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 discusses the weekend's Free Day RPG event which took place on Saturday, June 21.

Well, it is finally quiet after a long and successful Free RPG Day (see "Free RPG Day 2025").  Although foot traffic did not reach Free Comic Book Day numbers, we actually saw better sales than we did on Free Comic Book Day and had a line waiting at the door before we opened.  Of course, that is not particularly surprising given that last time I checked, about 87% of our sales come from gaming products.  Still, with foot traffic up 35% over a typical non-event Saturday and sales up a bit over 40%, we were quite satisfied with the day, albeit tired toward the end.

A few thoughts about the day and some of the offerings:

Qrawl.  I really liked the idea behind this promotion: post the provided flyers with QR codes at the specified locations throughout the store, letting players engage in a Choose Your Own Adventure type of game culminating with them at the cash wrap claiming a sticker.  Unfortunately, we only had one person start Qrawling and they never finished.  We had the start flyers prominently displayed on the table with our Free RPG Day offerings but no takers, for two reasons (in my opinion).

For one, most people came in to score free items and did not want to take the time to go through the maze.  Secondly, there was no stated goal on the Start sheet for joining the event: "Complete the quest and claim your I Fought the Dragon sticker" on the start sheet would have helped.  Our staff was too busy explaining what the various items on the table were to take time to explain how the Qrawl worked as well.

Dungeons & Dragons Rules.  Based on past years' experience, we separated out the 5E-compatible and system-neutral items into one section of the table with the system-specific items on the other half.  Over the years running this event, we have found most people play D&D and want materials usable with the game.  We ran out of all our 5E compatible materials by early afternoon and still had people coming in the rest of the afternoon asking for D&D items.

Pathfinder RPG.  Sadly, interest in Pathfinder and Starfinder have really declined locally in recent years.  I had copies left over of both of this year's adventure modules to go along with the copies we still have left over from last year.  When we had a stronger local Pathfinder Society, members would swarm in at open and grab the annual Pathfinder and Starfinder adventures; but alas, those days are no more.

Clean Sweep.  I was glad we had materials left over from previous years, though, as we ran out of almost all of the items included in this year’s kit by about 4 p.m.  The only things we had left (aside from the aforementioned Pathfinder and Starfinder items) were the Nobi Nobi Quickstart deck, the Marvel Multiverse RPG adventure and the Shift RPG Basic Rules.  I do not think people knew what the Nobi Nobi deck was, Shift did not make a compelling reason on the back to pick it up and I am not sure why the Marvel offering was not more popular.

Events.  I know other stores run games tied to each year's offerings and swear doing so increases traffic.  We have tried doing so in the past and had an intro D&D session set up but no takers.  I have read other stores swearing by events, but they have never fired for us.

As usual, this was a great event and thanks to Gaming Days LLC for going to the trouble of coordinating it.  We will certainly participate again next year.

Comments?  If you participated in Free RPG Day, how did your event go?  Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.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.