Free RPG Day

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Free RPG Day is an annual promotional event by the tabletop role-playing game industry.[1] The event rules are fairly simple: participating publishers provide special free copies of games to participating game stores; the game store agrees to provide one free game to any person who requests a free game on Free RPG Day.[2]

Shannon Appelcline discussed the comic book Crisis in Raimiton (2004), which was "an 'Adventure Guide to D&D' that Wizards gave away on Free Comic Book Day '04. It told the story of gamers playing D&D, and then the story of the characters they created. Wizards' interest in the free giveaway foreshadowed the industry's interest in a free giveaway day of their own: Free RPG Day."[3]: 91  Appelcline noted that for the game distributor Impressions Advertising & Marketing, their "most successful advertising program is one that continues today: Free RPG Day. Beginning in 2007, Impressions has every year coordinated the give-away of original RPG products in game stores across the country, resulting in considerable buzz and interest in those products — which is exactly what Impressions, an advertising and marketing company, was looking for."[4]: 65 

Inspired by Free Comic Book Day, Free RPG Day was started in 2007. The event was coordinated worldwide by Impressions from 2007 until 2019 when Free RPG Day was acquired by the gaming retailer organization Gaming Days, which has coordinated the event since.[5]

Appelcline noted that "Goodman Games' last stand against the dying d20 market was Free RPG Day 2007. Where most companies were offering up a single product of variable quality, Goodman contributed three different books to Free RPG Day, each one of them a top-quality production."[4]: 90  Paizo Publishing previewed the new GameMastery Modules series with D0: Hollow's Last Hope (2007), which first appeared on June 23, 2007, as part of the initial Free RPG Day.[4]: 218  Flying Buffalo assembled quick-start editions for Tunnels & Trolls for the 2007, 2008, and 2011 Free RPG Days.[3]: 132  Margaret Weis Productions released the Castlemourn Cortex System Quickstart for the 2008 Free RPG Day but then shut down the game line.[6]: 349  Green Ronin previewed their first new role-playing game, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (2009), at Free RPG Day 2008.[4]: 36  Troll Lord Games presented a "quick start" version of Castles & Crusades at each Free RPG Day from 2007–2011 to draw in new players, and Troll Lord also previewed their science fiction role-playing game StarSIEGE: Event Horizon at Free RPG Day 2008.[4]: 50  Pinnacle Entertainment Group presented The Wild Hunt (2011) as a "Savage Worlds Test Drive" at the Free RPG Day 2011.[6]: 292 

Shannon Appelcline outlined that Columbia Games published two adventures for Free RPG Days, Field of Daisies in 2008 and Dead Weight in 2010, but noted that "the latter product was more a teaser than anything. Stores only received one copy of the adventure when they purchased a box of Free RPG Day products; Columbia has since started selling the rest of the print run — and even admonished websites that reviewed Dead Weight as a 'free' release. More recently they produced a map of Hârn (2012) for Free RPG Day 2012."[7]: 240–241 

Related events

Germany's first event was February 2, 2013; it included 9 games. The German version of Free RPG Day is called Gratisrollenspieltag, also known as Gratis Rollenspieltag.[8]

Participation

References

External links

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