Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne shares comments on Free RPG Day from multiple retailers.

I received a few emails from retailers that participated in Free RPG Day too late to include last week but found them interesting enough to spend another column on the topic.

Dave Hoover, Armored Gopher Games:
"It was our first time participating, and we will probably do it again next year.  We had roughly 30 people spread out over four different games and five game sessions (one game ran twice).  Folks enjoyed themselves at the event, but the overall thoughts on the freebies being offered were apathetic at best."

Rob Stone, GameQuest:
"Free RPG Day was awesome for us.  It helped that none of the other stores in Fort Wayne participated.  They lost out.  But their loss is our gain.

"We ran a sale on new RPGs (20% off).  Used RPGs were buy one get one half off.  And we tiered our Free RPG Swag so that anyone who walked through the door received one pick from the lowest shelf.  If they purchased $10 or more they received (2) picks (one from the bottom shelf and one from the second shelf). If they spent $25 or more they got two picks from any of the three shelves.  We gave away the Free RPG Day t-shirt to the first person who spent $50 or more (we did not announce this ahead of time, and kept it secret, so everyone had a shot at it).  Will definitely participate again next year."

Brian Dalrymple, The Adventure Game Store and Dragon's Lair:
"We had our most successful Free RPG Day yet, though it took a while to get there.  I had Little Caesar's pizza waiting and there was no line at opening, but we had about 15 people come in the first hour to take a freebie.  We saw some old faces we hadn't seen in a while, and some new ones, too.  Most people made a purchase.  We gave an extra pick of the goods to anyone who was subscribed to Geek & Sundry, and we added about 20 new subscribers, using the store computer, over the course of the day.  Almost half our Free RPG Day visitors were already subscribed.  We sold out of Castle Panic (which we had stocked up on in preparation for the TableTop episode, which had aired the day before) along with Tsuro and the Munchkin base game.

"We allowed second picks at 4:00 and 8:00 pm and raffled off the T-Shirt, Dice Tower and hard-to-read Q-Workshop dice.  Our chocolate dice, sadly, melted on the way to us.  A brave gamer volunteered to eat the congealed choco-slurry, which had solidified in our fridge.

By raffle time there was nothing left, and that's a first for us."

It is interesting that both GameQuest and Dragon's Lair raffled off the "Ask Me about Free RPG Day" t-shirt since giving it away seems to defeat the purpose of its inclusion in the kit.  We not only wore it but bought others for the staff to wear around the shop in the weeks prior to Free RPG Day.  I do agree that there wasn't much excitement about this year's selections.  We had them on display by the front entrance for the week prior to Free RPG Day and the only one any customer showed real interest in prior to the 16th was the Harn offering.  Both the D&D 4th Edition and the Pathfinder modules from Paizo lasted late into the day.  I was also glad to see that both of those stores tied additional freebies to either additional purchases or performing an act beneficial to the gaming community.

If you have any further observations or stories about your store's Free RPG Day, please send them to ICv2.com.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.