Tomorrow, Saturday June 16th is the 6th annual Free RPG Day! Join your fellow gamers and your local gaming shop in celebrating this wonderful hobby of ours. Retailers participating in Free RPG day will be joining with various publishers to teach and demo new and existing games. Whether it’s volunteering to help with the days event or going down to learn some new games and get some cool free swag, head on over and show your support of our great hobby!
To find which retailers in your local area are participating in this event click here.
I have never heard of this.
Is this event a strictly American phenomenon?
I always miss this event. Every… single… year.
The closest game store to me has RPG Night every Wednesday where they demo new games, etc. They may ignore this “Free RPG Day”, because they already do it every week. I know of other game stores that do this too… so anyone who hasn’t already, should check and make sure their game store doesn’t have a regularly scheduled game.
BTW Game stores are notorious at being poor at letting new people know their schedule, as they assume everyone who needs to know already does. I don’t think it’s terrible to suggest that some game store owners do not have the best business acumen… as most store owners in general suffer from the same affliction. I’ve known of game stores with EXCELLENT service as well. But, my local game store (that shall remain unnamed) is not one of them. 🙂
Unfortunately I could not attend this year because of some important family matters I needed to see to, but it really sounds to me like this event needs a little more than a nudge by us the gamers to get the LCS/LGS on board with this. I’m going to see about volunteering my time next year at the local shop so this day that should be celebrated by gamers as a great day for the hobby doesn’t peter out as a meh day that no one really cares about. It also needs more participation… too many stories of “5 hours away” for my taste. 🙁
I always miss it. And apparently my local game store has decided not to get into the free RPG day event. Losers. I need a new game store.
Looks like I didn’t miss out on much. My nearest one was 5hrs drive away. Ah well.
It would have been interesting to check out. Sadly, the 2 I expected to participate did not and the closest ones were to far away.
@Robert
I hear you, that’s disappointing! Maybe next year contact your local comic shop a week or two early and see if they could use some help running the event. Bring your gaming expertise to the community. 🙂 The only ones losing out are the gamers.
I decided to see what the closest place was that was participating….looks like I wouldn’t be in on this even if I wanted to. Driving over a hundred miles one way into the next state just doesn’t seem smart to get something free.
The last time I let an RPG free… it died. Mine have been in captivity too long and can’t survive in the wild. Good luck!
Awesome, thanks for the heads-up on this. It doesn’t look like anywhere too close is participating, but I appreciate the information!
Last year had a Dark Sun adventure. Dark Sun is by far and away my favorite RPG setting. I just love everything about it, so it was an easy sell to get me interested in the adventure. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get a hard copy of it and had to settle for the free PDF. Acceptable, but the real thing is always preferred.
This year – haven’t heard about anything that’s really grabbed me. It’d probably be an easy sell if my RPG group was still meeting.
I believe I’m going to skip this one this year. Last year the local comic shop hosted the event and all they did was lay out free samples on a table. The employees didn’t have a clue about RPGs and the only ones they sold at the store were DnD manuals. This year there isn’t a single store within 50 miles hosting the event.
I have seen and reviewed some thirteen of the titles provided for Free RPG Day. So that was my week! Anyway, you can find all of these reviews at RPG.net:
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/
If you happen to pick something up, would welcome your thoughts, especially if the reviews swayed you.