Did you find D&D in a craft store?

[Phenster Dragorgn]

I grew up in the 70s and 80s in a small town without a game store. One day I happened to see matching blue and magenta boxes in a shop window. The boxes were titled “DUNGEONS & DRAGONS” and the shop was a craft store.

For a long time I thought a game in a craft store was just a weird fluke. But from time to time I’ve heard similar stories.

I think it was in the 3e era I read an article (probably on the WotC website, can’t find it now) about D&D in craft stores. As I recall, it had something to do with publishing industry codes and how book buyers order stock. Plus, craft stores carried materials and tools wargamers used to make terrain models (and still do). I think the article said that D&D used a BISAC number that essentially classed it under crafts, so craft stores stocked it.

Did you find D&D in a craft store?
Anyone know why it was that D&D was stocked in craft stores?

[Desparil]

I don't have any proof one way or the other, but could it have to do with TSR's acquisition of Greenfield Needlewomen in the early '80s? Perhaps with the needlepoint products giving them a foot in the door at craft stores, they were able to convince some of them to stock a few of their non-crafts products as well.

[Parzival]

The bookstore stocked the game. But the bicycle shop stocked the dice…

[spellslingsellsword]

I got the Mentzer set in a Toys-R-Us store.

[tkdco2]

IIRC I found my AD&D books either in a department store or Toys-R-Us and my BECMI stuff in a bookstore. I also got Marsh/Cook Expert in a bookstore; my dad bought my Moldvay Basic.

[Mushgnome]

I was also a Toys-R-Us kid, Mentzer red box.

[muddy]

When I first started buying stuff (mid 70's) it was in a local hobby shop that mostly sold war games, model cars, battleships, and those rockets we used to make in the fifth grade. By the late 70's/early 80's the local bookstores were carrying some of it.

Maybe if the town didn't have a game/hobby shop the local craft store was the logical alternative?

[Punkrabbitt]

I got my Holmes box in a cradt and plastic model store, "Mini City" in Chula Vista, CA in 1979.

[Deleted]

Black's Hardware had a counter in the back with d&d modules, supplements, and miniatures 1979 - 1983.

[scottenkainen]

Many of my early gaming purchases, starting with the Fiend Folio, came from K-B Toys, but I saw the Monster Manual for sale at KMart even before I started playing.

[simrion]

Got Basic and Expert at a Ben Franklins in my hometown. They were a craft/mini-department store. Found a copy of OD&D Collectors (white box) at local used book store back in early '80s.

[Deleted]

Found it in the school library, sort of. I was invited to a game that was being ran there by a faculty member. I told a longer version of this story a few times but that's the long and short of it. I also photocopied my own rules in the same library, and I wish I still had those old binders. I kept a lot of the setting material for my homebrew world of Cumberland in other folders and notebooks but the actual rules are gone. It was the Mentzer stuff. First two or three booklets only. All I ever used back then. 

[geoffrey]

I bought my old D&D stuff in three main places:

1. Honey Bear (a toy store in the mall)
2. Zeezo's Magic Castle (a magic shop in the same mall)
3. High Flight Hobbies (a hobby shop on the other side of town)

[tkdco2]

I bought my first miniatures in a toy store in Australia. I was on vacation. I bought them before getting the rules.

[angantyr]

Most of my early D&D/AD&D acquisitions were from "CB Coin & Stamp" in Duluth, MN. IIRC I got a Holmes Basic set and probably all three of the AD&D hardcovers. Kay-Bee also had stuff - I distinctly recall seeing a stack of the early print Deities and Demigods that I probably could have funded an early retirement had I bought them all and kept them in mint condition...

B Dalton (or Waldens) at the local mall sold some D&D stuff. I recall seeing some of the early monochrome AD&D modules there (G-series stuff sticks out in my mind the most). Some smaller bookstores also had interesting items - I picked up my copy of Swords & Spells at one near the UMD campus and recall seeing Chainmail rules as well. But the really neat one was a used bookstore downtown that had new in shrinkwrap copies of both OD&D (late "collector's edition" print) and Tractics. Bought one of each and still have them to this day... but, again, if I could have known then what I know now, I coulda funded my retirement quite handily...

[flightcommander]

In Orange Country CA we had a store on PCH called, if I remember correctly, "Chess & Games". They mainly sold pool tables and high-end chess sets for deposit in designer homes. In the back of the store however they had (a) a selection of TRS (Tandy/Radio Shack) home computers and related entertainment software (eg, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Apshai) and also (b) a shelf or three of games from TSR and GDW. I think this was where I purchased my Classic Traveller LBB boxed set, but it's certainly where I first saw it, along with Chainmail, ODD, and EPT. Weird times! I think they also sold vacuum cleaners.

[simrion]

Jan 17, 2022 19:46:40 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

Found it in the school library, sort of.  

We had copies in our local library but they never lasted long. Players would abscond with said library copies...

[ThrorII]

My parents bought us Holmes for Christmas. No idea where they got that from. When we graduated to AD&D (as Holmes told us to), we had a hobby shop in town that handled all of our D&D needs.

[Deleted]

Jan 18, 2022 16:42:21 GMT -6 simrion said:

Jan 17, 2022 19:46:40 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

Found it in the school library, sort of.  

We had copies in our local library but they never lasted long. Players would abscond with said library copies...

They should've simply politely pirated it like I did. 

[rsdean]

While my OD&D set was a gift from my parents, it came from Rider’s Hobby Shop in Ann Arbor, which was a general purpose plastic models, model railroads, etc. store with a war games section carrying AH games and miniatures. There might have been the odd craft thing in their (some of our other regular hobby shops had them), but it wasn’t a craft store like a Michaels or a Hobby Lobby would be today. A few years later, when I eventually went to live in Ann Arbor for college, the competing game-selling establishment was the upstair department of an outfit called Campus Bike and Toy, and although I never got any bike parts there, that was their main line of business…

[tedopon]

We had a game store in our town, so after we had bought up all the clearance items at Kay-Bee, we just went there. I have heard reports from Tim Kask, Tramp and a guy named Kevin who was my dad's friend that there was a craft store in the neighboring town that sold D&D long before I was into it.
I hung out with Tramp on weekends when I first got in college, because he drove cabs with my roommate.

[flightcommander]

I remember seeing the OD&D Collector's Edition at a stationery store in a mall. I also remember seeing the (Moldvay?) Basic Set and a few associated items at our local Ace Hardware. D&D was like the Pet Rock, it was everywhere people wanted to buy it at one point.

[Maximus]

I think I got my Moldvay basic set at a hobby shop called the Squadron in suburban Chicago. There was also a craft/hobby shop in one of the local malls that carried D&D stuff. It was called Gragers, then changed to Triarco.

[bobjester0e]

Ben Franklin!?
I thought they only existed in Central Nebraska in the 70's! The only one I knew of then was in a small town 40 miles away. It did NOT have D&D games, but they had a lot of cheap, no-brand name toy section - and Kenner Star Wars figures. I am old enough to remember keeping Sears & Roebuck and JC Penney catalogs for years so I could compare the toy sections from year to year. They had D&D rules & modules IIRC, but I never ordered from those catalogs - and my parents wouldn't either because of restrictive CC practices at the time. (Banks made it easier to get CC in the early to mid 80's, but Debit cards were very new at the time...)

I got my Holmes Basic as a Christmas present from a cousin who lived in California. I have no idea where she got it. I was 12-13 at the time, so she would have been 9-10, her older brothers played & taught her. They are several years older than me, so they'd be in their 60's by now.

I found later versions (BX sets, AD&D Monster Manual, PHB & DMG) in either book or toy stores in the nearest town that had such things - 100 miles away. IDR what stores they were. Probably K B Toys & Waldenbooks or B Dalton Booksellers.

[Thorulfr]

It was in Costa Mesa, CA, at the South Coast Plaza mall. Early 1978, I think. Upstairs in the swankier section was a Brentano's Bookstore that carried a small selection of wargames (Avalon Hill, SPI.) I was a wargamer at the time (Avalon Hill's 'Wooden Ships and Iron Men' was one of my favorites) and had saved up the money to get SPI's War of the Ring. When I got to the bookstore, on the shelf next to it was this colorful box titled "Dungeons & Dragons - Basic Set" (Holmes edition.) I hadn't seen it before - had no idea what it was, but the Sutherland art on the front was eye-catching and the blurb on the back was interesting enough that I decided to take a chance and get it.

[flightcommander]

Wow, I used to browse that exact Brentano's in the 80's but I can't imagine them having Holmes D&D there, that's wild — as I remember it, it was lots of arty coffee-table tomes. The place to go was Gamesmanship across the street in South Coast Plaza Village in the "Mercantile Building", which was a very small shop and absolutely packed to the gills with RPGs, hex-and-chit bookshelf wargames, miniatures, and also stuff like darts and traditional board games.

[asaki]

I don't think I ever saw D&D in a store until 3E came out, otherwise we probably would've begged our parents for it. We were pretty big fans of the cartoon (when they actually happened to air it).

[eris]

Koby's Game and Card Shop in downtown Pensacola Florida.

I had been frequenting Koby's for a couple of years buying Avalon Hill and SSI games. I'd drop by about once a month and browse their inventory in the back corner...generally payday Friday. In 1974, I found a white box with next to impossible to understand rules, but an absolutely wonderful concept and bought it, lock stock and barrel! I think it was $12.00 which busted my games budget, but you know, had to have it!

By the next Saturday night I had three friends around a table playing Dungeons & Dragons. Well, sort of. I didn't *really* gronk all the rules, so we played it fast and loose with lots of "roll and shout" going on. Everyone had fun and we vowed to meet again the next week to do it again...and that's how it began for me.

An interesting thing for me is that I never bought another version of D&D until 3.0 came out. I never had Basic D&D or AD&D (either edition). Neither did any of the friends I played with...off and on. We just always "winged it" and it always worked for us.

Truth is, we mostly moved to other systems Traveller mostly. Over the decades all of us drifted away each other and from the hobby. I played a few times, found FidoNet and played online there where it the games were almost almost completely narrative (if there was a system behind any of those games, any dice rolling, I never really knew it).

The d20 system that came with 3.0 (really the SRD) brought me back to D&D. I rejected most of the fluff and add-ons and stuck to the barebones of d20. To me, barebones d20 makes sense and works for games I like to play and run, and that's what I use.

[tkdco2]

I remember seeing a few AD&D rulebooks at a Toys R Us store in the 1980s. I already had the books, so I didn't buy them. IIRC, I got my Greyhawk boxed set at Crown Books and Forgotten Realms 2nd Edition boxed set at Waldenbooks. Those incidents were many years ago and two different times, so I can't be sure.

[thorswulf]

When I first discovered D&D, I was living in Coos Bay, Oregon. There was a local shop that carried a few items, and there was a toy store that carried the TSR books and some minis. Ben Franklin had some odds and ends of D&D, as did Bi-Mart. Most of these places were either gone or stopped carrying D&D stuff by the mid 80's, and it could be found in bookstores or if you went out of town, or mail ordered.