A History and a Remembrance
From a small Maryland shop and a pioneering fantasy publisher to the Alexandria Game Store whose friendships still endure
The Little Soldier began in Maryland in 1975 with a small shop, a circle of inventive people, and the growing sense that games could create a community of their own.
Over the years, its name came to encompass several connected ventures. The Little Soldier was the retail shop. Little Soldier Games was the publishing line born around its tables. Phoenix Games later carried part of that publishing tradition forward, while the store began a new chapter in Alexandria under Dennis Largess.
Each incarnation left something behind. The early shop brought players and creators together. The publisher contributed books and games during the formative years of fantasy gaming. The Alexandria store became a clubhouse where campaigns ran late, newcomers found a table, and friendships took root. Michael and I were among the people who found one another there.
The Story at a Glance
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1975: The beginning in Maryland
Ed Konstant and David Perez founded The Little Soldier. Surviving early material places the first documented shop at 11401 Grandview Avenue in Wheaton.
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1975 to 1978: Little Soldier Games
The shop gave rise to a small publishing company whose books and games entered the hobby at the moment fantasy role-playing was taking shape.
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By October 1977: Rockville's 1776 Plaza
The retail store was operating in Rockville when The Washington Post profiled Ed and the rapidly growing wargaming hobby.
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1978 to 1981: The separate Phoenix branch
Dan Bress and Phil Edgren formed Phoenix Games. The Little Soldier name continued for a time as a publishing imprint, while Gamescience carried the older catalog forward.
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By April 1981: Alexandria
Period retailer lists place The Little Soldier in Alexandria. Dennis later remembered running the store by January 1982, and a former customer recalled two Alexandria locations.
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By April 1982: 100 South Patrick Street
A Dragon dealer list records the familiar second Alexandria location. By September 1983, The Washington Post explicitly identified Dennis Largess as the owner.
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1989: The store closes, the community continues
Dennis later gave the closing year himself. Memories of packing the shop preserve a tender glimpse of its final days.
First Incarnation: A Small Shop in Wheaton
Ed Konstant's own later account begins simply: he and David Perez founded The Little Soldier in Maryland in 1975.1 The surviving record becomes more specific when early books and players are added. A photographed catalog page gives the address as 11401 Grandview Avenue, Suite 4, Wheaton, Maryland, and people who played there remember a small shop where Saturday games took over the back room.2
Phil Edgren, who owned Attic Books around the corner, was part of that early circle. Dan Bress, Phil, Ed, David, artists, writers, and players moved through the same small local scene. In a young hobby, a customer could become a playtester, a player could become a designer, and a chair pulled up to the table could lead to the next publication.
Ed's daughter later remembered helping assemble the little booklets in the family basement. That image captures Little Soldier Games at its beginning: a publisher growing directly from the people around the shop and the volunteer hand work provided by friends and family.2
Second Incarnation: A Store Becomes a Publisher
The first major release was The Ringbearer, a fantasy miniatures game by Dan Bress and Ed Konstant that drew openly on J.R.R. Tolkien's world. Konstant later recalled two editions, while comparison of surviving copies has identified multiple printings within those editions. The earliest version was a thin tan booklet that fit neatly inside the original Chainmail (precursor to D&D) game box; later printings expanded the rules and changed a number of Tolkien-derived names.3
A warning from United Artists over the Tolkien-derived material brought The Ringbearer to an end. Konstant later explained that the risk was simply too great for a small publisher to carry.3
The warning made the risks of borrowed worlds plain, and the books that followed drew more deeply from legend, folklore, and original game design. Knights of the Round Table turned to Arthurian legend. The Book of Monsters, written by Phil Edgren from an idea developed with Ed Konstant and Dan Bress, gathered creatures from myth and appeared in 1976, before TSR's Monster Manual. Then came The Book of Demons, The Book of Sorcery, The Book of Shamans, and Book of Treasure.
The catalog also ranged into history and military gaming with titles such as Fighter Pilot, Der Fuhrer, Imperial Guard, Axe and Arrow, and David Perez's Zulu.4 The result was a compact but remarkably varied body of work, created while the language of modern hobby gaming was still being invented.
Third Incarnation: Rockville and a Wider Audience
By October 1977, The Little Soldier was operating at 1776 Plaza, 1776 East Jefferson Street in Rockville. Trade directories carried that address through July 1979, and contemporary reporting gives us a wonderfully clear picture of the Rockville store and its proprietor.
Art Harris of The Washington Post described Ed as a former Washington bureau chief for the San Juan Star who had left a secure newspaper career, even World Series tickets, to run a game store full time. Harris found shelves of games, books, and miniatures, with Ed happily refereeing Dungeons & Dragons and talking about a hobby just emerging into public view.5
Rockville was where the two enterprises met most visibly. The store supplied the audience, ideas, and creative relationships. The publishing company gave the store a place in the national history of early fantasy gaming. For a time, the same name connected the shelves, the tables, and the books traveling out into the wider hobby.
The shop gave the publishing line its beginning. From Rockville, each followed its own path.
The Phoenix Chapter: The Publishing Story Moves On
In 1978, Dan Bress and Phil Edgren formed Phoenix Games. Phoenix carried forward creative relationships, projects, and, for a time, the Little Soldier Games name as a publishing imprint. A title page from the period identifies Little Soldier Games as a division of Phoenix.6
The Book of Shamans and Book of Treasure sit directly in that transition. Ed also designed The Book of Fantasy Miniatures and Elementary, Watson for Phoenix. The retail shop continued along its own course, soon beginning the Alexandria chapter associated with Dennis Largess.
Historian Shannon Appelcline reports that Gamescience paid $2,000 for the older Little Soldier Games catalog, helping Phoenix publish Elementary, Watson. That transaction carried the earlier books into their next life under Gamescience.6
Phoenix invested heavily in the large wargame Streets of Stalingrad. By May 1981, Dragon magazine reported that Phoenix had folded.7 Gamescience kept the earlier fantasy books in circulation and later collected them in The Fantasy Gamer's Compendium. The publishing branch had ended, while its work continued to reach players.
Fourth Incarnation: Alexandria and Dennis Largess
Period retailer lists place The Little Soldier in Alexandria by April 1981. Former customer Frank Shirer later remembered Dennis operating the store at two Alexandria locations, with South Patrick Street as the second.8
Dennis's own recollection places him running the Alexandria shop by January 1982. By April, a Dragon dealer list gives the familiar address: 100 South Patrick Street, Alexandria, Virginia.9 In September 1983, The Washington Post identified Dennis as the owner.
Under Dennis, The Little Soldier became a store organized as much around time and trust as around inventory. People came for a game, found a group, claimed a regular night, began a campaign, and returned week after week.
When Michael and I Arrived
By the time Michael and I found The Little Soldier in 1986, the store already had a history. We walked in looking for games and people to play them with.
We met there and became lifelong friends. We played Dungeons & Dragons, Axis & Allies, Car Wars, Advanced Civilization, and whatever else we could get our hands on. Many of our closest friends today are people we knew through The Little Soldier.13
The physical place was part of its character. The central table was an enormous sheet of plywood, close to eight feet square. The store was famously messy, and the carpet showed it. The front door often stayed unlocked while a game continued into the early morning. Some of us had a key to the drink machine so we could cool our own drinks. On a long night, we crossed King Street to the little market or continued the conversation at the all-night Denny's.14
I remember playing a cavalier named Mettleply Sundar in Jon Becker's weekend D&D game. Jon and I pronounced drow to rhyme with snow, a house pronunciation sturdy enough to last for years in the age before the internet.
Our friendship belongs squarely in the larger history. The store's earlier incarnations had produced games and books. Dennis's incarnation produced relationships. Michael and I carried one of those relationships with us when we began The Game Steward in 2013.
The 1989 Closing
The Little Soldier closed in 1989, the year Dennis later gave in a public discussion.15 By then, the store had spent more than a decade moving with the hobby it helped nurture.
Michael Fisher, who had known the shop as a young customer, later remembered helping his father, Joe, and Dennis pack it up. While clearing beneath a shelf, he found an eagle miniature. Dennis let him keep it.16 That small memory captures the closing: friends and customers helping put away a place that had belonged to them, too.
The closing came at a difficult moment for small hobby retailers. Dennis remembered an earlier 1980s market supported by thirty or forty distributors, followed by a sharp contraction as D&D reached mass-market chains at prices small shops struggled to match. Most tried to hang on, he wrote, and very few remained by 1989.17
My understanding at the time was that Dennis's family also needed the security of employer health coverage during his young daughter's long-term illness. For those of us around the store, that family need formed an important part of how we understood his decision.
Dennis later wrote that the closing made keeping in touch with the old group too painful.16 His words give the final days their true scale. This was a business under pressure and a family seeking stability, but it was also the loss of a place built from years of shared time.
How the Community Continued
The publishing work remained in circulation through reprints and collections. The retail story continued in the memories of the people who played there. Dennis and former regulars later gathered under the cheerful name Little Soldier Veterans Society. The old arguments, campaigns, and friendships found new places to continue.
For Michael and me, The Little Soldier remains the example of what a game store can mean: give a group a home, and let a person walk in looking for a game and leave with friends.
