Monday 17 November 2014

Bargains for grown-ups


Until 20th November the Teach Your Kids to Game Week sale is on at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.
This is a good chance pick up Numenera, Dragon Warriors and Mouse Guard at half price. I can never scroll past Bean D2 without a grin.



Cheap and trending is the Hero Kids range covering many genres and tropes.

Although they are not in the sale itself, as the price is already reduced, I think my own Inked Adventures Blocks would be fun to assemble with children - it's cube-based paper-crafting, simple enough for parents and uncles with large thumbs.  (Inked Adventures main site)

It's certainly worth trawling the free product lists if you're looking for one-off pieces for gaming session with children, especially when it comes to free samples of tiles, character sheets, introductory rules.  Cutting out simpler tiles and drawing plans or maps is great way to explore art, imagination and maybe a little maths with the young 'uns (or so I am told, because it's been a while since I've kidnapped friends' children...) 

The OBS sites seem to be doing a lot of themed sales these days as well as the seasonal ones. I'm fighting a personal sense of jadedness, much like that which I associate with the push-push-push last-chance-to-pledge Kickstarters. So as a shopper and affiliate I am trying to see beyond my own banner fatigue and just root out the types of PDFs I would normally buy.

Publishers have embraced the Pay-What-You-Want category with gusto, but upon closer inspection on DriveThru, I'm finding that on the descriptions many of those titles are intended as "free".  I suspect some publishers who would normally be submitting a product to the Free category are submitting products to this new category as a way of maximising time on the front page. A while back publishers, including myself were asked by the owners of the OBS sites to refrain from one-dollar-app style marketing, because of the transaction costs incurred by the sites. Does donation culture really work in this context?

Eep.  I must go. My partner's cat needs some attention.  Why is there not a "Teach Cats to Game Week"?   ;)