Editor's Note: Please be sure to check out part 1 of our story ...otherwise this won't make a lick of sense.

When friends gather together and get to talking about starting a business, it’s probably best to run away as fast as you can and never look back- you don’t want to find yourself blinded by the inevitable mushroom cloud that such a discussion will eventually precipitate. But this part of our story isn’t the Armageddon denouement. Pardon the clumsy foreshadowing and let’s check in on Dollar Bill, the Barrister, and myself sometime in the summer of 2004, when we were still working out the details of the ultimate game store pipe-dream sans the down-in-flames finale.

PUERTO RICO. GOA. ATTACK. RUNEBOUND. ACQUIRE. WALLENSTEIN. HEROSCAPE. WAR OF THE RING. These are the games that I remember us three playing together most vividly during that formative period, the games that we bonded over as friends while we laid the conceptual groundwork for what would become our store. We’d meet over at the Barrister’s suburban dream house every Saturday and game all night in his basement, his on-random 500 CD changer never wandering far from a Frankie Goes to Hollywood or Talk Talk track. We’d play for a while, and then talk about the store- casually at first, then gradually more seriously later on when The Barrister starting considering the idea as a viable investment.

Dollar Bill and I were, at this point, very much the brains of our triumvirate and our knowledge and experience was definitely the guiding principle- along with our passion for the gaming hobby and our desire to really do something great with it in a retail setting. The Barrister- in no small part inspired by his newfound discovery of a thriving board gaming culture he had been completely unaware of in his post-collegiate wilderness years of marriage, children, and career- started investigating the franchise opportunities offered by a major hobby retail chain.

But the Barrister didn’t want to sell R/C cars, Lionel trains, and kites. He wanted to sell Rio Grande Games by the case, D20s by the dozen, and Games Workshop miniatures by the pound. And of course that all fit right in with what Dollar Bill and I had already been talking about for years. The Barrister had a youthful enthusiasm at this stage that was really infectious, and one night on the way home I remarked to Dollar Bill that I thought The Barrister really had the right heart to do this game store thing; I knew that Dollar Bill and I would have been happy if whatever we did would be financially solvent and turned at least enough profit to make it worthwhile. The Barrister’s motives, as we would later discover, were not so noble.

Dollar Bill and I exit the frame. The Barrister remains and the camera witnesses what we could not. You know the cartoon grammar for it- the old “dollar signs in the eyes” routine. The wringing hands of the usurer. Cue the ding-scrape sound of a cash register drawer if you need it to get the picture across. Now don’t get me wrong- I’m fully aware that you can love games all you possibly can and have all the passion in the world for running a retail hobby gaming store but that won’t pay the rent, put inventory on the shelves, or open the doors. Money is a much more efficient agent to do those things, and naturally it is one of the most difficult components of the whole equation. With our store, just like any other, it really becomes a story about money and what money does- how it changes people, how it makes things possible, how it can appear and disappear with an alarming (and sometimes devastating) frivolity. So at this point, we’ll introduce money as our fourth Dramatis Personae.

In reflection, it was really kind of attractive to Dollar Bill and I to have a third party involved that was more focused on profit and making money since it grounded our loftier aspirations in something concrete. Dollar Bill was already a millionaire from his success in another industry and I had no expectations at all of making a thin dime out of hobby retail and together we shared a mutual interest in just doing something for the community- and sure, making a few dollars from living the gamer nerd’s ultimate dream would be fine. After a couple of years running a business, I can say that idea, sadly, just doesn’t pan out. If at the end of the day you aren’t making enough money to support yourself or your business then you’re really wasting your time. I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, but that’s the god-honest truth of it. What really makes a difference is the degree to which you believe that you’re going to get rich from an industry that an overwhelming majority of the population doesn’t even know exists, and one that an even smaller percentage actually gives a damn about. The Barrister was looking for a meal ticket based on my hobby knowledge and instinct and Dollar Bill’s raw business savvy.

But at that early stage, I really thought The Barrister was just a guy in love with games that really wanted to do something special and grow a profitable business- I had no idea at this point that his entrepreneurial drive was founded more on his assumption that Dollar Bill’s already proven-to-be-lucrative coattails would provide him an easy trip to a higher income bracket. Were we naïve? Probably. Were we just ignorant of the fact that a middle-aged man weary of his profession was looking for a way out? Definitely. Did we really think The Barrister, one of those Guys Who Seems to Have His Shit Together, with his very serious game store business plan folders and his hobby gaming industry research would be a trustworthy business partner? Beyond a shadow of a doubt.