Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Free RPG Day - June 20, 2015

Every year I take the girls out for a trip to Rubber Mallet Comics to take part in Free Comic Book Day.   This year it's Saturday, May 2nd, the same week Avengers 2 is released.  The kids will snag their fill of free books, I usually grab one or two, and we'll scour the heavily discounted bins for some treasures, especially since we can use it for fodder for the drive down to Disney next weekend.    Last year, I grabbed some Trade Paperback collection of Showcase with Supergirl in them that were so blatantly sexist that I nearly gagged.  Funny thing, they were still better role models than the crap on TV/Netflix (Monster High?  Ever After High?  The Winx?)    Methinks I know where some annoying mannerisms are coming from...

While just about every comic shop across the country participates in Free Comic Book Day, Free RPG Day is a completely different story.

From their website, www.freerpgday.com : "Established in 2007, Free RPG Day works with participating hobby game retailers and RPG publishers to bring new and exclusive RPG quickstart rules and adventure modules into the hands of gamers."

A store does need to order one or more "kits" with the materials (and they do cost the store's money), but inside are 19 different free items, in varying quantities.   Paizo, Goodman Games, and Catalyst are each offering two different items for the promotion,  and Chessex, Troll Lord, Pelgrane Press, 9th Level Games are some of the other companies involved.    Personally, outside of the Pelgrane flip-book for 13th Age and Night's Black Agents, and the Kobold Ate My Baby Adventure, I might be interested in trying to snag a physical copy of Khepera Publising's Hellas/Atlantis flipbook.  There's actually a Kickstarter campaign set up to fund the this for Free RPG Day (no physical copies are available as rewards, just pdfs.)

Bug your FLGS to participate.  I guarantee you they wasted more money (and probably spent less time) trying to jump into the latest minis game or CCG than a kit or two of free stuff for their customers would be.  Heck, they might make MORE money out of the investment.

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