Phil Glotfelty has sold tabletop games in the North Hills for nearly 30 years. To be a fly on his walls would mean watching teens play competitive card games, and then seeing them return with their kids. It’d mean tracking the rise and fall of gaming trends, and nearly suffocating as Glotfelty’s one-room shop overflowed with board games. It’d mean packing up and moving to a new spot where a shallow cranny would become a coffee shop and nightly crowds of nearly 70 would gather to collectively fight dragons.One of the only constants has been Glotfelty’s reminders to patrons that he is, in fact, blind.“If you need me, just yell ‘Phil!’” he repeated throughout my visit. “Remember: I’m blind.”Glotfelty is a lifelong gamer, but his retail experience didn’t start at the business he owns. With deteriorating sight in his 20s, the now-56-year-old landed an odd job selling swords and martial arts equipment. At that cutlery store, a micro-community began to form.“People were playing Magic: The Gathering there, and in the basement, there was this room and we were playing D&D,” Glotfelty says.Phil Glotfelty, the owner of Game Masters, poses in the store’s retail space. Photo by Roman Hladio.When the sword shop closed in late 1995, the owner paid out Glotfelty’s remaining wages with store fixtures. He was 20-something, blind and out of a job. But now he had a little more: “a few hundred dollars worth of stuff” and a passion for the tabletop game community.“I want to open a game store,” Phil told his then-girlfriend, now-wife. “She went, ‘OK,’ because you’re 25 and what the heck?”Eight months later, Glotfelty had the keys to a storefront at 3439 Babcock Blvd.When the original Game Masters opened, he mostly sold Warhammer 40,000 — a popular miniature, figure-based war game. Until the early 2000s, Glotfelty was one of the only stores that sold Warhammer in Pittsburgh, let alone the North Hills.“In the early aughts, I decided to switch to board games, which was really weird, because board games really weren’t around yet,” Glotfelty says. “But there was this thing called ‘Catan,’ and if you could find it, it was like gold. I’d run around to different companies who were importing this game from Germany, and I started carrying that.”For years, Glotfelty would stumble across games while out and about, contact the producer and add them to his catalog. Near the turn of the century, he noticed board game sales were growing. Simultaneously, Warhammer stores were becoming more common.“When I started in ’96, there was one other store, but when I got out [of Warhammer] in 2001, there were like four or five stores within 2 miles of me,” Glotfelty says. “It just wasn’t worth doing anymore. So I started doing board games.”Aside from near-nightly scheduled events, Game Masters’ play space and game library are open to patrons for a $5 table space fee. Photo by Roman Hladio.Game Masters had hit its stride. In Glotfelty’s back rooms, patrons played Magic: The Gathering tournaments and Dungeons and Dragons.But in 2018, Glotfelty started feeling constrained. At most, the Babcock Boulevard space could hold about 25 players and patrons. With his game collection ever-expanding, Glotfelty was outgrowing the location.A few years later, after “this thing called the pandemic,” Glotfelty says, West View business owner Tom Duncan was retiring, and his shop — Duncan Comics — was back on the rental market. The small, circular storefront was attached to a long rectangular room that hosted tables upon tables of comics. It’d be more than enough space for tabletop games. Glotfelty was enamored, so he signed his letter of intent and planned the move. But, in his usual fashion, there was a catch: He was going to move the store in one day. All he needed, he told regulars, was 15 people.“I literally signed up 15 people, like ‘Sign this. A little blood right there. It’ll be fine,’” he says. “That day rolls around, and we’re going to be there at 9 o’clock in the morning. “We pull in and my 15 people are there. And 60 more. They were everywhere. All day.”By 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, the move was done. Game Masters reopened on the following Monday.“I’ve always had that community,” Glotfelty says. “Even when gaming was just a bunch of 15-year-old guys with bad hygiene.”The new space could comfortably host over 125. Crowds of 60 or more make their way to Game Masters on weeknights to participate in scheduled games and tournaments or to gather with friends and play board games from Glotfelty’s in-house library for a $5 table space fee.The Dragon’s Roast Cafe opened in mid-August, but was a part of owner Phil Glotfelty’s original business plan from 1996. Photo by Roman Hladio.In mid-August, Game Masters launched an expansion, so to speak: Dragon’s Roast Cafe. Not only was a cafe part of Glotfelty’s original, 1996 business plan, but it — alongside his earlier additions of baby-changing tables and a sensory room — adds to his customers’ experience, making it a place they want to hang out, rather than a spot they have to visit for the latest releases.“People are looking for a community, a place to go, a place to do something,” Glotfelty says. “It’s not enough that I want to play a game, I want to make an experience around playing that game.”“Phil?” A customer calls out into the store. “Can we get a game whenever you have a chance?”“No, I don’t sell games,” he says. “Are you touching my stuff? Don’t touch my stuff; just look at my personal collection.”The post Hunt a dragon, explore an island and have a cup of joe at Game Masters appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh.