RetroRoleplaying: The Blog

With everything going on over the last year (my wife's mother dying, moving to her mom's house in Dallas and the major repairs to that house, finding new doctors for my wife. etc.) I haven't been very good about keeping my promise to my wife to giveaway most of the RPG items I inherited from Jay. While many of the minor items were given to players my Waco game or sold to games stores in the Waco-Temple-Killeen area to sell used, I still have a box full of items for Cancer Fund Drives. I think I'm doing pretty good: eight boxes down to two. My wife, however, disagrees.

And since we have recently had a lot of medical bills (5 MRIs and a spinal tap) with 20% co-pays -- which took all the money we had saved to pay the $3800 property tax this fall -- it looks like it is a good time to have a fund drive. Fortunately, the tax bill will be lower in future years as our homeowner exemption will kick in, but that's no help here. Why so many MRIs? The first MRI was my wife's annual cancer screening MRI, done months later than it should have been because of trying to find new doctors. No signs of her cancer returning, but her doctor saw something unusual in her spine and set her to a neurologist. He looked at the MRI and said it was most likely either be radiation damage or multiple sclerosis -- and given some of her other symptoms which had been previously blamed one her bad lower back, he was leans toward MS. Sigh. So he order 4 additional MRIs (one head, one neck/upper back each with and without some type of dye) which would be able to rule out damage from here head and neck radiation treatments. The whatever he was seeing in the spine would show up differently if it was radiation damage. Unfortunately, it wasn't radiation damage, so he wanted a spinal tap to be sure it was MS. As I write this, the jury is still out as the the results from the spinal tap -- apparently it takes quite a while to test the spinal fluid -- but the preliminary diagnose of MS hasn't changed.

Okay, now that the background is out of the way, it's on the the goodies I have to give away to lucky donors. The following items will be given away randomly selected donors. Every $10 donated gets one chance in this giveaway:

To start with, the remaining items I picked you at a garage sale a few weeks ago (see Garage Sale Finds Given to RetroRolePlaying Cancer Fund Donors) in two groups:

Group 1: A2 - Secret of the Slavers Stockade, A3 - Assault of the Aerie of the Slave Lords, C1 - The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan, D1 - Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, D2 - Shrine of the Kuo-Toa.

Group 2: S1 - Tomb of Horrors, S2 - White Plume Mountain, S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, S4 - The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

And then some other groups of items from the 1970s and very early 1980's from the collection I got from Jay:

Group 3: All TSR Tekumel games: Empire of the Petal Throne, Legions of the Petal Throne, War of Wizards.

Group 4: Gamescience Tekumel Boxed Sets: Swords & Glory Volume 1, Swords & Glory Volume 2.

Group 5: Imperium Publishing Tekumel games: The Tekumel Journal #1 and #2, Book of Ebon Bindings, MISSUM!

Group 6: Adventure Games Teklumel material: Deeds of the Ever-Glorious, Tsolyani Language, Parts 1 and 2, Armies of Tekumel, Vol 1: Tsolyanu, Armies of Tekumel, Vol 2: Yan Kor and Allies.

Group 7: TSR early historical wargames: Cavaliers and Roundheads, Cordite & Steel, Don't Give Up The Ship!, Fight in the Skies, Tractics, Tricolor.

Group 8: TSR early SF/F wargames: Star Probe, Star Empires, Warriors of Mars, Lankhmar, Divine Right.

In addition to the eight giveaways available to all donors, the top 5 donors will have a separate drawing for the following very special item: The Artists of TSR portfolio. This is a fairly rare portfolio the RPGA (TSR) published in 1980 -- only about 200 copies were printed. Jay had this one -- each of the 12 prints is enclosed in its own mylar sleeve. (Unfortunately, the portfolio cover was not and has yellowed.) The portfolio has two black and white illos by each of the six artists: Jeff Easley, Larry Elmore, Jim Holloway, Harry Quinn, Jim Roslof, and Tim Truman. Shrink wrapped copies of FEZ I will also be given to two of the remaining four "top five" donors.

Two of the eight groups (randomly selected) will be given away when we reach $750 in donations, two more at $1500, two more at $2250, and the last two (and the special "top five giveaways) when we hit $3000. Additional items not mentioned here may be given away at various points during this fund drive as well.

In addition to these giveaway items, I will be releasing "tablet-digest" versions of Microlite74 and Microlite81 games and supplements throughout this drive, current plans are for one release for every $250 in donations.

Occasional additional donated items (gift cards, Steam game keys, Judges Guild modules, etc.) may also be raffled off either during the drive or at the end of the drive. Book rate postage will be free to winning donors in the US and Canada. Others will need to pay for postage over the first pound.

As usual, anyone donates anything at all (even a dollar) to the RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund gets access to a few special downloads (like pdfs of two 1970s D&D fanzines I edited, a special edition of Microlite74, and more) as described on the Retro-Roleplaying Cancer Fund web page as well as in progress draft downloads of my current projects).

If you would like to help but cannot make a donation, please help spread the word around the blogsphere (and other places). In fact, if you make a post to your blog talking about this fundraising drive and post a link to your post in a comment to this post, we'll give you one entry in the raffle. Note: Your blog will have to have some way for us to email you if you get lucky or will will not be able to get your prize to you as I am still failing Mind Reading 101.

To get help us pay the medical bills (and to get access to some special downloads and possibly the above mentioned items), send a donation in any amount -- small or large -- to me via Paypal. Every $10 donated gets one chance in the above giveaways. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who donates. If you cannot donate but wish to help, please spread the word about my request and offer. Thanks in advance for any and all help.