Discount Gaming In Practice

A number of blog posts recently have been discussing the effects of the economy on gamers and related.  Well, I’ve been approaching this topic of making my gaming dollar go farther by leveraging spiffy sales when they arise!

Here’s my three latest hauls.

1.  From the Paizo store sale trying to unload all the remaining d20 books before end of year when existing d20-branded had to be destroyed.  (aka the Wizards Hates You Sale), especially Atlas and Green Ronin stuff.  (Don’t tell the WotC stormtroopers, but it looks like they still have some d20 on sale at wildly discounted prices – like $2 for softbacks and $5 for hardbacks.)  I got:

• Thieves’ World Player’s Manual, the d20-based PHB for a low magic dark fantasy RPG set in Lynn Abbey’s famous shared literary world, “Thieves’ World”
• Shadowspawn’s Guide to Sanctuary, a guide to the primary setting of Thieves’ World, the city of Sanctuary
• Murder at the Vulgar Unicorn, a TW adventure
• Dark Wings Over Freeport, a d20 Freeport adventure

I’ve enjoyed reading the Thieves’ World stuff.  I’m a sucker for TW, Vlad Taltos, and other fantasy-urban-grit settings.  Freeport’s my favorite, and if nothing else I’ll crib a lot for it.  The TW magic system is cool though, very different from normal D&D.

2.  Our local gaming store, Rogue’s Gallery, has an annual inventory clearance sale.  Each week they increase the base discount and you roll 2d6 for additional discount – a clever hook that appeals to a gamer’s heart.  So for 50 + 2d6% off, I got:

• Aletheia, a semi-recent indie game that does a good job of facilitating investigation-oriented play
• d20 Modern Critical Locations, mainly pretty urban floorplans
• Asian Bestiary I and II for HERO System – they were recommended to me long ago as sources for Asian monsters, but I didn’t want to pay full price because I don’t use HERO
• Dark Champions – Well, but I did play a HERO: Sidekick (lite edition) short campaign, and I’ve heard about Dark Champions for a long time, it’s their low powered supers/modern action milieu
• Lockdown, a supermax jail supplement for Mutants & Masterminds I’ve always wanted; it came out after my M&M campaign ended so I never wanted to go full price on it

Been reading through these.  Still not sold on the crunchiness of the HERO system, but Dark Champions oozes cool.

Oh, and I bought Savage Worlds new, but it’s only $10 list price!  Our gaming group was easily talked into a new Savage Worlds campaign at that price point.

3.  Half Price Books.  HPBs usually have a big RPG section.  Sometimes it’s just old 2e PHBs, first edition White Wolf and old GURPS, but sometimes you can get some pretty sweet stuff that’s selling for full price a couple doors down.  I raided one recently and got:

• Tome of Corruption, a guide to Chaos, Chaos cults, mutations, and the like for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
• Tome of Salvation, a guide to the religions of the WFRP setting
• Sigmar’s Heirs, a guide to the Empire of WFRP
• Plundered Vaults, a set of adventures for WFRP

I never knew much about Warhammer, though I did get a copy of the original “very used” many years ago and it was intriguing.  Since Green Ronin, one of the outfits I respect the most, was involved with the new one I got it.  I liked it, but not being one of those long term Warhammer wonks out there I didn’t know crap about the setting etc.  This set of books pretty much does the trick of getting me oriented between the Empire, Chaos, etc. and sends me on some adventures.  Nice!

You just have to be patient and opportunistic…