Possibly The Most Awesome Charity Drive Ever

21Jan/10Off

Possibly The Most Awesome Charity Drive Ever

As seen on Raph Koster's blog - donate $20 to MSF's Haitian relief through DriveThroughRPG and get almost $1500 worth of game book PDFs.

That's not a typo, that's awesome. You have no excuse whatsoever. GO!

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geldonyetich
January 21st, 2010 - 14:39

Completely looking the gift horse in the mouth, I’m a little leery giving my credit card to these guys – seems a bit too good to be true.
Sok
January 21st, 2010 - 14:51

geldonyetich :
Completely looking the gift horse in the mouth, I’m a little leery giving my credit card to these guys – seems a bit too good to be true.

I’ve purchased from them a couple of times. Never had a problem. (I’ll even recommend one of my purchases: “The Collectors – The Burning House” was written by a friend of a friend, and is quite good.)
Pardoz
January 21st, 2010 - 15:41

They’re legit – I’ve bought from them in the past. If you’re really paranoid, just use Paypal, no need to give ‘em your CC number.

If they were handing out 1400 bucks worth of printed matter for a 20 dollar donation, that would be too good to be true, but this is digital, remember. One copy, one hundred thousand copies, makes very little difference.
JuJutsu
January 21st, 2010 - 17:24

geldonyetich :Completely looking the gift horse in the mouth, I’m a little leery giving my credit card to these guys – seems a bit too good to be true.

I looked at the titles in their bundle. Bleh. Do it for the charity, not for the bundle.
geldonyetich
January 21st, 2010 - 17:31

Consider it done. Paypal was a good suggestion.
Brian 'Psychochild' Green
January 21st, 2010 - 18:55

Done. The site is fairly reputable. I’ve gotten some free PDFs in the past from them.

As a game designer, I love pawing through RPG systems to get inspiration and information. I agree with JuJutsu, a lot of the stuff seems to be (to put i t politely) filler. But, there are a few good bits in it, like the Serenity RPG core book. In all honesty, a typical person might get a few hundred dollars of use out of the list. But, this is a gold mine for a designer or a designer wannabe.
TPRJones
January 21st, 2010 - 21:57

Done.

They’ve already have 3,853 individual “donators”. Pretty impressive response.
Aufero
January 22nd, 2010 - 01:31

That’s the geekiest fund drive ever, and that includes Child’s Play. I’m in.
GTB
January 22nd, 2010 - 02:58

I bought it. With the exception of maybe 2 or books there aren’t any core games here, it’s all supplements and misc. stuff. (a few cool papercraft dungeon things, some comics)

It comes with the firefly core book and one other one which I can’t remember right now, but I had never heard of.

Honestly though for 20 bucks? its worth it, imo. Even if it wasn’t charity.
GTB
January 22nd, 2010 - 02:59

(that was supposed to be “…2 or 3 books”) sigh.
YelloBird
January 22nd, 2010 - 05:21

they have another two offers, where they double your donations without you getting ebooks.

And the bundle is also more on the “mediocre” side of their ebook list.

… but it made me donate and grab some old WhiteWolf books while I was already on the site
Freakazoid
January 22nd, 2010 - 08:16

I’m not seeing any worthwile d&d 4th ed books. Think I’ll pass.

Once again, haiti is a great excuse to liquidate old/unsellable inventory.
JuJutsu
January 22nd, 2010 - 09:00

Freakazoid :I’m not seeing any worthwile d&d 4th ed books. Think I’ll pass.
Once again, haiti is a great excuse to liquidate old/unsellable inventory.

As pardoz pointed out, it’s digital inventory…it’s not like they’re saving on storage costs for physical product by liquidating stock-on-hand. I will grant you that they’re not incurring much in the way of opportunity costs by giving away items that might be purchased otherwise… And they increase traffic to the site and pick up some incremental sales [see Yellobird above].

Still, its a Good Thing. I think they deserve kudos.
geldonyetich
January 22nd, 2010 - 11:43

As a game designer, I love pawing through RPG systems to get inspiration and information

Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green :
As a game designer, I love pawing through RPG systems to get inspiration and information. I agree with JuJutsu, a lot of the stuff seems to be (to put i t politely) filler.

Hey, same reason I went for it. It’s not that I’m looking to outright plagiarize, mind you, but I might be making (for example) a Sci-Fi game and thinking to myself, “what are some cool things to put in this sci-fi game?” These are good sources for that, even if the implementation will be completely different.
Andy O.
January 22nd, 2010 - 12:03

I bought this the other day, $20 for a good cause? That’s a NO BRAINER, No one should be thinking about what that $20 gives you, ESPICALLY if you haven’t made any donations to Haiti yet. (GEORGE CLOONEYS charity drive is TONIGHT on ABC I believe, another good opportunity to donate)

At first I thought it was for like little indepentant CRPGs, then I found out it was for pen and paper stuff. I’m not a big pen and paper guy, but I LOVE reading DnD manuals. I am looking forward to just reading some of this stuff. One of these days I’ll get a good DnD group going.
Sweetmeat
January 22nd, 2010 - 12:53

If you are looking to do a Dungeons and Dragons game, I would seriously recommend the Pathfinder rule set. These guys bought out the rights to 3.5 and then went about fixing most of the major problems with the system. The end result is really good.

I bought the 4th edition game and to me it pretty much took out EVERY opportunity for you to be heroic while playing a heroic fantasy RPG. This is not the D&D you are looking for, move along.
Eliot Lefebvre
January 22nd, 2010 - 14:52

I bought it today, on the premise that even if I only use two books out of those provided, I’m still getting about double what I would expect when spending $20 on an RPG. The list is something like twelve pages long, and I am absolutely certain that you’ll be able to get something out of at least half of the books.

It’s also more incentive to check out the Pathfinder set, which does seem pretty darned interesting. Especially since you can port the bulk of D&D3’s various snap-on bits into it, to the best of my understanding.
Guy
January 22nd, 2010 - 16:48

Done!
Ingmar
January 22nd, 2010 - 17:44

I have an idea, let’s have an edition war in Lum’s comment thread.
geldonyetich
January 22nd, 2010 - 18:02

Predictably, DriveThruRPG’s bandwidth is hurting. Here’s what you’ll get if you try to download any of the PDFs you purchased:

Thank you for donating to Haiti Relief. Unfortunately the overwhelming generosity of the gaming community is hampering our ability to deliver your order to you. Your products are safe in your order history, so if you could wait a day or two before downloading them, it would be much appreciated.
Toastrider
January 24th, 2010 - 11:50

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Give ’till it hurts’.

But yeah, I kicked in my $20. The Spycraft book is in there, and that’s useful.
Stormwaltz
January 24th, 2010 - 16:27

I’ve given DTRPG hundreds of dollars in business of the last couple years. They’re a great way to try obscure and indie RPGs for cheap. It’s an idea gold mine.

The bundle includes many things I’ve bought, or had on my wish list. It does include a lot of crap, but I just won’t download that…
GTB
January 25th, 2010 - 08:19

Freakazoid :
I’m not seeing any worthwhile 4th ed books.

Have you tried looking in the Library Of Imaginary Things? Probably you can find them right next to the books on hunting unicorns and capturing rainbows.
Pat
January 25th, 2010 - 14:28

Freakazoid :
I’m not seeing any worthwile d&d 4th ed books. Think I’ll pass.
Once again, haiti is a great excuse to liquidate old/unsellable inventory.

Freakazoid doesn’t like something and thinks people care? What a new and interesting development!
Arkenor
January 25th, 2010 - 14:37

Ingmar :
I have an idea, let’s have an edition war in Lum’s comment thread.

I’m always up for one of them! But in the circumstances, let peace reign!
geldonyetich
January 28th, 2010 - 23:48

Never underestimate the power of an incredible bargain:

Two days after the devastating first earthquake struck the heart of Haiti, we put up a couple of donation buttons – $5.00 and $10.00, which we agreed to match. Our publishers began asking us for a way for them to put their products up to encourage more sales. We constructed a bundle product, expecting a few publishers would put a few products in, and we’d make a few thousand dollars, maybe. We had no idea.

As of this writing, we’ve collected over $149,000.00