Free RPG Day

 

Once again the store had a great Free RPG Day with a line of people waiting to get in when we opened (See “Thoughts on the Upcoming Free RPG Day”)  We had a longer line waiting for free role playing stuff than we did for Free Comic Book Day but that does make sense given that we focus more on tabletop games than comics. Foot traffic was up about 20% over a typical Saturday and sales increased about 40% over a usual Saturday as well  RPG sales doubled but I ascribe a significant amount of the increase to the Yu Gi Oh Chaos Origins Premiere event that ran this past weekend. Unlike past recent Premiere events, which ended with us having about half a case of booster boxes remaining, the lure of the first full art Yu Gi Oh cards proved too tempting for local Yu Gi Oh duelists who descended on the set in droves and cleaned us out by the close of the business day on Saturday.

Back to Free RPG Day though. This was the best one we have had in recent years. There was a wide assortment of offerings from which customers could choose and a surprisingly small number of Dungeons and Dragons/5E compatible supplements. Not only did we give away our entire order of items but we managed to clear out all of the Free RPG Day items left over from previous including Cosmic Patrol, which has been kicking around our storeroom since 2015. The only Free RRPG Day item we had left over by the end of the day was the “Enter the Collection” supplement provided by Renegade Game Studios back in 2021. As usual, I do have a few thoughts about the event: