Free RPG Day

[Nikosandros]

I' don't think that that any store in Rome participates. The RPG market here is comatose (to put it charitably) and I was actually pleasantly surprised to learn that my friend's gaming store would carry 5e.

That said, there are on-line venues (line Noble Knight) that allow us foreigners to get some of this items...

 

[darjr]

We had a great day. I played in one totally new game "Gods Fall" and ran Dungeon Crawl Classics.

I had an emergency in the middle of the day and couldn't run the Pathfinder event so I rescheduled for this Wednesday. In fact until August I'm going to run one of the FreeRPG day adventures every wednesday.

There were new people to the store and lots of old hats, many who haven't gamed with each other, gamed. It was fun.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Unfortunately, none of the gaming stores near me participated this year. The closest one that did is a 45 minute drive away. By the time I spent the gas on that, the RPG wouldn't effectively be "free" anymore.

 

[Alzrius]

I picked up the three that I usually grab when this wonderful holiday rolls around: the offerings from Paizo, Goodman, and LotFP.

Having skimmed them, the Paizo adventure was of their usual high quality, but nothing particularly standout, though it makes a good lead-in to the current AP.

I enjoyed the Goodman one for its presentation of XCrawl, which is a delightfully "Xtreme!" setting; the DCC adventure was good also, but too short. I'm planning on picking up the core rulebook for that at Gen Con, but this adventure didn't seem to be making enough of a case for it.

But for the second year in a row, the "winner" of Free RPG Day - if you can call it that - was James Raggi and LotFP, which continue to come across as iconoclastic rock stars of the tabletop community (at least to me).

The back of his adventure, which is titled Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children, is one big middle finger to the stores that didn't carry the LotFP Free RPG Day adventure from last year (Better Than Any Man) in general, and to one store in particular, and it's awesome. He says how many stores wouldn't carry the adventure, and one store in particular said that it was about killing children; it wasn't, but, says Raggi, if that's what people expect to see, then that's what he'll give them. Hence this year's adventure being about the killing of ("monster") children.

The adventure itself is completely insane, as it's a weird-medieval European adventure to investigate some missing children, which rapidly comes to feature psychic crystals, incomprehensible aliens, and capricious inhuman gods...not to mention dozens of different ways for your characters to die or otherwise be completely and utterly screwed. It's magnificent.

I think I need to buy Lamentations of the Flame Princess just to support this guy.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Unfortunately, none of the gaming stores near me participated this year. The closest one that did is a 45 minute drive away. By the time I spent the gas on that, the RPG wouldn't effectively be "free" anymore.

To add a little more to this...

This is just one more example of the many reasons I don't patronize my area FLGS as much as I used to. I can deal with paying a little more for products for convenience, but it's up to them to provide the convenience part - having things in stock, being open during hours when working people can shop, etc. Even when handed a great program to draw more people in, the ones around me just completely ignored it. If I had gone in to get a free product, I would have purchased something. There has to be some reason to give them my patronage instead of ordering online (where most things are cheaper). They have to make SOME effort.

 

[TarionzCousin]

But for the second year in a row, the "winner" of Free RPG Day - if you can call it that - was James Raggi and LotFP, which continue to come across as iconoclastic rock stars of the tabletop community (at least to me).

The back of his adventure, which is titled Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children, is one big middle finger to the stores that didn't carry the LotFP Free RPG Day adventure from last year (Better Than Any Man) in general, and to one store in particular, and it's awesome. He says how many stores wouldn't carry the adventure, and one store in particular said that it was about killing children; it wasn't, but, says Raggi, if that's what people expect to see, then that's what he'll give them. Hence this year's adventure being about the killing of ("monster") children.

The adventure itself is completely insane, as it's a weird-medieval European adventure to investigate some missing children, which rapidly comes to feature psychic crystals, incomprehensible aliens, and capricious inhuman gods...not to mention dozens of different ways for your characters to die or otherwise be completely and utterly screwed. It's magnificent.

I think I need to buy Lamentations of the Flame Princess just to support this guy.

Wow. That sounds weirdly intriguing. I want to track this down.

 

[Wycen]

It was my perspective, possibly flawed, that Free RPG Day has some fatigue in the SF Bay Area.

I checked the retail locator and found the 2 most likely places I would go to were Games of Berkeley and Black Diamond Games. Anything else required a navigational aide or paying a toll. In previous years Endgame in Oakland and d20 in Alameda participated, but I believe Endgame doesn't think the cost-benefit is worth it. In the past I might have used Free RPG Day as an excuse to visit new game stores or places I don't ordinarily hit, but not this year.

Since I got a late start, I decided to drive to BDG first, since that's out in Concord. I got there to find most of what I wanted was gone, but I picked up the Lamentations of the Flame Princess product and the Goodman Games weird multi-product thing that I still haven't really bothered to do more than flip through.

Then on my way back I stopped by GoB. I got there around 5 pm and by that time either they had given everything out or it was hidden away behind the counter or down in the basement. The only reason I even suspect there may have been something was due to a sign on the counter with something about a Free RPG game being run earlier/later, (plus the aforementioned retail locator). I didn't bother to ask because when I looked for the one thing I wanted to buy, the Paizo condition card deck, they didn't have a copy. If I'm going to buy it, I'll get it at Black Diamond.