Knights & Knaves Alehouse

While FREE RPG DAY is a long ways off, now is the time when retailers can begin signing up to participate. It's also a good time to rally your friends at the FLGS to all encourage together (ie. blackmail, just kidding!) the store owner to participate. It's also a good date to add to the calendar to limit the possibility that some other event might interfere. This year's freebies look about the same as always, and I already see some items I am hoping to get.

http://www.freerpgday.com/index.htm?v=2018c

If you don’t mind, you’ll have to walk me through what exactly the point of this is for an oldschooler.

Falconer wrote:If you don’t mind, you’ll have to walk me through what exactly the point of this is for an oldschooler.

No problem. It's a lot like FREE Comic Book Day, if you know what that is, except they give out free rpg items.

If you aren't familiar with FREE Comic Book Day, you look on the FREE RPG DAY web-site about a month from now to look up which retailers near you are participating in this event. The day of the event, you walk and ask for a free item, and they give it to you, no strings attached. Many retailers will allow you to choose your item. Some retailers give customers multiple items. Retailers participate because it helps draw in new customers. Some free items are decent and some are not that great. If you see on the list that there are no retailers near you participating, then you can suggest they do, but they need to sign up at least a month prior to the event, maybe sooner. It's just free stuff for gamers.

Yeah, but none of that crap is old-school in any way.

I'd still like to publish a Free RPG Day OSRIC Quick Start Kit with rules summary, pregens, and a kick-ass adventure sometime before I die.

Allan.

Eh, I dunno. There's a lot on that 2018 list that I couldn't care less about, but there are a couple interesting ones on there: the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu adventure and the Tunnels & Trolls quick start + "Japan Adventure". If those were gone I'd probably go for the Pelgrane Delta Green thing (although I prefer regular CoC to the Gumshoe-based stuff), or one of the dice sets.

I'll keep checking in to see if there will be any old school material, of which I'm sure there will be little or none. However, I will remain hopeful

Every day is free RPG day in Vietnam.

francisca wrote:Yeah, but none of that crap is old-school in any way.

ghendar wrote:I'll keep checking in to see if there will be any old school material, of which I'm sure there will be little or none. However, I will remain hopeful

The way some people approach this event is to get the free stuff, sell it, and use the money for stuff they want. It's not uncommon for some of the items for sell for $15 to $20 each. Just be aware that some people are critical of that approach.

If your local store schedules/allows open gaming, it can be an opportunity to run/play in some old school games. Two years ago on Free RPG Day, I played in an AD&D game (running the beginning of A1) at a local store; last year, an OSRIC game at a different store. I was able to get the DM of the OSRIC game to join up with our regular group for a while before his job sent him overseas.

I have gotten some decent stuff from Free RPG Day before. Even gave away copies of Orcs' Nest at my local store.

Today's the day! Some of the better items are(IMO):

The Dungeon Crawl Classics item is mostly rule-book, but it also has a four-page first level adventure and an 8-page second-level adventure. it's 48 pages-long.
The Numenera Booklet is beautiful with lots of color art and has 32 pages. It has a 19 page adventure inside.
Fifth Edition Fantasy is only 16 pages long, but it's all adventure. The interior is all black and white.
The Cthulhu Confidential/The Fall of Delta Green booklet is the largest by far with 88 pages of goodness. The interior is black & white.
The Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Eldritch Cocks is the only hard-cover item in the mix and is loaded with graphic, mature artwork.
The Overlight item is 28 pages long with lots of color art and maps inside. It's a quality publication.
The Pathfinder module is a quality publication, but it's kinda short at 16 pages with some of that taken up by ads and pre-gens.

Everything else looks mundane/mediocre by comparison. Even if you don't like this stuff, there are people who will trade green pieces of paper for them! Happy hunting!

benjoshua wrote:The Dungeon Crawl Classics item is mostly rule-book, but it also has a four-page first level adventure and an 8-page second-level adventure. it's 48 pages-long.

I never got the appeal of this game. It seems like a retro clone that Michael Curtis seems to do the bulk of writing for.

benjoshua wrote:The Numenera Booklet is beautiful with lots of color art and has 32 pages. It has a 19 page adventure inside.

Seriously? A group invited me to play Numerouno once...and they never asked again.

benjoshua wrote:Fifth Edition Fantasy is only 16 pages long, but it's all adventure. The interior is all black and white.

Fifth edition what? Tunnels & Trolls?

benjoshua wrote:The Cthulhu Confidential/The Fall of Delta Green booklet is the largest by far with 88 pages of goodness. The interior is black & white.

Is this related at all to the RPG from back in the day? Or is it a board game?

benjoshua wrote:The Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Eldritch Cocks is the only hard-cover item in the mix and is loaded with graphic, mature artwork.

I don't care to mix my S&M with D&D.

benjoshua wrote:The Overlight item is 28 pages long with lots of color art and maps inside. It's a quality publication.

I had to look this up. Overlight RPG: A Roleplaying Game of Kaleidoscopic Fantasy. I can't unsee it.

benjoshua wrote:The Pathfinder module is a quality publication, but it's kinda short at 16 pages with some of that taken up by ads and pre-gens.

Yeah, but at 16 pages it would take about 4 weeks to get all of the encounters in it complete...and that is playing 4 hours a day.

MageInBlack wrote:

benjoshua wrote:The Dungeon Crawl Classics item is mostly rule-book, but it also has a four-page first level adventure and an 8-page second-level adventure. it's 48 pages-long.

I never got the appeal of this game. It seems like a retro clone that Michael Curtis seems to do the bulk of writing for.

I ran a DCC game for a year. Not really a retro-clone per se, but I suspect that most people who play older editions of D&D would enjoy it (or at least not hate it).

MageInBlack wrote:

benjoshua wrote:The Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Eldritch Cocks is the only hard-cover item in the mix and is loaded with graphic, mature artwork.

I don't care to mix my S&M with D&D.

I just hate Jim Raggi. Mostly because he's a giant, unsightly cock of a man that's still way too obsessed with genitalia. I DO hope he finally got over his fetish for internationally stalking redheads though.