Brick & Mortar: Stratagemma (Florence, Italy)

Last month I had the pleasure of visiting Italy with my family and some friends. As is my habit, when visiting any new country, I try to find a local gaming store and check out the scene.

For Italy, it was Stratagemma (located in Florence, walking distance from the hotel we were staying at -- and very close to the Duomo, apparently). The visit really drove home several things to me:

1. the web and its tools make finding such places, and managing your expectations, so much easier than in the past. I was able to find the location via Google Search, got directions to it via Google Maps, and was even able to enjoy online virtual tours of the locale.
2. getting new blood into the hobby / hobbies is important for any store (and any hobby). They were having some kind of Pokemon card game introductory tournament when we dropped by, and boy was my son excited! He started chattering animatedly at the boys (roughly his age) who were playing. They politely listened, but perhaps understood as little about what he was saying as my son did about what they were saying. But the enthusiasm was reciprocated until I stepped in to let them continue with their tournament.
3. different locales have different preferences. I had no real understanding about what was popular in Italy, much less in this particular corner of it, but I was surprised by some things nevertheless: a Cyberpunk 2020 RPG (reprint) prominently displayed in the window, and apparently a call for players on the bulletin board; the absence of Pathfinder and the dominance of D&D 5th Edition; some local RPGs in Italian, but also some international RPGs in English on the shelves.

I would've loved to stay to discover more about the sub-culture, but museums, sights, and food were calling us to other parts of Italy.

RPGs: an aggregator of my fandom interests

At some point, gaming became a focal point of all my fandom. There were two main reasons for this:

1. my fellow gamers were part of that fandom -- we didn't share the same exact interests in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Crime, Horror, Humor, Comics, TV, Movies and the strange intersection that snags the interest of fandom, but the constant exposure helped broaden my own fandom beyond what I would have learned of on my own. And their enthusiasm was infectious.
2. games allowed me to express and reference my fandom -- character homages, plotline riffs, setting elements cobbled together from many sources, madcap canon theories discussed and dissected in the middle of games (and sometimes long after them) all helped to refine and catalyze my general fandom is a rich broth of imagination and experimentation.

It is with this in mind that I return to RPGs in the middle of this year, with some goals:

• to continue my son's RPG experiences either through our current Champions series (PowerPuff Girls: the Shadow of Krypton);
• to finish reading a number of RPG books that I've purchased and would definitely see regular play had I but the time and the game group;
• to understand the shape that this hobby (and -- dare I say it -- art form) has assumed in the modern era.

The last goal would seem to entail both a review of the current topics of discussion on blogs and RPG news sites across the field. The second goal would seem to involve a strict schedule of reading (and character building, my preferred way of learning both RPG systems and settings). The first goal would entail some more discussions with my son, now that we've had a number of sessions under our belt.