What are they doing in there ?

There is a Tom Wait song called "What is he building in there ?" who's lyrics involve someone wondering what the hell a neighbour does every night when all he can hear is nails banging, the occasional soft moan and the fact that he is seen some nights on the rooftop signalling to someone with a flashlight.

Well, I have a similar question of something that is omnipresent in shopping malls now...

War Game shops, or Role Playing shops as they sometimes refer to themselves...

What are they doing in there ?

You will have seen them, of that I am sure, you may not recognise that you have seen them for your first human instinct will have been to glance quickly into their open fronted interior, immediately register "geek", and walk on.

But think hard and you will recall those small shopping mall outlets, usually towards the periphery of the mall where units are cheaper to rent, a minimum of spend has been made on the interior where the walls are simply lined with shelves so that the maximum spend can be made on the hand painted sign above the frontage - it usually resembles something that a year 11 art student would have done given unlimited quantities of primary poster colours and involves non-human characters dismembering each other with ray guns or huge scimitars - those shop signs are a science fiction geeks nirvana.

But don't hurry away, stand across the aisle of the mall at a safe distance and observe what is going on inside the shop.

Nothing is going on inside the shop, that's what is going on inside the shop, nothing.

And yet the shop is full of people.

When I say people I mean the male of the species for rarely is a female to be seen anywhere near an outlet that does not retail clothes, and these Role Playing shops do not retail clothes, or at least if they do they won't be the sort of clothes that you'd want to wear for that golf club function you've been invited to next month, you know, the one where you simply must have a new outfit but you just can't think what it is you're looking for yet.

You do occasionally see a woman loitering outside the shop signalling frantically to some bespectacled spot-ridden-face youth as its time for their bus, the youth will be doing his damnest to ignore his mother while the other shop inhabitants will be smirking behind their hands at him, relieved that its not yet their turn for their mum to come for them.

And yet don't let me mislead you that these outlets are full of spot-faced youths who's mums leave them there while they shop, this is not even predominantly the case, these outlets are more often filled with obese middle-aged men who all bear a remarkable resemblance to a grown-up version of the Milky Bar kid, a Milky Bar kid who believed too much in his products nutritional benefits, and its these men too who check the shop frontage for the signal from their mother to pick up their big leather shopping holdall and accompany her to the bus.

The War Game or Role Playing outlet is usually crowded with spot-faced youths and wobbling 40 year old Milky Bar kids, but none of them seem to buy anything and none of them seem to browse the shelves, instead they all simply gather around a large table in the centre of the store and stare at the little soldier models laid out there.

Occasionally one will reach out and move one of the little soldier models to another position on the table and then there will be a general glancing around, a rubbing of chins, a nodding approval of heads, and then the room settles down to stare at the board for a bit longer.

Its one of my New Years resolutions to discover exactly what these shops are all about for I see no visible evidence of any retail activity at all which of course begs the question "How do they pay the store rent" and "What are they doing in there ?"

In my research, and in a Pete Townsend stylee I will claim that this was all done in the interests of research when the police call, I have uncovered several of these "Role Playing" or "War Gaming" webs sites where a person could buy whole armies of small plastic soldiers, humanoid or otherwise, and my best guess is that the spot-faced youths and elderly Milky Bar kids do this and then take their little soldiers down to the shopping mall to fight with them every Saturday.

I say best guess because that s what it is , its my best guess, I really haven't a clue what they are doing in there, but I base my best guess on what me and Ned used to do with our little plastic soldiers when we were small children, although it has to be said that our War or Role Playing games usually ended up with one or both of the armies perishing in a huge ball of fire caused by the easy accessibility we had to cans of Ronsonite lighter fluid and a box of matches, I have yet to see one of the shopping mall outlets be engulfed by a lighter fluid inspired inferno, but on the other hand I haven't really observed them properly yet.

2008, the year of investigation, first target Role Playing Shops - What are they doing in there ?