March 2020 - D20 Games Alameda

Post Apocalyptic D20 Update-Week 2 Mystery Loot Bags (and more)

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Sale & Deals, Updates

Hey folks,

Trying to keep things (me) from drifting off into the timeless aether. I can’t tell you how much I miss seeing people in person.

First off…as a fellow owner of a game store, I need to say something about Gamestop’s decision to stay open with the argument that we were “essential” businesses. NO!…No, no, no, no, stop complaining you utter irresponsible whiners, NO! Ok, look, I understand the panic of wondering if your business can survive this kind of thing. I get those feelings too. But if someone came up to me today and said that my folks were sick and the only way to keep them alive was to close the store for a month or two, I wouldn’t even think about it. So if we need to get bored out of our skin in order to keep this from spreading to even one unnecessary grandma or grandpa, then we’re doing it, even if it puts the business at risk.

Having said that, we are gonna try and do some things to both help folks from getting too stir crazy and to see if we can find some rent money under the cushions. We are doing “knock up” business…basically knock on the door if the light are on or call before you come and we can come out to the curb. Since we can’t have people do browsing, what we can do is bring stuff to the door. So that means Specific games if we have them in stock or the next batch of our mystery loot bags. The bags are $60-tax included, and have between $80-120 retail worth of games.

Just to be very clear about the nature of these bags. They are currently the vast majority of our business, and even that like a 10th of our normal business. We really appreciate the concern for our survival and will need the help, IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT. For those customers who are struggling too, reach out to us. The other purpose of the loot bags are to give us a chance to keep from going stir crazy without the mental bad side effects that can creep in with too much screen/phone time. If you are in $$ trouble too, reach out to me. I’m going to put together some bags for our customers who are hurting too, and for those, pay what you can, and if that is nothing, talk to me. Normally we’d all be helping each other out, but in this instance, I’m the one with unopened, uncontaminated stuff. The one cavet in that if you can’t afford $$, just pay it back in kindness. And this isn’t true for most of my customers but I gotta say this anyway, I’ll only have a limited number of the kindness bags, so make sure they are there for folks who need ’em. We need to count on each other right now, so small does of do the right thing go a long way.

I’m also working on variations to the loot bags. These will include:

Magic Loot bags for sealed fun.-
- Silver Chaos Loot Bags: $50 (12 random packs—good for 2 person 6 pack sealed, or 3 people 4 pack mini sealed.) Plus mystery bonus $50-80 value
- Gold Chaos Loot bag: $100 (A pair of random prerelease kits and a mystery bundle. Plus a mystery extra magic goody.) $120-160 in value.
- Platinum Chaos Loot bag: $200 ( A booster box, fat pack, two prerelease kits, and an extra surprise worth at least $50)$230-270 in value.
- Diamond Chaos Loot bag: $500 ( A booster box, one of the Analogy sets, Archenemy, 4 prerelease kits, 4 brawl decks and a Conspiracy booster box, and whatever else I decide to toss in.) $550-800 value

And for D&D folks, we got all the basic books back in stock, have the new book in now. and are putting together a set of painting loot bags. These will be $60 and include mini figs to practice on and dedicated D&D paint sets.

Give us a call before you come over to see if we (I’m) around. I’ll be in during the day on Saturday and Sunday with the exception of when I go take the pooch to the dog park. Other then that, I’ll be in the store a lot doing various long ignored jobs. It feels super weird to not be having regular store hours…I worked very hard to take those hours as a promise from me to you guys, but we live in strange times at the moments.

BTW…here is a story that I wrote about that first shelter in place week.

View at Medium.com

Games-Special “stuck at home” Drive Up Mystery Loot Game Bags

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Sale & Deals, Updates

Mystery Loot Bags. These are bags that we are selling for a suggested donation of $60 that have at least 3 or more games with a retail value between $80-$120. (sometimes with bonus demo games thrown in. These are $60 including tax, so if you have cash, give us a call about 5 minutes before and then when you are down the street and we will bring it out to you.

Ok…two problems with a common solution.

The next month is gonna be a tough one for us as a store as business drops to the floor.
Its a stir crazy time for people who are home from school or work.

We know that new board games are a great solution, and we will be here to give good recommendations, and will work hard this week to see if we can try and become able to take orders online and but for now, we are doing officially unofficial curbside/at the door delivery as a way to keep things safe and still do what we can for you and to stay alive. .

If you can, we really appreciate the support over the next little bit. It means a lot to us, and this way we can be here when this is all done.

What’s a Responsible Game Store to Do?

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / D&D, Magic, Main Page, Updates

I’ve been struggling with the right thing to do at the shop to be good ducks right now and it is very tough. We don’t wanna be over the top, but we also really want to make sure we keep people safe and do our part to help as we can. And we can also see how we can shift the business so we are still around when the cough’s clear.

Last week we replaced our usual tablecloths with the not as pretty ones we had that we used for parties, since we can clean/disinfect them. And before we did the magic draft where we passed the cards around we had everyone use disinfectant hand wipes. Seemed a bit overly cautious at the time, but not so much at this point. We are trying to figure out the best ways to make events at the store as safe as we can, including lots of disinfectant and even limiting the number of people at the events to insure more space.

We also know that we actually have something to offer to help so that people who are stuck at home as an alternative to video games or getting utterly sucked into phones. We are going to look into trying figure out how to get people games in ways that don’t necessarily require coming into the store. And we are looking at creating game events for (limited) amonts of kids during the days when they are off school. We don’t want these to be lots of people coming in and out, instead we need it to be less people who are staying with a small group for the day.

So here is what we are doing as of now:

Friday Night Magic will be 4 pack sealed instead of a draft:
For the next few weeks everyone will get a “prize” Pack with the normal 3 and then the prizes will be promo packs for the top 4 players. Since we now have the Mystery Packs ($5) in, and were gonna do the drafts for $20 anyway, this should still be plenty of fun, sort of a Chaos Sealed. –Limiting to 26 players to insure there is enough space to have between people.
We are gonna be suspending the Pokemon League for the next 3 weeks at least. Don’t think there is any way to insure the little ones keep their fingers out of eyes, and mouths between playing/trading.
Enforcing the 6 person max for D&D so there can be space between folks at the tables.
Well–don’t be sick. 😉 We are all doing our best through this, but one of the biggest things is if yer coughing etc, don’t take the chance. The truth is that a pretty good percentage of the folks who come to the store are young enough that they will likely be fine though this, but that don’t mean that they might not inadvertently pass it on to another kid. No big deal unless they end up inadvertently passing it on to their grandma. So to protect all our grandmas…don’t take the chance…