Passionate gamers across the Coachella Valley have spoken—and they have chosen The Dragon’s Den in Palm Desert as the Best Comics/Games Shop in this year’s Best of Coachella Valley readers’ poll.
The Dragon’s Den, in just a short amount of time, has provided a home for locals in love with tabletop games, while also welcoming newcomers to the world of tabletop fun. I recently went to visit the shop, where there are board games for sale, about a dozen big tables perfect for throwing dice and exploring fantasy worlds, and friendly vibes all around. After owner Mindy Conant showed me around, she talked about how she opened the Den to get closer to her son, Jake.
“In 2020, we suffered a great loss as a family. My father and my father-in-law passed within five months of each other,” Conant said. “We are all very outgoing people in my family, but my kids were so just steeped in grief that they kind of withdrew.”
Conant’s son was then in high school. “My son’s friends … were like, ‘Hey, since we’re all in quarantine, we should play Dungeons and Dragons online,’” she said. Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game in which players roll dice to determine their choices and their success rate in a fantasy-adventure experience.
“When he started explaining the game and how much fun it was and what you could do in it, he lit up,” Conant said. “He was talking fast; his eyes were bright. I was like, ‘There’s my kid; he’s connecting again.’”
The Dragon’s Den fills a need in the desert for safe places to gather and game.
“Jake said, ‘Mom, it’s not 1980. People don’t go to people’s houses; libraries are quiet; parks are sketchy; and you can’t be in a pizza place for four hours and play D&D,’ so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll open a shop,’” Conant said. “I’ve always wanted to own my own business. The concept was so foreign to me that I thought I invented it, and then my son’s like, ‘No, these places actually exist.’ But there wasn’t one out here, so I’d never seen it. It took us two years from that conversation to when we got the keys to open the door, and it was a long, hard trip. We opened in February 2024, and as of now, we have 150 members, and they’re here every month.”
The shop runs on a paid membership system. Bronze ($40 a month), silver ($60 a month) and gold ($100 a month) members all receive unlimited play and the monthly fee back in the form of store credit. Silver- and gold-tier members get perks such as access to the paint room (to customize game figures and dice), priority registration for tournaments and events, and more. The shop welcomes non-members to play for $20, or $10 for students and active members of the military.
Another popular game at the shop is Warhammer, a tabletop fantasy similar to D&D.
“The Warhammer community found us before we opened, and that was due to the fact that my son and his friend Nick started playing Warhammer on a semi-regular basis at another hobby shop,” Conant said. “They had a Discord (chat) that they would talk in to meet up and play there. Nick started telling them, ‘My friend and his mom are going to open this shop,’ so they found us first. When we got our signs up before we opened, there were pictures on the Discord. They were making memes about Dragon’s Den opening before rent was due. Now we have a really healthy Warhammer community and a really healthy D&D community. We also have our store Discord, and we have more people on our Discord than we have members in the shop.”
The Dragon’s Den hosts D&D beginners every first Friday of the month, and beginners’ Warhammer nights every second Saturday. Conant said hosting beginner nights is crucial to tearing down stereotypes attached to roleplaying games.
“I think a lot of young women, or even older women—like my age—think that it’s a guy’s game, and it’s so heavily ruled that they really can’t get into it,” she said. “Me not knowing how to do it and just sitting down and playing with my kids at home, it was so much easier than I thought, and so much more fun than I thought, that I was like, ‘People need to know that it’s this easy.’
“We have a lot of hardcore members who have been here since day one, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ll teach and help build a character.’ We do a quick two-hour D&D game so you can just see if you like it. I would say, nine times out of 10, they’re hooked. They’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know it was so easy,’ and that’s really the importance of beginner D&D, just to show people how easy and how much fun it is. We don’t overwhelm them with a bunch of rules. … We started our own shop league, so on the second and third Fridays, you can come in and play in that league, and it’s a continuing story.”
Conant said she and her staff make sure they’re always compassionate and friendly.
“Jake said, ‘Mom, it’s not 1980. People don’t go to people’s houses; libraries are quiet; parks are sketchy; and you can’t be in a pizza place for four hours and play D&D,’ so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll open a shop.’”
Mindy conant
“It has been my experience that if you treat people like adults when they are adults, they’ll act accordingly,” Conant said. “… Me and my son, one of us is here every single day, and we’re making friends. We know about their lives; they know about our lives. It’s a community, and we find that our members are very protective of the community.”
The Dragon’s Den has become a safe space for people on the autism spectrum.
“We understand that a big portion of our community is somewhere on the autism spectrum or has ADHD like myself, and we see that as like, ‘Oh my God, you have these superpowers, and you understand every game and the rules, or you understand painting,’ and it’s such an honor to be a part of that,” Conant said. “… It is a safe space, and we make sure of it. We don’t allow too much aggression in games. We don’t allow people to spit slurs at people, but I’ve never had to tell someone to knock it off.”
News of the Best of Coachella Valley win did not come as a surprise to Conant.
“I know the people here, and I know how much they support us, just by signing up to be a member every month,” she said. “At one point, we had to increase our prices, and nobody blinked an eye. They were like, ‘Absolutely, $10 more a month to keep you guys open.’ … It doesn’t surprise me that people think this place is great, because it really is great here, and I feel extremely lucky to be a part of it.”
Conant invited all readers of the Independent to experience the Den in person.
“We can talk about it all day long, but until you walk in here and feel that vibe of friendship and collaboration and play, you really don’t know,” she said. “We do collaborate with the comic stores and other nerd-centric shops in the desert. … This is kind of a new thing to the desert, so you just have to walk in and feel the vibe.”
The Dragon’s Den is located at 72221 Highway 111, No. 101A, in Palm Desert. For more information, visit thedragonsdenrpg.com or instagram.com/thedragonsden_cv.
hell yeah, Dragon’s Den rules.