Tales from The Sidequest Inn

 I discovered this event advertised on Facebook about a month ago and was highly curious.  A Sidequest-triggering experience. They advertised that this event was being hosted at St Andrew's Church in Brantford, Ontario by an organization called Soup for the Soul.  To give you a bit of context around them and their work, they are a volunteer, fundraiser and donation driven arm of St Andrew's United Church (95 Darling St in Brantford:  St. Andrew's United Church Downtown Brantford, Ontario ).  To quote their website: "Soup for the Soul gives all people the opportunity to a free, nutritious meal and social support services. We provide a safe, caring and trusting environment that allows people to enjoy their meal in peace.  Our volunteers ensure that the meals are prepared fresh for our guests each day".  But what in the heck does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons??? There was the promise of multiple GMs, many NPCs, prizes, food and fun.  Ti...

 People are highly curious about Sidequest Loot and what exactly we sell.  My response is typically "everything" and I mean to be sincere.  They universally just look back at me with confusion. There are certainly things that I have learned to either refuse to sell or approach with a degree with caution.  Food items? Pretty much never - though I do have a large lot of Satin Isomelts but these don't expire and I personally classify them as more of a baking accessory.  I really want to believe that various "special edition" unopened cereal boxes are worth something but everything I have seen seems to indicate that if this ever turns out to be the case there are multiple sources where I can find them at a reasonable price (not a good sign). Batteries? They are a higher risk if there's something wrong with them.  As in, they blow up and cause fires.  Chargers? On very rare occasions.  I will tend to stick with factory originals.  If you want the ...

Sidequest Loot has made it a priority out of the gate to treat the Brantford community with a few extra perks.  Our free-over-$25 delivery in town, our support for local causes and our attempts to find local suppliers first for the things to keep our business going.  There is a lot of pride in the good parts of the community, hope to see or help improvement in the not-so-good and to provide buyers/sellers in the community to have just a few extra options available to them.  Geography is a tremendous factor, obviously.  It's also always nice to have a pleasant chat about something OTHER than the item that we are delivering.  There is so much good and frankly, normal about this town.  We love our OHL team just as much as we loved our CHL team and as much as we would have loved a team that was the first North American KHL team.  I don't think you get that in a "big town" Having spent a large portion of my life here, I can reasonably let you know that we a...

Part of the idea of Sidequest Loot was based on a couple hundred successful sales on Facebook Marketplace, with just a pinch of Kijiji. It started with the sale of some of my childhood items: Transformers and Video Games.  I was able to find other name brand items through online auctions, estate sales and visits to Antique Malls (the architecture previously known as Flea Markets). I would need to pickup items from Burlington to Waterloo to London to Niagara Falls.  To be a little more efficient, I would always make sure to try to stop at local thrift stores.  Sometimes, I would find some modest gems.  More efficiencies were found when we were able to locate Facebook Marketplace listings in the same area.  A sidetrip became a Sidequest - every time we hit the road.  We have merged deliveries, pickups and scouting expeditions, finding some new favourite spots along the way.  We love finding packaged goods, unique collectibles, stuff I remember from my yo...

Turnabout Asked about how I created Turnabout, I have a bunch of prepared statements that sound either irascible for laughs, or deeply humble to play the puppets of the board gaming world. But the simple fact is, I am an outsider, looking in. I do not play board games, for the most part. What I’ve built here wasn’t meant to belong to any community, it was a project I started working on to entertain guests, since the regular classic family board games had complications that made them difficult for people I knew to enjoy at the best of times. Other games, commonly popular contemporary games, seemed either too complicated and/or vague in the rules, or were simply meant for kids under twelve, and no mistake about it. This is not a failing of theirs, because people play them all the time and ask others to play with them. It’s not even my failing, as a middle-aged man with a weird sense of humor, a self-destructive lifestyle, and more friends than I deserve. No, I think the problem is just...

If you're expecting an intimidating rant about how no one should mess with us or that we will avenge ourselves upon evildoers or that LOWBALLERS SHOULD BEWARE (huh, three equivalent terms, how 'bout that), this post is going to greatly disappoint you. We have already shared a couple guest Sidequest Tales and intend to share many more.  Thus far, there are at least two commonalities in our contributors to this blog: they each took a leap of faith and I can guarantee that none of them followed a guidebook word-for-word.  There's no such thing.  If the idea became reality then the methods that they used worked.  Successful? That's an eternally moving goalpost. Sidequest Loot is fully involved in a FAFO mentality.  We are prepared to try new ideas, new approaches and new concepts to move ourselves forward and grow.  There are a large number of "tried and true" strategies in our playbook but we are also not afraid to incorporate a bit of anarchy into the game....