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Just wanted to share people's experiences when going to the game store with a sibling or friend that is a non gamer.

Being a gamer for a number of years, taking a non gamer to a game store can be a little bit of a culture shock for both sides;
The gamer type tend to be a sheltered group but really good people once you get to know them.

The two stories I have;
Over the years my non gamer sister would go with me to the game store around holiday time so I could show her what I wanted; she tends to be a chatter box and has no clue how any of the games work but still has to talk to every person in the store. Including pointing me out and telling them the games I play.. tournaments I have a attended, I realize she is excited for me... But the people there usually don't have a clue who I am and not sure how to handle a strange girl talking to them. Its kind of funny watching the whole thing go down.. Normally they are nice and listen for a little while.. but if they try to walk off she will follow still talking away... I have asked her just look around and don't scare the gamers ; but her personality is the type that could talk to a wall
if it had ears.

The other is when I go with my non gamer wife to the game store and the polar opposite happens, she allows me to shop while she waits patiently in the small lounge area at the front of the shop. But there are times when male gamers decide to try and hit on her. Not what you expect like "so do you like games?" friendly chatting type stuff...No....I am talking about painfully socially awkward hitting on.. with opening lines like "Hey Baby" .. She don't mind and usually shuts them down fast by saying she is there with her husband.. Its happened a few times and we both just laugh it off.

And don't get me started on the utter shock she had of the "odors" some players had at a 40k tournament one year. She thought there was something medically wrong with them.

My wife looks around at all the armies and bacj inpatiently at me to leave the store. She is trying to be supportive so I can't complain.

I started off on that side of the coin. When I've unglued my brain from my mouth, I'll try and think what it was like...

Quite honestly I can see this turning into the "im/patient other half" thread, so here's one for you...

I took my retired mother to a game shop that I explicitly trusted to be full of calmer, respectful players when we were waiting for a train that day. Her face lit up as she looked through all the board games and beautiful miniature cabinets. She told me about playing RPGs in university. I realised that our back room at her home has always had copies of D&D and board games, my entire life. I was really worried that she would look upon it all with a sort of, "Well, you liked toys as a kid, now you like *smaller* toys..." but I suppose knowing me longer than I have known me, there's little could really surprise her.
We settled down for a can of drink and a chat with the owner, who of course knows how to chat with someone a little out of her depth in the sense of wall to wall game(rs). She was a school teacher for many decades, so a bit of end-of-day funk and hot air didn't really register.

It is always fun bringimg my wife into the game store, she is a very good sport about it and has fun people watching at game stores. She can be put off a little by the funk at some stores. But she will play along due to me talking about armies and laugh with me about it later.

She actually finds it funny seeing how awkward the gamers get when she comes in with me.

My Girlfriend likes to pick things up, this doesn't go down well.

I brought my wife to the Chicago bunker back in the day. There were a few interesting types present including one fellow who seemed to be doing a very poor gaunt's ghosts cosplay (black vampire cape and a boonie hat). We didn't stay long.

Her comment was revealing. "I don't like associating you with that". Sounds universally condemning of gamers, but after I formed a private gaming group, some of the members and their wives have become some of our best friends. Still hasn't changed her mind about the battle bunker experience though and I don't blame her.

I guess the lesson is that while it depends on the FLGS, on the wrong night they aren't always the best reflection of the community.

While I was at Adepticon, my wife joined me on Saturday and walked around. When she was in the Warhammer Fantasy area, she saw some interesting daemons and asked the guy how he did his flames so well. The guy snapped "Do you mind? We're in the middle of a game!" The other guy apologetically shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes about his opponent. This is a shame as the guys in the 40k area, even the Championships Day 2 were very sharing about their armies and seemed glad to explain their modeling and painting choices.

She later asked a historical gamer about his army that she also thought was well painted. The poor guy couldn't keep eye contact and kept looking down and muttering.

We're not all known for our social skills, I guess.

There was a very well done pirate and ship game set up. When she asked to join the demo for an hour, they were accommodating. When she asked the name of the game and was told "Fist Full of Seamen", she rolled her eyes and passed. Come on, guys. Really?

My pal was a bit embarrassing when he listened to the GS manager telling a customer about a book and chimed in with his opinion of why space marines could never be interesting because they can't have any personality, but I get on well enough with the manager that he didn't say anything about it. Next time I'll do my purchases before I meet up with him!

 kronk wrote:

There was a very well done pirate and ship game set up. When she asked to join the demo for an hour, they were accommodating. When she asked the name of the game and was told "Fist Full of Seamen", she rolled her eyes and passed. Come one, guys. Really?

I was at that game! Had a great time captaining the "Titans Uranus".
I told my wife about it and did a writeup. http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/644106.page It wasn't until later that she realized that "Fistful of Seamen" was the actual game name. She thought I had made it up as joke.

I do take your point though that such a particular flavor of humor might not project the best image to all outsiders, female and otherwise.

Well, you see there is a popular set of rules with various "Fistful of...." titles like...

Fistful of ToWs
Fistful of Lead
Fuistful of Kung Fu

So naturally when you make a pirate version using that ruleset as the base then you call it.....

In our defense, it's not like guys who are Bikers, Sports Nerds, Musicians, etc. are any more/less juvenile than wargamers are.

Friends and family see the more "public" side of us, getting the work done, day to day stuff being a "normal" person.

A hobby has a certain level of "devotion" that not all people can see and anything that has an emotional response can be viewed as a wee tad crazy.
As you get into it, certain short-hand language is used that can be "exclusive" since the average person is not part of that culture.
It all does add up to a bit of a shock.

The ladies of your life tend to be attracted/approve of those who are socially popular.
Not so much if popular with strange people with hygiene issues and like to dress-up outside of Halloween.
Greeting my wife with my jeweler visor giving a good impression of Bubbles from Trailerpark Boys tends to remove the mystique (dampens attraction as well...).

All we can do is stress the positive:
1) We develop artistic skills: many of us are the dads that make the cool stuff for the kids to play with or wear for dress-up (or the gamer kids who make their own!).
2) We have a strategic mindset: apply it outside of gaming: research, develop a plan and execute with ruthlessness... on your taxes.
3) All kinds play, make a point of getting contact information, there are so many walks of life the networking and employing each other is impressive.
4) To get what we want we get rather good at finding deals... apply it to other products.
5) We typically do not go out drinking and pursuing poor lifestyle choices because we need all those brain cells!

I am not sure what slippery path got me into gaming but no regrets, my wife says games are like watching paint dry but they look great initially.
She will come around eventually like everyone else...

My GF comes from a family of movie and boardgame geeks. There was a bit of culture shock introducing her to 40k. At least, the NJ wargaming scene is very inclusive and friendly. She was kind of psyched out when she first went to the larger, not-so-local hobby shop and there were tables full of people playing Star Trek Attack Wing, speaking only in Klingon, and to be honest even I had to act unphased by that.

On the other side of the coin, it can be very very uncomfortable and wearing being a lass on the peripheral of wargaming. A lot of people think that it's difficult because of the "stare and nudge" stereotype upon entering a store. Or that girls might even like the attention, etc. But in reality it's a gradual death by a thousand tiny eye-rolls, sighs, and accidentally patronising remarks. "What army does your boyfriend play?"
Attending a convention for more traditional wargaming, this reaction doesn't tend to happen, instead there's a distinct attitude of "one of these things doesn't belong." for ladies attending. Free admission given in some cases due to "he must have dragged you in". I see kids hailed over to tables for demos. I never see women being asked if they're interested.
Something that's tiring as an outsider at FLGS and cons: Being blocked off or barged in front of at sales tables, even if the interest is casual. If you'd get annoyed by a dude cutting in front of you, imagine how it feels laid over the uncertainty of whether you're even supposed to be there. It's possible to tell who's in a 'minis daze' and who's just assuming they can push past. It's never personal, it's just rude.
I will say that despite it all, the people are what drew me in. I swallowed the anxiety and joined the scene because of how nice the players in my FLGS were.

^Well said, Buttery Commissar. I'm really glad that the stores my girlfriend and I frequent are free of this kind of thing.

My wife is "tolerant" of my hobby. Getting her into a game store would be an exercise in futility, and that's ok. i really don't want to go to JoAnn's Fabrics with her. We do both share a fondness for the Hobby Lobby though....

I take my two girls with me all the time... they're a little young for games yet, but they love to go and look at all the cool stuff. My youngest one (three years old) is really into Star Wars so she'll go look at all the X-Wing stuff and name all of the ships. She's even sat in there with for a couple of games of X-Wing with my buddy.

My wife, not so much... She's been to my FLGS a few times though. She was came when I entered a painting contest in 2012 and she'll go to buy me presents for my birthday or Christmas but that's pretty much it.

My wife has become very tolerant of aspects of the flgs, she will occasionally sit in on a game of me playing Warmachine, though she is on her phone for most the game.

If I call the store and ask the staff to set something aside for me she will go in and pick it up and not even complain about it. However I can not get her to ever go in on a Friday night.

Our local meta of magic players is filled with unhygienic filth bags who either have no respect for women or are deathly afraid of them. She stopped by to watch me play a game and was repulsed by the odor, she actually left shortly after coming in.

I am not sure what it is about some people ignoring hygiene but it can be brutal sometimes, I used to hold back but I make a point of bringing it up publicly and no longer care if I am the donkey-cave who told Mike he should shower and put on deodorant before coming.

 primalexile wrote:

I am not sure what it is about some people ignoring hygiene but it can be brutal sometimes, I used to hold back but I make a point of bringing it up publicly and no longer care if I am the donkey-cave who told Mike he should shower and put on deodorant before coming.

True that! The RPG crowd at a store I used to visit is the same way. One guy apparently had spilled something on the front of his wool coat and then left it in his car for months (years?) because it had white mold all down his front.

 primalexile wrote:

I am not sure what it is about some people ignoring hygiene but it can be brutal sometimes, I used to hold back but I make a point of bringing it up publicly and no longer care if I am the donkey-cave who told Mike he should shower and put on deodorant before coming.

Hmm. I could understand taking that line with someone who's showing up like that over and over, but it's a tad unfair to publicly humiliate someone because of things other people have done in the past, no? I've raised that issue with a few people over the years, privately, and fairly often they're completely oblivious to it until you point it out - I find it hard to condemn somebody when they've not actually harmed anybody and didn't even realise anything was wrong.

As to the topic, I ran into a work colleague in the street outside the local GW once while I was on a smoke break, and he turned out to be a right judgmental wee arse. I ended up having to tell him and his girlfriend to bugger off since they kept pointing at folk, whispering to each other, and very obviously laughing at them - it's all very well to talk about what a burden it is for "normals" to have to stoop to interacting with socially awkward nerds, but frankly I've met far more genuinely decent people in the latter category than the former.

Its rare, but occasionally it happens to me.

I am very outgoing, so usually it goes ok, and I can introduce people well.

Now, regarding my wife....
Heh....she usually heads over to the comic book or minis section - or if she does linger near the wargames, she lets them know she played back in 2nd edition....

Yeah, I am a lucky man.

oh, and side note: next time someone whispers and mocks tell them "its like fantasy football,but for people with imagination and disposable income".

To be fair, the early teen male shall stink no matter if they washed twice a day and all clothes worn once only.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/articles/lifecycle/teenagers/hair_and_sweat.shtml)

I find larger play spaces have been helpful, the classic small space with high heat has never helped anyone smelling all that well.

My local store is a big space so it is a little more accessible for those with sensitive noses.

Clearly you should get all your friends (that she doesn't know) to pretend (or actually act like themselves) to be smelly neckbeards for the day, okay it with the store owner, then kick your loved on in and hold the door shut while cackling, while your friends swarm her to show their MLP Space Marines off and discuss why TwiLysander has the prettiest thunderhooves. Bonus points if she stays with you after the joke has run it's course.

Bigger bonus points if you don't let the owner in on it and he goes along with it anyway.

Lose all points if the cops are called, arrest you, and tase you.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Clearly you should get all your friends (that she doesn't know) to pretend (or actually act like themselves) to be smelly neckbeards for the day, okay it with the store owner, then kick your loved on in and hold the door shut while cackling, while your friends swarm her to show their MLP Space Marines off and discuss why TwiLysander has the prettiest thunderhooves. Bonus points if she stays with you after the joke has run it's course.

Bigger bonus points if you don't let the owner in on it and he goes along with it anyway.

Lose all points if the cops are called, arrest you, and tase you.

#JustWarGamerThings

 Yodhrin wrote:

 primalexile wrote:

I am not sure what it is about some people ignoring hygiene but it can be brutal sometimes, I used to hold back but I make a point of bringing it up publicly and no longer care if I am the donkey-cave who told Mike he should shower and put on deodorant before coming.

Hmm. I could understand taking that line with someone who's showing up like that over and over, but it's a tad unfair to publicly humiliate someone because of things other people have done in the past, no? I've raised that issue with a few people over the years, privately, and fairly often they're completely oblivious to it until you point it out - I find it hard to condemn somebody when they've not actually harmed anybody and didn't even realise anything was wrong.

Yeah. Public shaming isn't usually needed. Having a quiet word with them will suffice. Or tell the store owner to. It's his/her job.

I take my girlfriend sometimes. She has no idea what's going on, but she likes how some of the models look (space marines are ugly ).

Managed to bring her along to watch a game once, she was bored by the very end of it but surprisingly managed to watch the first half of it just fine despite not really being able to follow it too well.

 Squidmanlolz wrote:
^Well said, Buttery Commissar. I'm really glad that the stores my girlfriend and I frequent are free of this kind of thing.

My FLGS has become incredibly friendly and very welcoming lately, due to new management. I always feel happy going there, the store radiates joy. I'd feel safe taking my Mum there too, which is my metre stick for good company these days.

In the past, I went in there (it also sold comics) and whilst I was leaning on the counter, heard the words, "She wants Dark Knight Returns? That's Batman. Sell her anything from Batman, she won't know the difference." They hadn't spotted me listening. I put my order down and didn't return for over 18 months. To gently or affectionately mock someone for naivety is one thing, but actively predating on someone they considered ignorant is foul.
The two guys I heard speaking no longer work there, or they'd still have lost my business. I'm the sort of customer who will travel across country to support you a few times a year if you treat me right, it takes a lot to piss me off to the point where I won't walk 15 minutes from my house to give you money.

Only had one uncomfortable moment when my brother and I went to a LGS with his none gamer girlfriend. The whole drive there she was talking about how they lack hygiene, socially awkward and how frighteningly nerdy they can be. My brother and I were trying to convince her that gamers are no different then most people, and its true! More often than not, and this day was the not. This happened to be MTG day and there was a couple playing a Tournament who were too focused on the game to attend to their baby that smelt as if it had been stewing in its own excrements for half the evening. Then the LARP came from no where wearing a Link costume and talking about how he "transmogrified" into a gnome... She left and went back to the car, and my brother and I were dumbstruck. Of all the fething times we've been there, this time was the worst and completely nullified our defense.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

 Squidmanlolz wrote:
^Well said, Buttery Commissar. I'm really glad that the stores my girlfriend and I frequent are free of this kind of thing.

My FLGS has become incredibly friendly and very welcoming lately, due to new management. I always feel happy going there, the store radiates joy. I'd feel safe taking my Mum there too, which is my metre stick for good company these days.

I would be curious to hear how they make it radiate Joy.

 Easy E wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

 Squidmanlolz wrote:
^Well said, Buttery Commissar. I'm really glad that the stores my girlfriend and I frequent are free of this kind of thing.

My FLGS has become incredibly friendly and very welcoming lately, due to new management. I always feel happy going there, the store radiates joy. I'd feel safe taking my Mum there too, which is my metre stick for good company these days.

I would be curious to hear how they make it radiate Joy.

I don't think it's that hard when you have a lot of friendly people who are passionate about their hobby. Sounds like a joyful environment to me.

 Squidmanlolz wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

 Squidmanlolz wrote:
^Well said, Buttery Commissar. I'm really glad that the stores my girlfriend and I frequent are free of this kind of thing.

My FLGS has become incredibly friendly and very welcoming lately, due to new management. I always feel happy going there, the store radiates joy. I'd feel safe taking my Mum there too, which is my metre stick for good company these days.

I would be curious to hear how they make it radiate Joy.

I don't think it's that hard when you have a lot of friendly people who are passionate about their hobby. Sounds like a joyful environment to me.

I guess I mean, what things do you think hte gamestore specifically did to help build this store culture. I am genuinely interested in that piece of the story.