{"id":1839,"date":"2021-10-14T10:44:39","date_gmt":"2021-10-14T14:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/?p=1839"},"modified":"2021-10-14T10:44:39","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T14:44:39","slug":"survival-of-the-funnest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/survival-of-the-funnest\/","title":{"rendered":"Survival of the Funnest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dream Wizards\u2019 owner Laurel Chiat believes the skills acquired through role-playing and board games are also applicable outside her store.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the late 1980s, it was a teenage ritual. My friend and I would save up \u2014 about $20 each, real money then \u2014 and plan our pilgrimage to Dream Wizards, the Rockville store that sold Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing and board games.<\/p>\n

It was the mecca for our imaginations.<\/p>\n

We would ride the Metro, play real-life Frogger cutting across Rockville Pike and take a stairwell down into a nondescript parking lot where the store was located. There we would linger while deciding which game to buy, our excitement fed by the action-packed covers; we used whatever money we had left to buy the dice needed to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing I liked about it most was that you never knew what you would find,\u201d says Adam Guyot, my partner on our teenage trips. \u201cI went in one time and saw Chainsaw Warrior, a board game pretty much explained by its title, which became a favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gamers still make pilgrimages to Dream Wizards, now a Montgomery County institution. In 2019, based on available records, Dream Wizards became the longest continuously open role-playing game and board game store on the East Coast. It\u2019s the second-oldest store in the country, trailing only Griffon Bookstore and Games in South Bend, Indiana, which opened in 1976, according to Kelly Mignogna of the Game Manufacturers Association.<\/p>\n

The story of the store\u2019s success is full of as many pitfalls and as much magic as the games within. Mark Chorvinsky founded Dream Wizards in 1978 after returning from London, where he was working on his honors thesis about the historical authenticity of the character Merlin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile in London, he was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons and the beginnings of miniatures and thought it was very creative,\u201d says his widow and current owner, Laurel Chiat. \u201cHe opened the store so he could be around creative people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stores like Dream Wizards opened in the 1970s as role-playing games became popular. But later trends in the gaming market, including computer games and game systems like Nintendo and PlayStation in the late 1980s and the 1990s, decreased the hold that such stores maintained, according to \u201cHeroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games\u201d by Lawrence Schick.<\/p>\n

However, Dream Wizards has always stayed one step ahead of the trends, including being a forerunner in selling Magic the Gathering, a card game in which players battle each other with spells and magical items, and running tournaments for it, starting in 1993.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time we had [Magic the Gathering] in the store, one of the friends of the designer came in [as a customer] and taught us how to play. Within a year, I was running large tournaments sponsored by the manufacturer, Wizards of the Coast, with 300 to 2,000 people in hotels in D.C.,\u201d Chiat says. \u201cWe knew how to do it, run a good event. Magic is [still] a huge, huge game.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, Pok\u00e9mon toys \u2014 anime animals with vivid colors and cartoonish characteristics \u2014 were released in Japan. They caught the attention of Chiat and her husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe read about Pok\u00e9mon in a Nintendo magazine,\u201d Chiat says. \u201cHe thought they were so cool and wanted to get some for our son.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, they devised a way to import them.<\/p>\n

\u201cGolf companies [in Japan] were mailing golf clubs to Japanese-American distributors in the U.S. To make their customers\u2019 kids happy, they were putting Pok\u00e9mon toys in the boxes,\u201d Chiat says. \u201cWe contacted the distributors and asked them to send some to us. Everything we got sold immediately just based on the cuteness of the characters,\u201d Chiat says.<\/p>\n

When the Pok\u00e9mon card game debuted in America, Wizards of the Coast, which held the game\u2019s U.S. distributorship, let the store run tournaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was one of the first people to run them in the U.S.,\u201d Chiat says.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2005, Chorvinsky died from cancer at age 50. It was the Dream Wizards community that helped the store survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my husband was sick, people came up to me, volunteering to work in the store. That is an amazing thing I don\u2019t take for granted,\u201d Chiat says.<\/p>\n

Even during the pandemic lockdown, the store soldiered on. Employees delivered products to customers\u2019 homes and kept up the Dream Wizards profile on social media. Staff ran games over Discord, an app that allows people to talk to each other online.<\/p>\n

A blindingly loyal clientele also helped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe day I started [being open again], a gamer walked in and said, \u2018Hi, I really like your store. I want it to survive, and I am here to spend money,\u2019\u201d Chiat says.<\/p>\n

On a Saturday afternoon in July, customers browsed the merchandise in the front half of the store. Dream Wizards features a wide variety of games: the well-known, such as the board game Settlers of Catan, and the obscure. At folding tables set up in the back, a rowdy group played Magic the Gathering, excitedly slapping cards down in front of each other.<\/p>\n

Dave Robertson of Rockville, one of the participants that day, says he plays Magic at the store whenever he can.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is really a good group of people here. They are willing to play a lot of games; it just makes you want to come back,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Peter Norris, who would frequent Dream Wizards before moving out of state, misses it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a local game store [here],\u201d Norris says. \u201cNone of them were as open, or was a hub where people would gather there, instead of just buying their stuff and leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream Wizards\u2019 collegial atmosphere has even sparked romance. Matthew Peters and Martina Brym met there while playing \u201chours and hours\u201d of Dungeons and Dragons, according to Peters.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy attitude has always been to be really open,\u201d Chiat says. \u201cWe strive to make Dream Wizards a community of openness and inclusivity where all feel welcome. By playing as gamers, we can have conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the late 1980s, it was a teenage ritual. My friend and I would save up \u2014 about $20 each, real money then \u2014 and plan our pilgrimage to Dream Wizards, the Rockville store that sold Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing and board games. It was the mecca for our imaginations. We would ride […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":1845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nSurvival of the Funnest - Montgomery Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gamers still make pilgrimages to Dream Wizards, now a Montgomery County institution.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/survival-of-the-funnest\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Survival of the Funnest - Montgomery Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gamers still make pilgrimages to Dream Wizards, now a Montgomery County institution.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/survival-of-the-funnest\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Montgomery Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-10-14T14:44:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LDS_3341-scaled-e1634218015836.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"670\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John F. 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