Robin Hood and Building Community | Andre Krodolfer
When You Stop Running From Yourself, You Start Building For Others
There’s a moment in Disney’s Robin Hood when Friar Tuck rings the church bell in an empty Nottingham. The pews are bare. People have been arrested. The situation is dire. But Friar Tuck doesn’t wait for perfect conditions or a full crowd. He rings the bell anyway, not because he expects a packed house, but because he knows someone out there needs to hear it.
That’s the difference between talking about community and actually building it.
Most of us spend our lives waiting for the right setup before we start. The right job, the right neighborhood, the right social circle. We optimize. We plan. We delay. And then we wonder why we never quite feel like we belong anywhere.
Andre Krodolfer didn’t wait either. He was a senior software architect with a solid career, a family, and all the conventional markers of success. But something was missing, and it wasn’t money or status. It was connection outside the four walls of his home office.
That realization led him and his business partner Dan to open Harside Games, a card game store that’s become something far more valuable than a retail operation. It’s a third space. A place where people come to play the thing they love with people they love. And the belonging that happens there isn’t accidental, it’s by design.
The Cost of Always Moving: Why Belonging Matters
Andre grew up moving between countries every few years. Bolivia. Peru. Ecuador. Mexico City. Frankfurt. Moscow. Tucson. Different languages. Different cultures. Different schools every time he planted roots just deep enough to matter.
Most kids would crumble under that kind of instability.
But Andre’s family had something that made the moves survivable: they had each other. His parents were aligned on the mission. His older sisters became his anchors. And once a year, without fail, they went to Disney World, the one constant in a life that changed constantly.
Disney World wasn’t just a vacation destination for Andre. It was a psychological anchor. It was proof that not everything changes. That there are places designed to make you feel safe, welcome, and at home no matter what else is happening in your life.
He carried that lesson forward. When he finally stayed in one place long enough to build something, he built something designed to do exactly what Disney World had done for him: create a space where people feel like they belong.
Here’s what most people miss about belonging: it’s not passive. You can’t join a group and expect to feel it. You can’t show up once and assume you’re in. Real belonging requires something from you. It requires vulnerability. It requires showing up again. It requires being curious about the people around you instead of just tolerating them.
Robin Hood understood this. He didn’t just steal from Prince John and call it heroism. He built a movement. He showed people that there was another way, that they mattered, that their lives were worth fighting for. And in doing that, he created belonging so strong that people were willing to go to jail for him.
Get Curious Before You Get Convincing
This is Andre’s first takeaway, and it’s worth sitting with for a moment: Get curious before you get convincing.
Most of us do the opposite. We form an opinion, we find evidence that supports it, and then we spend our energy trying to convince other people we’re right. We lead with our worldview. We assume everyone’s starting from the same baseline we are.
But that’s not how you find common ground. That’s how you build walls.
When Andre moved to the United States as a teenager, he spoke Spanish fluently. He’d grown up in international schools. He wasn’t completely foreign to American culture. But everything was still different. The language was faster. The social rules were unwritten. The stakes felt higher.
He could have retreated. Instead, he got curious. He asked questions. He listened more than he talked. And because he did that, he made friends.
That same posture shows up in how Harside Games operates. Andre and Dan didn’t walk in assuming they knew what gamers wanted. They spent a year and a half visiting game stores, talking to people, understanding what was actually missing. They listened to what people said they needed: connection. Community. A place to belong.
And then they built exactly that.
The magic girly night at Harside Games happened because someone felt safe enough to propose it. Because the culture of the store had already been established as a place where you could be yourself. Where your interests didn’t have to fit into a predetermined box. Where the owners were curious about how to serve you, not convinced they already knew.
That’s the difference between a business and a movement.
The Small Gesture That Says “You Matter”
In the same scene where Friar Tuck rings the bell, there’s an earlier moment that’s easy to miss. Friar Tuck brings a small gift to the blacksmith, a bell or a little bit of money. Nothing grand. Nothing that solves the poverty crisis in Nottingham.
But it says something: I see you. I know you’re struggling. I’m here.
That’s not heroism. That’s humanity.
Andre talks about this in the context of building community. You don’t have to take every bag of gold from Prince John. You don’t have to solve everyone’s problems. Sometimes the thing that creates belonging is just showing up. Ringing the bell. Bringing a little light into a dark situation.
This is why Harside Games works. Yes, they sell cards and games. But the real product is the experience of being known. Of walking in and having someone recognize you. Of sitting down across from someone and realizing you’re not just opponents, you’re people with shared interests, shared vulnerabilities, shared hopes.
The store didn’t advertise heavily. No big marketing campaign. People brought their friends because they felt something there. Because they experienced belonging and wanted to share it.
That’s the opposite of how most businesses operate. Most businesses optimize for transaction. Get people in, get money out, move to the next customer. Harside Games optimizes for relationship. And the transactions follow naturally because people want to be where they feel they belong.
Humor in the Midst of the Hard
Robin Hood and Little John are being chased by guards. Arrows are flying. The situation is genuinely dangerous. And they’re laughing about it.
Little John gets hit by an arrow and acts shocked. Robin Hood uses a sword to cut off his own disguise instead of using it to defend himself. They find levity in the chaos because they understand something fundamental: taking yourself too seriously is a luxury you can’t afford when you’re trying to build something.
This is Andre’s third takeaway: Be humorous. Lighten up. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
When you’re building community, when you’re trying to create belonging, when you’re asking people to be vulnerable and show up as themselves, you need to make it safe to fail. You need to make it okay to be imperfect. You need to show people that you’re not so invested in your own image that you can’t laugh at yourself.
Harside Games does this naturally. It’s a place where competitive tournaments exist alongside magic girly nights. Where serious players sit next to kids opening their first packs. Where the culture says: You belong here, and you don’t have to be perfect to do it.
That’s the lesson Robin Hood teaches. That’s the lesson Andre learned from a lifetime of moving between worlds. And that’s the lesson Friar Tuck embodies when he rings an empty bell in an empty church, not because it will solve anything immediately, but because someone out there needs to know they’re not alone.
The Belonging You Build Outlasts the Problem You Solve
Prince John is the antagonist in Robin Hood. But he’s not really the point. The point is what happens when ordinary people decide they belong to something bigger than their own survival. When they decide that community matters more than safety. When they choose to show up for each other.
That’s what Harside Games is. That’s what the magic girly night represented. That’s what happens when you stop waiting for perfect conditions and start ringing the bell anyway.
The question isn’t whether you have the right credentials, the right background, or the right setup to build belonging. The question is whether you’re willing to get curious. To see people as people. To show up with humor and humility. To ring the bell even when the church is empty.
Because someone out there is listening. And they need to know they’re not alone.
Ready to build more belonging in your own life? Listen to the full conversation at https://youtube.com/@YesAndLand | More at https://www.yesandland.com/