Second Best Dungeon Masters

Sunshine has been in business for some twenty years, selling the games that allow the mentally gifted and socially awkward to sit around a table, roll twenty-sided dice, and imagine they're elves, wizards, barbarians, vampires, Klingons, Wookies, or other fantastic characters. Like many in the role-playing game trade, Joel ("What's your last name?" asks New Times. "Why do you ask?" he shoots back.) once sold comic books. Unlike many others in the biz, he built up a big enough clientele for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and other similar pastimes to weather the downturn in the comic biz. He now devotes his little storefront across from Tropical Park solely to gaming books, adventures, and other fantasy-related resources. His narrow, slightly dingy but well-ordered store offers titles from the familiar (AD&D) to the not-so-familiar (GURPS). If you want to sample a particular system, Joel will rent you a rulebook for about ten dollars per week. He's got two groups meeting in the store now (AD&D and Vampire: The Masquerade), but there's always room for another hardy band of adventurers at the folding table in the back -- provided an experienced gamemaster comes forward to referee. "Everybody wants to play, nobody wants to GM," he gripes. Ain't that the truth!