Following the leads of Record Store Day (April) and Free Comic Book Day (May), June has Free RPG (role-playing/roleplaying game) Day. Every year, various publishers print “free” material for the numerous stores to give out in the hopes it will gain new fans. I put quotes around the word free because I discovered that the stores who participate pay for the random bundles. I think they receive a substantial discount and the companies take a small loss but it isn’t as high as the stores.
This year I remembered to show up early since the Pathfinder goodie often runs out first. It wasn’t bad for a free adventure, the focus was on their current Adventure Path in the pseudo-Egyptian nation with the pre-made PCs coming from their upcoming supplement debuting more character classes nobody needs. I also went with the die in the picture. It looked pretty cool.
Other stuff? Fudge dice, the Valiant (Comics) RPG, a space opera-like game, a dungeon-crawl adventure from Goodman and a dual-flip-side Shadowrun/BattleTech adventure. Wizards of the Coast was absent. They’re probably too busy prepping their upcoming Fifth Edition of D&D, aka the Too-Little/Too-Late revision.
To show my support for my store, I bought a couple other things to help offset the costs and skepticism over this retail holiday. I think it’s great to raise awareness of the hobby, enticing new players is the lifeblood of everything and it’s very hard in an era filled with video games/computer systems that can “do it better.” Maybe the vendors should look into finding volunteer DM/GMs to run the stuff, demonstrate to kids the difference between electronic button-mashing versus tabletop, they’re both awesome and sometimes analog is superior. Hipsters keep professing this with vinyl, I’m just saying the same with D&D.
