out on time. There. Unless you're really passionate about it, they're a huge paint in the ask to sell. Yeah, and there's other stories that are common about it, but sure it is well. Yeah, I have a few friends that are former comic bookstore owner. It's not so much gaming, but like like strictly comics and and like you know, the their favorite thing in the world was when they had enough stuff to to start the comic book store, and their second favorite day was when they closed up shopping. Yeah, pretty much. That's That's what like. Having been a comic bookstore owner is why I don't read comics anymore. Yeah, and you know there are other stories around that that specialize in common. You know, if my entire

44:58 store was nothing but comics, that would be a different story. Yeah, how about Mooster Red Bank? Are you guys here is Kevin? Yeah, it's okay, Yeah, yeah, twenty five, we're gonna drop as many new Jersey centric references as are possible by cancer. But I mean, like, like, if you can go chop at Kevin Smith's comic bookstore, it's a powerful incentives. He's got a blast radius around that store. I'm sure that makes it tough to do anything else. You know, Like I mentioned, Dean from Platinum came here on the day that we had that pre release to say, hey, thanks for taking care of my guys. There's a to give a shout out. There's a store literally around the corner from us, It's three tenths of a mile from where we're sitting right now, called the Comic Stop, the Gentleman Kevin. That that started. He opened right around the first of April. Within a week or so in either direction, and there's a little overlap between his store and our store, but really the only overlap is Funkos. Yeah, he is comics. Funkos and action figures are the three primary. But he's got a little bit of Pokemon, you know. He's got two booster boxes is something that he happened to pick up in a cabinet. But he doesn't do the magic events, he doesn't do the dungeons and drection, you know. So there's very little overlap, and fun Coos doesn't really an overlap. Every place sells fun cos. You can find fun Co pops all over the place. I was at Target yesterday, all over the place. Everybody that comes in as soon as they ask about comics is yet right around the corner you want slabs and sign stuff. Yeah, he's got really cool that's so. Yeah, I mean right around the corner. And that's been a great part of doing this too. The fishing boat business, it's very competitive because you're you're competing for a finite resource that

46:32 is only available within a certain distance in a certain areas. So there's only so many wrecks that a boat can anchor on to catch sea bass in a given season and again, yeah, and seasonal. That's the other thing I was going to say. You can only do it a certain number of months out of the year. So there's a lot of competitiveness beyond just the you know, well I got there first. You know, you're you're fighting for customers. Who's got the bigger boat, the fast boat, the better captain, whatever, blah blah blah. With the game stores, at least in our neck of the woods, generally speaking, it has been the exact opposite, or you want, I couldn't if I had a dime. For all of the people that were sent to us from a couple of places just south of us for Pokemon, I can't even count them. Oh yeah, we were down at X y Z place. And I'm saying that because I can't remember the name of the ones to my son is the one that deals with it. They're right in Toms River, and I just can't think of the damn name. I'm like, I imagine to us, thank you, Yeah, I know those guys. Imagine if someone can be blanked on the name, comes in and ask you for ugo or something like that, there's a place you can send in the same thing with comics and yeah, of course, you know if it's something we sell. We carried a little bit of ugo, but it was only singles, um and that, and we would immediately be like, hey, if you want current stuff, you know, we're not the place for that. Yeah. That that store. I've been there a handful of times. They just they don't specialize in the things that I play. They're big Warhammer place, right. Um. Oh yeah, GW that's the other thing. That was the thing we did at my store.

47:51 Yeah, it was GW was the Lion's share of our revenue more than Magic sow than Magic. It's and it's it's kind of I find it's almost regional like and I can go block to lock red where like if you're if your player base is they're either Magic player or Warhammer people, and one of those two things is paying your rent. Yeah, um and uh and if it's Pokemon here, that's uh. I love seeing a three faction wars. Yeah. Well, you know it's enough with games Workshop to I don't know how interested your viewers are going to be in the nitty gritties of you know, retail game store. But games Workshop is another one I have I set up an account with Games Workshop, and I have not a single product of Games Workshop in my store at the moment because their their minimums are so huge.

48:36 You know, first of all, I'm not a Warhammer guy where That's not what I do here. Yeah, people want to come in and play Warhammer would be perfectly fine. My point is it's not a product that we currently carry. I'll never say never, of course, but it's not a product we currently carry. But if I'm not part of their stock is program. Yeah, they want you to commit if you're going to carry it, and which which feels pretty reasonable to me because then then it means if you walk into a shop that has it, you know that they're in it. You know. The hard part. I one of the things we're going to expand to here into the into here in the store is minis miniatures and paints. Yes, and I wanted one of the things I wanted to carry with Citadel Paints. I've been using them on and off my entire life. Um, there are lots of other brands out there. I mean, we're gonna have um with kids stuff, We're gonna have Army Painter, I'm gonna have the Turbo Dorc paints from Reaper, but I wanted to have Citadel paints.

49:31 Well, if I don't do the stockst program, which is a great program by the way, for Games Workshop, they applied you with the with the rack, they give you the stuff to supply it. You have a little freedom of choice to pick what you may or may not want to accentuate in the in the actual rack itself. But if I don't do that and I just want to carry paints, my minimum order doubles I have just I have to start with at least four thousand dollars worth of paints. That's my cost. Well, I don't need to fill the store with pain I just need enough paints for many And that's one end Games Workshop is just it's not in our price range right A week, a month, a year from now, I hope. So I want everything to be in our price range. I want to be able to do as much stuff as possible. If we think it's cool, we want to sell it. So I will talk of the future as well. But just just to wrap up, while I started with with with how stores laid out, so we know, okay, so the back gaming room cool, that's fun. The front retail room we kind of expect that. Let's talk about your vault. Yeah, the Vault of Wondrous Treasures. I was telling Jim before when I was getting in the tour of the store, I had to sign the Vault of Wondrous Treasures made. It's one of those nice big Etsy made wooden stores wooden signs. Rather, I had to sign before I had to sign lease, okay, because we knew this was what we wanted to do. When when I started looking at spaces, which was back in September of twenty twenty one, one of the requirements, as I had mentioned earlier, is it needed to be close to home.

50:58 Because since this is a side gig for me, my primary business is running boats for a living. I wasn't going to commute a half hour forty minutes to a side gig when my real job is fifteen minutes from home and has been my whole life. So I was looking locally anything within twenty minutes of a twenty minute radius of my house. And when the real estate agent called called me up about another spot that he was looking at that fit within my size, location, et cetera, that I had the parameters I had set for him, he said The only downside to this space is it has this safe in it that you can't move. So I'm sitting there and this is on the phone. I'm like safe. You mean like a like a floor safe that it was in the concrete. No. No, no, like I said, you know, like with the door that you walk in.

51:39 You mean a fault. The coolest thing you'll ever see is it? You mean a vault? I'm like, yeah, okay. So I called my son up and he was at work and I was at home, and we met here in the middle and we're looking at it, you know, through the window because we don't have a key or anything to get in yet. And we see the vault with the door open, and I were like, oh, yeah, we ranged a day for the met have the realtor come here and you know, gets the key and from the lock box and brings you in. And we're looking at each other. Oh yeah, we're doing this. Yeah. So I'm on the phone with them and uh, I probably shouldn't say this, but I'll say it anyway, um, just because he can cut it out if it turns out to say something we're not supposed to say. No, I don't mean that it's not that kind. It's just not for me. It was the vault became a negotiating point.

52:22 Well, you know it's one hundred and ten square feet of space that I can't move it, I can't use it, I can't do anything. Oh we'll deduct it me. We're like, yeah, right, so take your vault away. So that and that was that was really so we really kind of built the store around it. Um, you know, we made the vault a show piece of the store. Yeah, and I was like the first day that came in, like I was just like just looking around that. Yeah, and like not only like uh so, it was what do you have in there? You've got it. You've got a lot of like it was a lot of like older and collectible stuff like the first edition prints any Pops funcos that are forty dollars and up going the vault because as you mentioned, box condition makes it difference. So if it's worth that much, we really need to protect the box because some of them are eighty one hundred dollars where we have signed ones. Um, there's graded Pokemon and Yugo cards still some in there too that are valuable cards. Some of them slab some of them still raw. I saw some st after comics in there. Yep, not anymore. We finally got rid of the last of them. Had I had signed comics stan Lee and all that kind of stuff that we've eventually moved those all out for a while. You had your your Alternate Art DND books there. There's there's still a bunch of first editions. There's still a whole bunch of first edition first printing stuff in there. I have first edition and second edition stuff in the RPG room, um that anybody can just walk up and take off the shelf and buy, because there are fifth prints, twelfth prints, that kind of stuff. But the first edition first printing staff valable. Well. The fact the fact that you have the Vault of the Drought displayed in the right I thought it was appropriate. Perfect. Yeah, well that was you know, like that was where I had the name of

53:52 the store before anything, because I was I was trying to think of what it was, and of course I immediately flashed back to my childhood of you know, the Dark Tower and all that kind of stuff. I thought, you know, the keep would be cool. I want I want it like I want a stronghold. But stronghold just didn't fIF so keep. I mean, that's what the keep is. You know, there's the castle and then the keep is the stronghold you retreat to if the castle walls are breached. Yes, so I made up the whole, this whole logo and everything with it's actually a combination of Edinburgh Castle and Edinburgh and another one in Scotland that I took pieces of all different real castles and keeps and made the logo. I had a pewter dragon that my mom had bought for me like thirty years ago. That was like a little pendant that I scanned in and colored and made the dragon behind it and that kind of stuff. Picked out the fonts that I wanted for everything for the logo, and that was the thought process was I'm going to start with this and it's going to be the Keep.

54:45 It's a D and D type theme thing. And also the goal was so eventually when we moved to a larger space, I always wanted to have the Keep and the fortress. The fortress would be the big one. The Keep will stay the way it is. But so that was whe think came from Keep. I love the thirty minutes on the business plan thirty hours on the logo. Yeah, that was the Yeah, obviously, that's that's the right part. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I want to start bringing us home here. Um, what is what's in the future for the Keep? In the future, um, probably one of the soonest things we're going to have. I was just showing him the logo while sure that was that was what the original logo I had made up. We'll have links to not only the Keep and everything like that, their Facebook page, all their socials and h linked to the actual store. We'll put all of the show notes.

55:37 Um, and uh, if you send us that send us that image, we'll have a link to the image. You can go check that out too. The in the immediate future will be probably what will come first before anything will be uh the new Disney Disney Lord Kana was there. Disney's coming out with a TCG with their own card game. Okay, I heard. So we're here literally going to be able to have you know, your favorite character fight against your favorite Disney princess or vice versa. That's on the horizon. It's an August release. I believe we just recently signed up with There's only two distributors in the United States, that carry one Piece, which if you're not familiar with it, it started i want to say, over twenty years ago as a thousands of issues as a mana and then a anime, and I mean now that's what like over a thousand episodes of the anime itself, and it's now a card game as well. But there's only two distributors that carry it because it's Bandai Namco that that actually produces it, which I've been playing their video games since like pac Man stuff back in the eighties, So we just recently signed up with them, just got an account. With this, we're gonna be able to run tournaments in the whole nine yards for one piece. That'll be coming up in another few months. On the D and D front, the next major step is going to be paints and minis cool.

56:57 I don't know if we're weeks or months away from that yet, because with so many other things going on and we can only devote so many resources to I can't as much as I might want paints and minis. I know, I've got two more sets of Magic and two new TCGs that are coming out over the next four months. I've got to devote you know, our primary resources to getting as Reapers great though. Man Reaper is super easy to deal with directly. They'll send your racks, they'll do the whole nine yards. They're they're just a great company. And I like the Turbo Dark paints. I do like them. It's just like we're just we've got all the accounts set up and everything. We're just not pulling the trigger yet, because every time I go to pull the trigger on it's like, you know what just came out? Oh you know what's so Yeah. Literally, if I had the funds, we would have everything. You know. It's not a question of oh, we don't like that. No, there's so much cool stuff out there, and you know, new card games just like new RPGs and everything else. That's how that's how it grows. You know. Not everybody's gonna like the same thing. You have to have some level of variety.

57:59 Sometimes the market it's saturated with stuff and there might be too many of Oh there's so many different card games out now, so just pick the one you like and stick with it. And you don't have to That's one of the beauties of Dungeons and Dragons. You know, I love Fifth Edition, but I still play first edition, true, because it's not only what I started with, it's what I like the most. But I like it the most for the reasons that I like it. Other people I know have gotten into it and have gone backwards. They started with five and worked their way back and eventually settled on three point I can't believe how popular three point five still is. Oh yeah, um oh yeah. Not because there was anything wrong with it. I'm just shocked that in an edition that hasn't been around, you know, hasn't been any new product produced for it and so long, it's hugely popular things that that's one of the nice things about that.

58:40 So yeah, those are the three major things we see on the horizon right now. One piece Disney, Lorcana and Paints and Minis look forward to him in I wanna keep coming. I'm gonna keep runing one shots here. I got one coming up. This episode's actually to come out pretty quick. So it was ten PM, but you've got you've got one shots here. Looks like it looks like every week with a couple of different dms. Yeah, I've got four scheduled right now for the month this month. There's one next Sunday, the fourteenth, then we've got the fourteenth right, then two on the twentieth, one during the daytime, and then years in the evening, and then one on the twenty eighth, which is our new DM. Brian. He's new to us, not new to DM UM. Brian's got a little old school in him too too, so he and I hit it off right away. We started talking, and Will is working on a Wednesday evening too, so we can do a weekday night one for people who can't come on the weekends. We've tried to do at least one Wednesday or Thursday every month, so somebody that just doesn't have the ability. Hey, I work weekends, yeah, like and I do. And I've learned a few Monday ones here. UM yea, I what your last last one got canceled?

59:43 It's I got a little gun shy schedule the next one, but I'll try it again. UM so links to UM not only the keeps uh you know, a website and UM socials and all that, but linked to their calendar of events and events calendar that's the important thing. D D one shots and magic events if you're if you play other games as well, uh and including avans that I'm going to run. I want to come and come and play a game with me. All that's gonna be in the show notes to go. Make sure you check all that out. Uh. Tony bilgan Um, owner operator of the Keep in Brick, New Jersey, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Thanks for having me on. He's not going anywhere just yet. We're gonna have him stick around for for next week's episode as well. We're gonna get his favorite gaming story. So that's gonna wrap it up for today. Jim, thanks for hanging out with me in person.

1:00:28 Yeah, it was so cool. Cool. We did bring people together, right, I mean that was It's cliche, but it's not. I mean it actually worked. Community of three. Yeah, I think we'll get We'll get Josie in uh live via internet and for the next episode as well. But uh, Jim, Tony, thanks so much, Thank you, Thank you Adventures. Thank you for listening to com Mudgeons and Jackins. Please share this with your favorite adventures, leave a review on Apple and follow us on social media. Oh thanks to me sound at Comudgeons on dragons dot com. Practice safe for venturing. My friendsh