New bookstore on Frankford Ave. will have a hidden room where Dungeons & Dragons fans can play

Fans of Dungeons & Dragons will soon have a new place to participate in role-playing games — and it’s in a secret room on Frankford Avenue.

The room, hidden behind a swinging bookcase, is part of Runehammer, a bookstore expected to open in late May at 2401 Frankford Ave., at East York Street. The shop will carry role-playing and war-gaming books and supplies, as well as fantasy and sci-fi books, and offer workshops.

Once the hidden backroom is constructed, with it’s own eight-sided rotating table, it will be “one of the coolest places to play D&D on the planet,” said owner Brandon Gillam.

Gillam, 50, who worked as a concept artist in the video game industry for 20 years before launching an online business in 2015 where he sells his own handbooks for role-playing games, moved to Philadelphia about five years ago. He soon found that the city needs a space for people who want to play D&D and similar games.

As COVID-19 restrictions eased, and D&D moved from online to in-person again, he and one of his groups played at a local bar, the Monkey Club. When the bar grew busier, though, they found themselves in need of a new location.

“I discovered something in Philly that I hadn’t discovered in other cities I’ve lived in, which is the houses are so tiny. You can’t have your five friends over and fit them in the house and play D&D,” he said.

So he had to come up with a solution.

“At that moment, I was like, I wish we just had like a neutral place that’s not your house, it’s not my house, it’s not a bar, it’s just a neutral place with a really nice table and a good atmosphere and a water fountain,” Gillam said.

He set out to raise a year of rent from investors in January and accumulated over $40,000 by around Valentine’s Day from a half dozen people who have been “longtime allies” and a surprise last-minute investor who “came out of thin air,” surpassing his goal.

He could have opened the store without that additional financial support, he said, but wanted to ensure that there wasn’t pressure on the store to meet a sales need to make rent.

The focus will be on providing a gathering place for gamers. But it won’t be a boy’s club, he said.

“Game stores fall into a very male kind of modality. … Strategy games and even D&D to some extent, you kind of get like a male vibe to them,” Gillam said ”Sometimes when you go to a GameStop, a game store or a sci-fi kind of environment, it can be a little weird, a little awkward. We really want to work against that. We really want to make a cozy space.”

The success of his online business has made him want to take it to “the next level” with a brick-and-mortar spot.

His most recent role-playing book, Crown & Skull, sold out the 3,000 copies of its first print run in three weeks after launching in October. He also has a YouTube channel with nearly 50,000 subscribers where he discusses gaming and has published over a dozen books under his own label, as well as from publisher Modiphius Entertainment. Some are handbooks for role-playing games and others are novels, including an adventure fantasy, a cyber-punk love story, and a horror anthology.

There is still work to get the Runehammer store up and running. Construction should be done in April, he said.

In addition to local patrons, Gilliam said he expected that some of his online followers will travel to visit.

“Already there’s a whole sort of segment of my fandom that’s planning their pilgrimage,” he said.

“The thing that’s most exciting about it is to meet actual people. I’ve been really living on the internet since before there even was an internet,” Gillam said.

“For me, this is a big deal because in some ways I want to put the internet into the passenger seat of what I do in life. I want to be in the actual world a little more, and it’s definitely a big deal to plant a flag in a neighborhood.”