At least we will be visiting many Hobby stores that I have never visited before. Hopefully we will be able to score something, either a freebee or some cool OOP items.

I called our local Hobby Shop today and asked if they were participating and they had never heard anything . They have 4 stores around the state and the only store listed on the Free RPG is the Bloomington one. The other local gaming store isn't participating either.

The goal of Free RPG Day as stated by Impressions was to get "lapsed" RPG players interested in gaming again.

My personal goal with participating in Free RPG Day was to get word out about the Wilderlands of High Adventure and Castles & Crusades to as many people as possible, new gamers or old, RPG players or not.

As editor of a magazine and a website, I earn my living based on advertising (I've also worked in advertising, marketing, and public relations in this industry for more than a decade... yeah, you might see why I'm cynical and bitter at times).

As far as RPGs go, this is one of the best ways to advertise. You actually get a sample of your product in players hands. Hopefully, they will actually play with the product. Ideally, they will enjoy it and desire more products of the same sort.

Whether it will work... I dunno. The market right now is so fractured, and the economy stinking so badly, I have no idea if it will work, and if it does, how well it will work.

I gotta say I'm real nervous about who is actually going to get these products... if they simply disappear into store employee/owner hands for sale on eBay, that would suck big time. If that happens extensively, there's no way in hell I'll participate next year, success or no, unless the retailers are paying for the products...

jamesmishler wrote:I gotta say I'm real nervous about who is actually going to get these products... if they simply disappear into store employee/owner hands for sale on eBay, that would suck big time. If that happens extensively, there's no way in hell I'll participate next year, success or no, unless the retailers are paying for the products...

As a store owner and a collector, I will admit I did skim off the top for my collection and then I used some to bribe a friend to run a game in store tomorrow, but I still have 65 items to give away.

jamesmishler wrote:The goal of Free RPG Day as stated by Impressions was to get "lapsed" RPG players interested in gaming again.

My personal goal with participating in Free RPG Day was to get word out about the Wilderlands of High Adventure and Castles & Crusades to as many people as possible, new gamers or old, RPG players or not.

As editor of a magazine and a website, I earn my living based on advertising (I've also worked in advertising, marketing, and public relations in this industry for more than a decade... yeah, you might see why I'm cynical and bitter at times).

As far as RPGs go, this is one of the best ways to advertise. You actually get a sample of your product in players hands. Hopefully, they will actually play with the product. Ideally, they will enjoy it and desire more products of the same sort.

Whether it will work... I dunno. The market right now is so fractured, and the economy stinking so badly, I have no idea if it will work, and if it does, how well it will work.

I gotta say I'm real nervous about who is actually going to get these products... if they simply disappear into store employee/owner hands for sale on eBay, that would suck big time. If that happens extensively, there's no way in hell I'll participate next year, success or no, unless the retailers are paying for the products...

For the record I think it's a great idea.  Whether or not the stores plan to do their part isn't really something the publisher can control.  IMO, and this is just me, a possible solution would be to devalue the worth of any such free game item to the point that "hoarding" copies for online sales, say, would not be effective.  Doing this would require either printing tons of copies to flood the market, or releasing the items as free pdfs the day after.  
 Anytime a "collectible" is released in a limited quantity under specific conditions, there is a type of mentality that takes over...seen with Beanie Babies, for example.  
  C&C seems like a really, really cool product. I really hope this takes off.  I know I'll be buying most of the supplements.

Mike B.

I'm with the group that thinks this is a great idea. A publisher cannot help if a gaming store owner doesn't promote the event, or stashes ALL the goodies for resale on ebay, or is an idiot and shoots himself in the foot. But eventually, the free market will take care of this, and bozo X will go out of business.

(While there might be some bad apples that take advantage of the free RPG day publishers, they are, IMHO, the exceptions.)

It would behoove us as customers to note that the publishers are all taking an finanacial hit to do a favor to the stores and the customers. You think James has money to drop on 10,000 copies of his wilderlands city?

Heck no. That's money out of his pocket, and, in this day and age, we should all be disabused of the idea that most RPG publishers have money to burn. This is true of most the publishers in the free rpg day group (with perhaps the exception of White Wolf).

They all are owner operated, with the owners taking a hit by providing free product, in the hopes that it might aid game stores' chances of survival in the age of the internet.

And finally, it would behoove the publishers, IMHO, to recognize that any these disaffected posts are just from players who desperately want your product. We might not have said it in that way, but if we're pissed that we can't find random copy of product X, it is just because we love your line so much.

So, thank you, James and Co., and please do Free RPG day again next year, and if possible, find a way to make it bigger.

First post. First rant. Not a good omen of things to come.

jamesmishler wrote:I gotta say I'm real nervous about who is actually going to get these products... if they simply disappear into store employee/owner hands for sale on eBay, that would suck big time.

If this does happen again next year, perhaps all of the products could be shipped to a single publisher and then shrinkwrapped or securely bagged as sets so that all of the swag is given out to a customer.   If I can get only one or a few pieces per store, then I'll have the DCC module and the Castles and Crusades rules and not much else.  

I'll STFU since I am commenting from ignorance and the peanut gallery . . .

James, you and the others have cojones to get involved with this endeavor.  Now the RPG community will have a single data point (better than nothing) with which to gauge future promotions.

I just called the FLGS and they've never heard of it. The first question was: "is this officially sanctioned by WotC?" Seems the store only supports RPGA events like "Worldwide D&D Day." Lame.

Just means you'll have to put out more products before you get your own category.

ShaneG.

Damn it! The stupid NKG website took half an hour to process the step after the shipping method selection so, by the time it finally loaded, I'd lost the DCC from my cart. Whatever. Should NOT have taken that f'n long to load the page, and it was NOT my side of the link. Needless, I'm pissed, but not at them. I just think it sucks beyond belief. Oh well. So goes collecting life for me... dangle it before my eyes, let me think I might have a chance, and then let someone else steal it away. Damnit.