Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav Just Wants to Be a Dungeon Master at the Brooklyn Strategist

Though he’d really like to be, Tim Harrington is not quite a regular at the Brooklyn Strategist. It’s not that he doesn’t come to this game center, café, and social club a lot. He does. He’s here at least every other week with his two kids: nine-year-old Ben and six-year-old Kaspar. It’s evening when he arrives to meet me at the Brooklyn Strategist, and Tim’s surprised at how different the place is. Rather than the “crazy madhouse” Tim says it usually is during the day with kids playing Pokémon, it’s filled with adults playing tournament chess. Dr. Jon Freeman, the gray-haired and ponytailed owner, along with his staff, doesn’t really know Tim. And, if I had asked them, they probably would’ve suggested I interview the bespectacled guy making a lanyard or any of the Orthodox Jews on a G-rated date or maybe one of the old ladies playing Scrabble. But I went with Tim because the forty-one-year-old artist, musician, and children’s book author used to be a regular at a lot of places in his old neighborhood in Williamsburg, and since moving to Cobble Hill three years ago, he’s really been trying to find his new regular spots so he can do his “rounds,” as he calls it—his routine walk around the neighborhood locales.

There’s another deeper—and darker—reason Tim is almost a regular here: he wants to become a Dungeon Master. That is, a Dungeons and Dragons Master. It’s something he’s wanted since he was a kid, when he convinced his parents to get him the role-playing game and his own twenty-sided die. Problem was, nobody would play with him. They all thought it was too nerdy. So, as a child, Tim played alone, rolling his lone die and sketching his own characters. As an adult, while he toured back and forth across the States with his insane indie rock band Les Savy Fav, he tried like hell to get his bandmates to learn the game and play with him. Again: no dice.

When Tim comes to the Brooklyn Strategist with his kids, they play games like King of New York, a monster madness fiasco that Tim taught me this evening. The room is spare and utilitarian. The food is fine—save for the delicious DUB Pies. It’s all long tables, playing cards, game pieces, and zero mood lighting. In other words, it’s exactly what you would expect from a gamer’s space that’s welcoming, unpretentious, and focused exclusively on the love of the games. Tim talked to me about being a dad, having an endless amount of enthusiasm for life, his quest to belong in his new neighborhood, and, of course, his desire to at last become the Dungeon Master he knows he is destined to be.

It takes me a really long time to be a regular. I’m a slow-goer. I like to know every single thing all over the neighborhood because I want to check them all out.

Pretty much every weekend, I’m like, “Who wants to go to Brooklyn Strategist? Come on, let’s go!”

There’s amazing things happening at a store full of board games.

If you live around here and are even remotely a nerd, you notice Brooklyn Strategist. You can leave your kids here for like $10 for four hours. If your kids are over six, they can go crazy. But I never end up leaving when I’m with my kids, and I end up just playing games.

The thing about losing your edge is it’s easy to identify what you like. Like sick, amazing, crazy rock shows. For the longest time, I identified with that. But it’s also really easy to be like, there’s amazing things happening at a store full of board games. Kids see different things that are exciting from where they are. And that stuff is super cool. In general, being a grown-up, you get closed off or settled—in a bad regulars way. I don’t want that monotony.

The thing about being in this less cool neighborhood is that their board game store has no hang-ups about it.

I had gone to a [game] store in Williamsburg. I asked on behalf of my kid if they had Pokémon cards because he was learning how to play, and the only place I knew where to get them was at the Nintendo store in Midtown. So I said, “Hey, you guys have Pokémon cards?” And it did a record-scratch thing where it got quiet and the guy behind the counter said, “Oh, no. We don’t carry it.” And I heard people, like, snickering into their Magic: The Gathering cards. I said, “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that you guys only play big-kid card games.” And left and felt embarrassed. I came here and was nervous, but they totally had Pokémon cards.

My older son is really loud, and my younger son is really quiet. People underestimate him as a kid. Ben uses very different strategies. Ben is super aggro and on it. He’s into smack talking.

I wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons so bad when I was a kid. None of my friends had any interest in playing, really. I remember wishing for D ’n’ D beginners’ starter kits for Christmas and got them multiple times and started kind of playing by myself. I mostly spent time drawing my imaginary characters. But it’s really hard not to cheat super-duper bad when you’re by yourself and you’re the Dungeon Master for yourself. So my characters would get really good really fast, but it didn’t matter because there was no one to show them off to. Anyway, one time my parents got this next-door neighborhood teenager, a burned-out metalhead hesher guy, to babysit specifically because he was going to play D ’n’ D with me. They said, “He’ll show you how it works.” I was so excited. My parents left, and he said, “Nah. I’m not teaching you.” And we didn’t do Dungeons and Dragons.

An enthusiastic point of view is really crucial.

Right now, it’s amazing. There’s a D ’n’ D game going on and a guy doing a knitting-in-the-round project, and then it’s also a popular place for Orthodox Jewish dates, I’ve noticed. A lot of times you will see quietly in the back a Scrabble date, and I’ve only ever seen Scrabble dates with Orthodox Jewish guys—some Jewish thing where your dating involves going to the board game store and playing Scrabble.

Good things happen when you’re enthusiastic. Exciting things, fun things happen. Having an enthusiastic point of view is really crucial, and it’s really hard, too. With music, I’m always arguing with friends, “Don’t become a connoisseur.” You need to defy your expertise and stay enthusiastic.

I feel that wall of board games has such potential. I wish I could come here enough to learn them all.

I don’t know the staff here because I’m usually here when there are a lot of kids here, and it’s usually a crazy madhouse. But also because it’s about all those little boxes there: you feel you get your little game box and then you’re not really here, you’re here.

June 2, 2015

(Photos by Phil Provencio)