Free How "free" is free?

We are deluged in offers for free stuff every day. Even if the dollar cost of such items is zero, are they worth our time and attention? Even if they are, will we value them less because we got them for free? These are questions I've been asking myself as I offer something for free in celebration of two years as a coach.

The end of June saw a special milestone for me--the second anniversary of my embarkation on my coaching career. A good time to look back and consider the journey. Only I’ve been so busy I haven’t had much time to do a lot of that. I’ll get to it later, I’m sure.

But I did want to celebrate and thank all the folks who have supported me on the career shift, so I decided to offer some free coaching on Facebook. Today I’ll be doing a random drawing (actually I’m probably going to roll a d20) from among the entrants to determine who wins. I’m pretty excited about it, because it’s always fun to work with a new client and I love helping people. Even for free. Especially for free.

However, I’ve also discovered you have to be careful with Free.

In this day and age, with the ubiquity of internet access, cell phones, and tablets, we’re bombarded by offers for free stuff every day. So much free stuff that if we tried to grab all of it, we’d have little time for anything else. Right away it becomes less than “free” because it is taking up some of our most precious commodity.

Then you’ve got to consider what sort of strings are attached, if any. Maybe I’m too cynical but I tend to think of most free stuff being offered as “free” as those weekend invites to exotic vacation destinations where all you have to do is “sit through a brief opportunity to hear about our time-share!” I’m very wary of that kind of thing; I do nothing of the sort when I’m offering free stuff. I’ll make my money elsewhere.

When I’m providing free coaching, I try my very best to, as a friend of mine calls it, “give with both hands.” That is to say, not withhold anything in the process of giving. I also recall very clearly some advice from my coaching mentor who was extremely generous in the help he gave me when I was getting started. I was worried the free help he was giving me was beginning to border on me taking advantage of his generosity. He said to me:

“Scott, there are two kinds of clients I work with for free. Some are the folks I know are never going to be able to afford what I do. They need the help and can’t afford to pay for it. But helping them is its own reward and I love doing it regardless. The other kind are people who I know are going to be wildly successful. Someday they will need more help and will have plenty of money to pay for it. You’re one of those people.”

I was honored to hear his words and have always kept that concept close to my heart. I like to give as much as I can and just know, while someday it may benefit me monetarily, it’s making me feel fantastic right now. I’ve worked with more than a dozen free clients over the last couple years. Some later became paying clients and some have not. It’s all good.

There’s another aspect of Free I learned about along the way, and it’s something I am quick to tell others: Just because you get something for free, make sure you still appreciate its real value. I’ve had one or two free clients who didn’t seem to take the coaching very seriously. They would miss appointments or not follow through on their weekly goals in ways I doubt they would have if they were paying for the coaching.

What does any of this have to do with our RPG hobby? It’s always been an arena littered with free stuff everywhere you look. People put out all kinds of free stuff, both as professionals and as amatuer passion projects, all the time. And of course most of the GMs I know do it for free. It’s rife with giveaways and creative commons sharing.

How much of this free stuff are you consuming? I don’t think of myself as using a whole lot of it, but then it’s easy to forget all of those times where I think to myself, “Hey I need a character sheet for this game I’m running. Lemme see what I can find on Google Images...” And of course one of my favorite game systems in recent years, Old School Hack, was created entirely for free.

Considering how few RPG products I’m buying most months, I’m usually getting a ton of value from the ones I pay for. I’d like to think I’m valuing those free systems and settings as much as the ones I’m paying for, but it’s a pretty tall order. In a lot of ways it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the concept of “value” when it comes to RPGs because, even with the most expensive ones, I’m usually playing them for enough hours that the cost per hour of fun seems fairly trivial.

And yet, when I go to recommend some of the games I love, like OSH or Risus, to somebody new, I almost always throw in there, “And it’s FREE too.” Clearly I must think that’s important on some level. Maybe I’m just suggesting to them, with the product being free, there is no reason not to give it a try. There are no strings attached.

How do you feel about free products? Which ones do you see value in? Are you more likely to abandon something you got for free?

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've been struck by the number of free rpg products that do seem to waste my time. A good rpg product - free or not, contains new and useful ideas. It used to be that WotC would put out a lot of excellent free content; often web enhancements or small-niche columns like Far Corners of the World or Mind's Eye. Stuff that maybe they wrote while working on other things, and were putting out because it didn't fit in a (not free) book or because they were piloting it for future use. An extra reward for paying customers who check out their site.

They got away from that and started doing more advice and analysis, some of which was good and some of which wasn't, but none of which has the value that actual rules content does.

Nowadays, what I see is a lot of useless stat blocks and maps. Not rules, but stuff someone made with the rules. Gee, thanks. I'll go put that in my campaign, if I don't, you know, have any ideas of my own and if the statblocks are made to fit my style, and my houserules and conventions. Not worth my time. Or we get quickstart guides and the like, which are occasionally decent advertisements, but have no real value as a reward for someone who does own the full game. It's kind of sad when "Free RPG Day" rolls around, and there's nothing even worth the gas I'd spend getting to it.

The good part, though, the ones I see value in are either things like above that add value to games you already bought, or games that are completely free and open from the start, not useless chaff or free things designed to make me a paying customer. The internet allows us to share some great ideas without money changing hands.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I've bought my fair share of RPG books over the past two decades of tabletop gaming. But, when I look back, I realize that I just haven't played most of them. Even stuff I love reading only gets maybe 2-3 plays, because my group is very D&D-centric. So, yeah, I got the Dresden Files RPG, and I absolutely love it, but I've gotten two face to face sessions of it played, and that's it. Looking back at stuff like that makes it very difficult for me now to decide to buy RPGs. I do buy some... but rarely with the real belief that I'll get to play much of anything I buy.

That's why I'm drawn to free RPGs. I get to see the cool rules, read over stuff, and not feel like I've wasted money and space on my bookshelf. That thing is completely full, after all. And if I actually get to play it, all the better! But, I won't hold my breath. So, I'm very keen on free.

 

[trancejeremy]

Yeah, that's the thing, all too often you don't know what you get until you've actually bought it.

With RPGs it seems like you either get a gigantic bargain (if you end up playing it) or it just goes to waste (if you don't).

Free can go a lot way towards avoiding that. Like say a game that gives away its core rules for free as a PDF (or SRD), but if you want it in hardback or a PDF with artwork it costs money.

Or the pay what you want model. Of course the trick there, is people get the whole thing (at least a virtual copy) for free, so there isn't any motive, other than wanting to reward the creator, for going back and paying for it.

 

[Umbran]

I find that the cost of the material doesn't really factor into whether I use it or not. My use of gaming stuff is limited mostly by time - do I (and my group) have time to run a game using it, or not?

 

[Rel]

Umbran, I made a rule for myself about 7 or 8 years ago that I would not buy any RPG product unless I knew FOR SURE that I would use it within the next 6 months. It has served me pretty well. I think most of the time I use that same rule for free RPG products.

Or maybe I only use it for the physical ones. For free downloads and such, I'm more inclined to grab them if I think I might need them later. I've got a lot more virtual space than I do physical space.

 

[Janx]

Outside of gaming, I am suspicious of any kind of "free" promotion. it's almost always a trap. best never open it.

I throw away all the flyers and such I get in the mail. if it ain't a bill, it goes in the trash or shred bin based on its security risk.

I don't do coupons. Coupons seem like free money to people, but they have a cost, even in a free flyer/newspaper. You have to clip them. You have to retain them. You have to remember to use them. You have to carry them with you. that clutter is not worth the $.30 off baked beans I could be saving.

Within gaming, there is very little somebody else can make (and give away for free) that I can't do myself. Since I enjoy making things, I would be depriving myself of fun if I used somebody else's thing.

 

[dafrca]

I think ThirdWizard hit the nail on the head for me. I have a finite amount of time to dedicate to my games. If I spend lots of that time on games and downloads, even if they were "free" it ends up costing me my game time. With limited time, the group tends to want to go back to the core of what made this fun and has little willingness to venture too far from that core.

 

[nedjer]

Free can be spread for free; made commercial for reliable badges/ benchmarking; made PWYW with baseline quality and/ or quantity demonstrated.

It's also maybe helpful to look at what's on offer even when a game doesn't get played and all the content isn't read. A title with new ideas, a different angle or artwork that justifies a relatively modest price in its own right appears to result in high customer satisfaction. I.e. there's something in there that makes a player think my time was well spent.

That's not a suggestion that a lump of lard with a piece of basil on top is OK - novelty likely has to gel to make it clear how it can be used/ connect up to other systems and use at the table.

 

[Rel]

I find that I generally have a similar view to Janx in terms of all those "free" offers I get in the mail. We do sometimes use coupons (though we probably wouldn't if my wife didn't clip them). I do use plenty of bits and pieces of free gaming stuff however.

But I guess it feels like a bit of a shame if I cast too cynical an eye on all that is offered for free. After all, I just offered to give away some free coaching. Do you all think that this was automatically a turnoff for anybody reading my offer? Does it make a difference that I offered it on Facebook where I already have a social connection to those reading the offer? Is there something I could be doing to make it more palatable?