Free RPG Day Loot Report!

Yeah, yeah. I realize that Free RPG Day was several weeks ago. Yeah, I'm a little late at getting my loot report done. Y'all who know me well know that there's some serious negative juju going on in my professional life right now. Unfortunately that has to take precedence sometimes.

So, without further ado, here's what MY haul looked like at 5:00 p.m. on Free RPG Day 2013: First off, I took my kids with me to ensure a "shotgun" approach to gathering loot. Our FLGS allows two items per person; even though I'm well known by the staff, I try not to take advantage of that...at least, an advantage obvious to other customers, that is. As in past years, many of the publishers provide PDF versions of the Free RPG Day offerings after the fact (where available, I've included links to legal PDF copies of the materials as well.); I still prefer to get hard copies of these where- and whenever possible. For one, I like holding and reading printed materials; for another, the post-Free RPG Day offerings are not always free after the fact.

Starting at the upper left, we have the Hall of Bones adventure from Frog God Games, for the Sword & Wizardry ruleset. I haven't had a chance to go through this one yet.

Next to that there's Paizo Publishing's follow-up to last year's We Be Goblins!, the cleverly-named We Be Goblins Too!. This was one of the titles that I was particularly excited to get. I enjoyed last year's offering and this one, at first glance, appears to be as fun and interesting as the first. Unfortunately, my gaming group has no interest in playing goblins...so, this seems destined for good NPC fodder. In fact, our current DM is running an orc/goblin-centric campaign right now. I may just have to pass this off to him for inspiration.

Finishing the top row, there's Goodman Games' RPG offering. Like last year, they have stuffed two good modules within these two covers. One is a DCC adventure for 1st-level characters. The other is a Pathfinder Xcrawl adventure. This one is going to be milked for inspiration for sure.

The second row has the Flying Buffalo T&T Adventure Fire Dwarves of Zorr and Troll Lord Games' C&C Adventure A Pot of Broken Bones and Halfling Broth. Both of these are destined to be mined for inspiration for 3.x. The next two items are also for inspiration...I just have to find the correct Sci-Fi/Space Opera game system. Fantasy Flight Games' Edge of the Empire and Catalyst Games' flipbook for Shadowrun and Battletech. (This one will be doubly useful, as one of my gaming buddies wants to start working on a Mech game of his own.)

The last two are two others that were the reason for my foray into the shop: Lamentations of the Flame Princess' Better Than Any Man and James Porter Jr.'s NeoExodus Temple of the Forbidden God. I have plenty of lizardmen just waiting to come out of hibernation. I even recommended Better Than Any Man to a teenager who was struggling over what to pick out; his mother was standing there looking lost. Her advice was "Pick something that you think looks like something Dad didn't pick out himself." He had this one in his hand and I told him that Raggi's products were all pretty sound and quality. It wasn't until I was on my way home myself that I noticed the "18+" tag on the module.

Oops.

Still, though, it's impressive and amazing that Raggi puts out a book--yes, a literal BOOK--of this size for a Free RPG offering. Usually you can count on a dozen pages. This thing FAR exceeds it at 96 pages. NINETY-SIX. That's EIGHT DOZEN pages. Plus the cover is removable and contains a map on the inside.

Hopefully the kids' mom will forgive that anonymous "dirty old man" in the FLGS....

About an hour after leaving the FLGS, I received a phone call to inform me of the results of the in-store prize drawing: my oldest daughter's entry won the collapsible dice tower from Blue Panther. She, of course, gifted it to me out of the goodness of her heart. Then the manager laughed and told me I'd won the grand prize: the massive hardcover DCC RPG. Needless to say I was pretty psyched. (Of course, I may have to look at selling or re-gifting, because I'm not sure how much re-purposing I can do with this, and my game group isn't too OSR-friendly nowadays.

Finally, as some of you may know, I have an addition to dice. Dice. That's right I said: dice. Ahh, the mere word sends my heart racing and my hands shaking. Dice. DICE.

Did I tell you I like dice?

Well, the managers also know of my love of dice and when I went in to pick up our family's my winnings, he slipped me these little beauties. I really liked last year's offerings--a complete set (or nearly complete in my case)--mostly because I don't have a lot of uses for d6s. But they're pretty. And he even slipped me a second Q-Workshop for my daughter, who loves yellow. She "squeeed" just a bit at the gift.

Whew. All in all, a pretty successful Free RPG Day this year. I'm not sure I can match it. I was constantly reminded, throughout the day, of the generosity I felt from my fellow gamers last year, all those who were able to grab up extras at their respective FLGS for my library.

[From the Mailbag] Gamer Generosity

I've tried to write this blog entry a dozen times and I've deleted my efforts just as many times.

You see, I want to express my gratitude to several people and I want to laud the generosity of the RPG blogging community. But at the same time, I worry that others will try and take advantage of the same generosity for which I'm so grateful.

In the end, I've decided that I have to go ahead and make my thank-yous and count on the same gamer goodness that spawned this entry in the first place.

Now that my dithering is out of the way, I guess I should explain myself.

I've mentioned recently that my father passed away in June 2011. A year later, my mother decided it was time to pick out a headstone design and get it installed on the grave site. She enlisted the help of my older brother and myself and set up an appointment with the monument company's designer.

The problem: the appointment fell on the same day as Free RPG Day 2012: June 16. I'd waited a year for this date and found that I could do nothing to accommodate both my familial duty and my hobby cravings. I resigned myself to missing out and relying on the release of free PDFs from some of my desired Free RPG day materials. I explained my predicament online in a couple places and took care of my mother on the day in question.

I've spent the last 18 months or so in a spiral of depression. My father's passing did nothing to help the spiral; problems at the Firm and with my family's finances have piled additional weight on my shoulders. My back isn't broken, but the straw of missing Free RPG Day this year was close to a final one.

And then something happened, something that strengthened my faith in humanity and reassured me that the RPG community is full of good-hearted and caring individuals.

I had three friends respond to me...people that I know only from online correspondence, people that I have never met face to face. These three friends took it upon themselves to share with me their Free RPG Day bounty. In fact, I received an extra bit of gaming goodness that took the act of kindness to a level above and beyond.

Once the envelopes arrived, this is what my desk looked like.

1. Q-Workshop Free RPG Day 2012 Forest Dice (d4, d8, d10, d20, d100)
   
2. Harn Map, by Columbia Games
   
3. Dead in the Eye, by Wizards of the Coast
   
4. Cosmic Patrol Quickstart, by Catalyst Games
   
5. Dungeon Crawl Classics Free RPG Day 2012 Module, by Goodman Games
   
6. Dawn of the Scarlet Sun, by Paizo
   
7. Cardboard Heroes: Castles Walls and Towers, by Steve Jackson Games

Most of these items were on my "Wanted" checklist for the purpose of teaching my kids to game. Because of the generosity of others, I can do it.

I want to thank the three individuals publicly; in the spirit of effective alms-giving, I want to keep them anonymous, however. They know who they are, and hopefully they know how grateful I am to their kindness. They went out of their way to help a friend who was unable to help himself. I do not think that I could find the words sufficient to show my gratitude to them. At the least, I can try and pass along the kindness to others in the community in the future.

Thank you my friends. You've given me a bit more than simply RPG products. You've given me some hope and faith. The depression isn't gone, but this experience has thrown me a little life preserver.