Happy Free RPG Day!

So today is Free RPG Day, a game industry promotion based on the comics industry’s successful Free Comic Book Day promo. Publishers create sample products, which are distributed to participating game stores and given away, allowing gamers and would-be gamers the opportunity to try out some new things, find out what’s out there, and learn about what’s in the works.

Green Ronin’s contribution is our A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying Quick-Start; a complete (abbreviated) set of rules, sample characters, and a short adventure for playing SIFRP. (It’ll also be available as a free PDF on our website sometime in the next couple weeks.)

Check out the list of participating stores to find one near you and check out the various offerings. Chances are you might find a fun new game or product you didn’t know about!

[RPG] Worlds in Sixty-Four Pages

Sometimes (like today) I miss 64-page RPGs. You may know the ones, from the early days of the hobby, when an entire RPG came in the form of a 64-page, saddle-stiched (which is to say, stapled) booklet in a box. Oftentimes, there would be a 32-page adventure along with it, or maps, or other components (dice, counters, and whatnot), but the core, the essence, of the entire game would be contained in that 64-page book.

Many of mine became dog-eared, their covers intended with thumb- and finger-marks from holding them so often. I’ve still got most of them, games like Gamma World, Villains & Vigilantes, Champions (the second edition, before they went with a square-bound single book), Boot Hill, Top Secret (before S.I.), Marvel Super-Heroes, Star Froniters, and, of course, the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set(s). Those games packed whole worlds of fun and adventure into those booklets, and still do, in many ways.

Now, I’m not making judgments about more recent RPGs, with their hardcover “core rules” with hundreds of glossy, full-color pages. Hey, I’ve written or contributed to more than a few of them. Still, there are times when I get nostalgic for those booklets, for games smaller than many typical magazines these days. I know part of it is because, as the saying goes, “the Golden Age of adventure is around age 12,” and so, too, was the Golden Age of gaming, in many ways; my Golden Age of gaming, anyway (my “Silver Age” of gaming was around age 16, I’d say).

It’s no small feat, what those early game designers accomplished, fitting worlds into 64 pages. In some ways, we designers weened on their work are still catching up.