I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure how to
handle this piece. My intention was to write about spending a day at my
friendly local game store (FLGS) and how I spent free rpg day. A problem
occurred that makes that a bit difficult. However, I’ll get to that a bit
later.
First, what is free rpg day? Well,
almost ten years ago, several members of the gaming community came together and
created free rpg day. It is a celebration of role play games and the community
that supports them. Every year groups of game developers and publishers create
special adventures, products, and suplements for their games and make them
available through the free rpg program. FLGSs order a box, I’m unclear on if it
costs anything. Once they receive it, they set up the day, arrange people, like
myself to, to run demo games. People come to the store and spend the day
learning new games, playing old favorites, and spending time relaxing with
friends.
This year I was asked to run an
adventure, I chose to run a module from Through the Breach, which had been
included by Wyrd Miniatures. Through the Breach is a game set in the 1800’s
it’s a *deep breath* Victorian, western, gothic, Lovecraftian, fantasy, horror,
bayou, wuxia, comedy setting. *breath out* I really like the game, it focuses
on story telling over character stats and has a bunch of fun little systems
built into it.
I got to Epic Loot in Centerville and
set about getting ready to play. There was a small amount of worry in that no
one had set up for my session. However, that ended up not being an issue. We
had several people who had wanted to play, sit down and join me at the table.
This was fine with me. I then got to spend the next few hours introducing five
new people to a new game they had never played. In this instance, the group was
playing a team of miners nearing the end of their shift when the mine is
invaded by a group of molemen. I’m not going to say too much more in case
someone reading this will play it one day. We had fun, everyone got to
experience the different characters, some of the classes, and a few of the
skills and abilities from the game. In the end at least one person purchased
the rule books for the game for his home group. Everyone got a copy of the
module. It was a ton of fun.
After that I went from the person
running the game to someone playing the game. I sat in on a game of 13thAge.
13th Age, is a fantasy adventure with wizards, knights, and archers.
You fight monsters and battle the forces of evil. All of the characters seem to
start with a high level of power and an impressive amount of ability. The game
is built around your character doing massive amounts of damage and feeling
pretty bad ass about it.
We started in a tavern that was
suddenly invaded by skeletons. I’, not going to say much about this game
either. This is partially to avoid spoilers and partially because this is where
that problem I mentioned earlier came in.
I have a couple of medical issues
that cause me to go off if my blood sugar goes too far in the wrong direction.
Mid way through the fight my hands got shaky. This was most likely due to
spending a day eating nothing but junk food and snacks. It wasn’t long after
that that I needed to leave to get some real food in me. Sadly, that was the
end of my day. I wasn’t able to return to the store and take part in any more
of the day. My Free rpg experience ended part way through my second game with
my having to leave.
Other than that, it was a good day
and I had tons of fun. I’m looking forward to next year and hope to have a
better amount of food in me so I don’t have to leave early. I hope I get to see
you there.
