Free RPG Day is one of my favorite events of the year. It helps spread the word about roleplaying games, gives new players a chance to try out games for themselves, and it supports local game shops. It’s a win-win all around.
This event means even more to me because, for the last three years, a game I’ve created has been included in 9th Level Games‘ flagship Free RPG Day publication, Level 1.
Each year, the Level 1 anthology has a different theme. Last year’s was “How the West Was Lost,” and this year’s was “Stand Up!”
I highly recommend checking it out. The absolute variety of games and play styles inspired by that simple spark of inspiration — Stand Up! — shows the versatility of roleplaying games as well as the immense creativity of game designers in the community.
Whether the game focused on comedy or protest, last stands or first laughs, creators took those words in all sorts of entertaining directions. I’m proud to once again be included among those eclectic and talented folks.
All the proceeds from this treasure trove of gaming fun go towards the Level Up Fund, a charitable endeavor intended to grant game designers free use of 9th Level Games’ Polymorph game system, encouraging creators to continue creating games all year round! (You can click here to learn more about the Level Up Fund and its endeavors.)
Next year’s games will all be centered around Romantasy, so I’m excited to see where designers take all the tropes wrapped up in that literary genre.
Be sure to click one of those links to check out the creative minds featured in Level 1. You won’t be disappointed.
Just a quick post today to remind you that Free RPG Day is tomorrow, Saturday, June 27th!
Legitimately one of my favorite gaming-centric days of the year, Free RPG Day is all about building the RPG community. Game companies send freebies to local game shops and hobby shops all over!
And it literally helps everybody:
Local game shops get more foot traffic, hosting events and getting more eyes on all the products and services they offer.
Game companies introduce their games to new audiences, either through free adventures to try out (often being run in-house at those local hobby shops!) or through Quickstart versions of their games, giving a sample of what their game has to offer in a smaller, easily-digestible presentation.
Customers get freebies to expand their knowledge of the hobby, and often game shops run events and sales to capitalize on customer interest. Plus there’s always the chance of making new friends and discovering a new favorite game.
This year, loads of companies are taking part in the Free RPG Day festivities, although what’s available will vary from store to store.
You could find Quickstart versions for games like The Crooked Moon, Wizard Riders, Age of Vikings, Arkham Horror, Dungeons & Kittens, Vaesen, and Root, giving you a marvelous cross-section of different RPG worlds and play styles to choose from!
There could also be one-shot adventures for Cosmere RPG, Daggerheart, Everyday Heroes, Pirate Borg, Kobold Press, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Pathfinder, Starfinder, and more, offering a sample of adventure, horror, excitement, derring-do, and communal storytelling to try out!
You can visit the Free RPG Day website to find a participating store near you and to check out previews from all the companies taking part in the event.
And make sure to follow the #FreeRPGDay hashtag on Twitter and Bluesky, as lots of companies have discounts and freebies online as well!
Please keep your eyes peeled for this year’s edition of the Level 1 Anthology, offered by 9th Level Games. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a particular theme. Last year’s edition was all about the end of the Wild West. This year’s edition is about Stand Up.
This project is close to my heart because I have a game featured in this year’s collection! (It’s called Pip, Pip, Cheerio: A Game of Last Words and Last Stands and it’s about remaining defiant, sometimes comedically so, in front of a firing squad.)
This event is being held both in-person and online, with four themed puzzles and two themeless/freestyle puzzles to challenge solvers. The list of constructors for this year’s event is quite impressive: Andrea Carla Michaels, Byron Walden, Mark Axel, Rebecca Goldstein, Sarah Sinclair, Sophia Maymudes, Mallory Montgomery, and Zhou Zhang.
The event itself is happening on July 26th in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and is sure to be a great time.
Man, we’ve got Westwords in June, Boswords in July, Lollapuzzoola in August, and Midwest in October! Tournaments galore!
International Day of Play!
June 11th marks the third annual International Day of Play!
The United Nations, through UNICEF, created International Day of Play in 2024 to raise awareness of how important the act of playing is to the development and well-being of children.
This year’s theme for International Day of Play is “Protect play, protect childhood.”
Play is so important for all of us. It fosters relationship building and cooperation, reinforces friendly competition and concepts of right and wrong, and maintains that childlike love and whimsy that comes with play that so many of us, young and old, must hold onto at all costs in a world that is so often unkind, unfriendly, and unfair.
You can find out more about International Day of Play on UNICEF’s website.
Free RPG Day is coming soon!
Last, but certainly not least, Free RPG Day is Saturday, June 27th.
The concept behind Free RPG Day is simple. All over the world (but mostly in the United States), local game shops, hobby shops, and other outlets team up with RPG publishers to distribute new, fresh, and most importantly, free material for all sorts of different roleplaying games, systems, and settings.
Sometimes they’re quickstart versions of the games to introduce new players. Sometimes they’re exclusive adventures or modules to play either in-store or at home. Othertimes, they’re entirely new games, free of charge.
Not only can you receive a wealth of new ideas and playing options in one fell swoop, but it serves as a terrific way to meet fellow roleplayers and build a community of game enthusiasts.
You can click this helpful link to find local spots near you that are participating in Free RPG Day, and I would highly recommend searching online for local game shops, game cafes, and even community centers like your local public library to see who is participating.
These shops will often be running demonstrations of games, tutorials on how to play, hosting raffles and contests, and offering terrific sale prices to encourage you to find the game that fits you best.
Every year, dozens of companies get involved, not only to encourage the growth of the game world, but to promote their own products. And what better way is there to get people hooked than with free exclusive materials begging to be tried out?
Keep your eyes peeled for this year’s edition of the Level 1 Anthology, offered by 9th Level Games. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a particular theme. Last year’s edition was all about the end of the Wild West. This year’s is about Stand Up.
This project is close to my heart because I had games featured in the previous two years’ Level 1 collections, and I also have a game featured in this year’s collection!
Free RPG Day is one of my favorite events of the year. It helps spread the word about roleplaying games, gives new players a chance to try out games for themselves, and it supports local game shops. It’s a win-win all around.
This event means even more to me because, for the last two years, a game I’ve created has been included in 9th Level Games‘ flagship Free RPG Day publication, Level 1.
Each year, the Level 1 anthology has a different theme. Last year’s was programming, and this year’s was How the West Was Lost.
I highly recommend checking it out. The absolute variety of games and play styles inspired by that simple spark of inspiration — How the West Was Lost — shows the versatility of roleplaying games as well as the immense creativity of game designers in the community! I’m proud to once again be included among those eclectic and talented folks.
All the proceeds from this treasure trove of gaming fun will go towards the Level Up Fund, a charitable endeavor intended to grant game designers free use of 9th Level Games’ Polymorph game system, encouraging creators to continue creating games all year round!
Whether you’re a veteran of many roleplaying campaigns, someone who has dabbled in a few dice-rolling sessions, or a total newcomer to the RPG hobby, one of the best days of the year is fast approaching.
The concept behind Free RPG Day is simple. All over the world (but mostly in the United States), local game shops, hobby shops, and other outlets team up with RPG publishers to distribute new, fresh, and most importantly, free material for all sorts of different roleplaying games, systems, and settings.
Sometimes they’re quickstart versions of the games to introduce new players. Sometimes they’re exclusive adventures or modules to play either in-store or at home. Othertimes, they’re entirely new games, free of charge.
Not only can you receive a wealth of new ideas and playing options in one fell swoop, but it serves as a terrific way to meet fellow roleplayers and build a community of game enthusiasts.
You can click this helpful link to find local spots near you that are participating in Free RPG Day, and I would highly recommend searching online for local game shops, game cafes, and even community centers like your local public library to see who is participating.
These shops will often be running demonstrations of games, tutorials on how to play, hosting raffles and contests, and offering terrific sale prices to encourage you to find the game that fits you best.
Every year, dozens of companies get involved, not only to encourage the growth of the game world, but to promote their own products. And what better way is there to get people hooked than with free exclusive materials begging to be tried out?
Keep your eyes peeled for this year’s edition of the Level 1 Anthology, offered by 9th Level Games. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a particular theme. Last year’s edition was all about programming. This year’s is about the end of the Wild West.
This project is close to my heart because I had a game featured in last year’s Level 1 collection, and I also have a game featured in this year’s collection!
At the start of the pandemic in 2020, game companies around the world rallied around their customers, offering discounts, producing print-and-play versions of their games, and creating new online variants of their games to allow for Zoom play or remote play.
It was a remarkable effort at a very trying time, one that many board game enthusiasts like myself remember warmly.
So, five years later, as this baffling tariff war threatens the industry as a whole, we’re seeing the board game industry again roll with the punches and work with the audience to survive.
Some are having “tariff sales” at deep discounts to help clear inventory, gauge audience interest in certain games, or create a cash bumper to help them weather the uncertain tariff storms.
Others are making PDFs more available to customers, helping mitigate both prices for the audience and reduce production costs for the company.
Today, I want to highlight a few companies that have gone beyond that, offering free products for customers to enjoy.
Yes, they would obviously rather that you visit their shops and pay for PDFs or physical copies, but the fact that they have free board game libraries AT ALL is worthy of attention and admiration.
Every year, dozens of roleplaying game companies create Free RPG Day handouts for game stores to offer fans. Sometimes they’re quickstart versions of the games to introduce new players. Sometimes they’re exclusive adventures or modules to play either in-store or at home. Othertimes, they’re entirely new games, free of charge.
For five years now, 9th Level Games has created their own Free RPG Day offering, the Level 1 Anthology. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a theme. Last year’s edition was all about programming. This year’s is about the end of the wild west.
You can visit your friendly local game shop on June 21st this year to pick your physical copy of the game.
9th Level Games is one of my favorite RPG companies — making classics like Kobolds Ate My Baby!, Mazes, Return to Dark Tower, and The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl — and I’m proud to have a game featured in last year’s Level 1 collection as well as a game in this year’s upcoming collection. Please check out both the freebies and the full lineup of games on their website.
A company called Cheapass Games launched with a very simple idea: they only give you what you need to play the game. No reselling you tokens and dice and chips and fake money that you can already borrow from other games. Just what you need to play their games. It was affordable and brilliant.
They’ve created some of my all-time favorite board games, including:
–The Big Idea (can you put two cards together to make a silly product and market it to your investors/other players?) –Kill Doctor Lucky (can you eliminate the luckiest man alive?) –Unexploded Cow (can you combine unexploded World War II ordnance and mad cows to turn a profit?) –U.S. Patent Number 1 (can your time machine beat other time machines to the day the patent office opened and claim the very first patent?)
I know that the prices of D&D books can seem daunting these days, but what you might not know is that there are publicly available rulesets for you to enjoy right now! You can use their own quickstart rules, as well as the advice on DnDBeyond.com to delve into building your own game world free of charge!
If Dungeons & Dragons is still a little intimidating, no worries! Have you ever tried a one-page RPG?
Rowan, Rook, and Decard offers a brilliant library of RPG games at all price levels, and many of their one-page RPGs designed by Grant Howitt are Pay What You Want. It’s a delightfully affordable way to try out the hobby without breaking the bank! (There’s also a free RPG section!)
Want to play bears planning the perfect crime? Try Honey Heist.
You’d be amazed at what’s out there for gamers on a budget if you just know where to look. Please support any and all of these companies where you can. They’re helping keep the hobby alive, affordable, and exciting.
PuzzCulture 