The Afterthought of #FreeRPGDay

 It's a lot of chaos happening right now.  Maja is currently on the third production of six of Oliver!  at the local theatre company, Millie just finished a many-delayed trip to reach Hawaii for a month, and their mother is left holding the bag... or boxes, trying to finish up things with their impending move over July 4th to upstate New York.  

This Saturday had none of those concerns.  I had yard work to take care of at my mother's and #FreeRPGDay to revel in. 

My initial plan seemed probable, using previous (and numerous) years as an example.  

*Swing by Sword in the Stone Games in Wilkes-Barre first thing in the morning to check out the freebies...

*Head down to my mom's, with a quick detour to The Portal in Bethlehem to check out their freebies (perhaps there's a limit at Sword and I could pick up other items I didn't get initially).  Portal also is known for good community events and sales, so it's a win-win before I start doing yard work before the planet catches fire from the heat. 

So, I leave the house around 11.  Sword in the Stone.  NO #FreeRPGDay.  It seems it clashes with a CATAN National Qualifier Tournament event.   Huh...  Their #FreeRPGDay event will be Sunday, June 29th. 

A little over an hour later, I'm at The Portal, wander back through the store to the open gaming area, only to open that door to 32 War Machine players in a tournament. It looks like they locked in this tournament six months ago (and by my first report, the event was formally announced with a date in March).  I assume the CATAN thing falls under that same umbrella.

Discouraged, I grab a wrap at Wawa and double check the website, realizing that JAF Comics just north of Bethlehem is also participating.  There's a whole review coming for the shop, but I'm there relatively quickly, impressed that the store isn't the images I had in my head for years ago, and had a spectacular conversation with one of the staff.  

Even better, they had stuff.

I grabbed some cheap dice to qualify for the drawing for the odd one-off items #FreeRPGDay is notorious for, and proceeded to do yard work until 7:30pm.

Minor aside:  My largest purchase of the day was a quick visit before close at Cloud City Games, less than five minutes from my Mom's.  No free stuff, but I did grab a D&D 3rd Edition Orc blister, some more color-coded dice for Fistful of Lead, and, after missing on two racks at two of the game stores, the newer smaller bottle of my liquid crack, Citadel Seraphim Sepia wash.  I didn't grab the receipt, but I assume it's the same horrible overpriced amount, but upon further inspection, they're violating certain laws, possibly legal, definitely physics.

I'm trying to be generous and understanding, even to the bastards at Games Workshop, the smaller container does not/should not contain more volume, either metric or Imperial, so how do they math this?