charity

Lawful Good Gaming

Back in January, prolific gaming blogger (and pal of mine) James Walls vented on Facebook about feeling the need to do something positive to counteract the bad feelings generated by the recent attempted Muslim ban. And, being a hard-core tabletop gamer, he wondered if that positive activity could be something game-related. Some of us other like-minded gamers felt the same way, and together we started a group we call Lawful Good Gaming.

Here’s James’s introduction to the group:

There is some good in this world and it’s worth fighting for…

The world had given us about as much as we could take. So we decided to use the talents and skills cultivated in our tabletop gaming hobby to help make our world just a little bit better. So we formed LAWFUL GOOD GAMING.

Lawful Good Gaming coordinates, hosts, and participates in tabletop gaming events (both online and in person) to help raise money for progressive charities, organizations, and causes. Make no mistake… to paraphrase a great Browncoat, “We aim to misbehave.”

If this sounds like your kind of adventure, come join us! We’re just getting started, and your voice will most certainly be heard.

The group’s current home is the Lawful Good Gaming Facebook group, until we get our website up and running. The Facebook group is public; only members can post, but we’re happy to add all gamers who want to join the fight.

Season One

LGG is planning to divide its games up into “seasons,” with each season focusing on a different thematically-linked group of charities. The first season is called Champions of Equality and supports three charities that focus on (yes, you guessed it) equality: the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Government Accountability Project.

So far, members of the group have run three online RPG one-shots to raise money for our selected charities. We ask players to make a donation to one of the charities before the game and send the GM some form of proof-of-donation. (We don’t handle money ourselves.)

Our first three games were Gods of the Fall, The Strange, and Night’s Black Agents. In those three events, we raised over $700. I think that’s a great start!

We have five more events scheduled at the moment, and more on the way.

Saturday, April 8 at 8 PM – 11 PM EDT: Numenera – Let’s Go to Queslin (2 open seats). GM Ethan Hammersmith. Charity: Government Accountability Project. 

Wednesday, April 12 at 6 PM – 10 PM: Cypher System – Modern Setting (5 open seats). GM Shaun Ramsey. Charity: Government Accountability Project.

Saturday, April 15 at 9 AM – 12 PM: Masks: A New Generation – Saturday Morning Supers Presents: Civil Outreach (0 open seats). GM Taylor LaBresh. Charity: National Immigration Law Center. 

Thursday, April 20 at 6 PM – 9 PM PDT: Delta Green – Springtime in the City of God(s) (5 open seats). GM Alexander Lepera. Charity: Government Accountability Project. 

Saturday, May 13 at 3 PM EDT: World Wide Wrestling: FIGHT-FEST 2017 (4 open seats). GM Jeff Stormer. Charity: Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Join us!

If any of this sounds appealing to you, come join us! We are looking for more players and more GMs but we also welcome folks who just want to discuss topics of interest to activism-minded gamers.

If you ARE interested in running a game for the group to raise money for charity, come on in and let us know. Group admins will help you get something scheduled.

Facebook Group: Lawful Good Gaming
Twitter: @LawfulGG

Charitable Game Promotions

Here in the US, we’re in the 3rd week of a terrible new presidential administration. The party dominating the government is the party of discrimination, selfishness, and religion, and they’re wasting no time in working to undermine the safety and security of everyone who doesn’t look and act and think the way they do.

Fortunately, a lot of us are doing what we can to resist these hateful actions and attitudes—taking actions such as calling and writing representatives, attending marches and other protests, and donating to organizations designed to help the people and institutions that are currently jeopardized.

This latter group includes some game designers, and that’s what I want to spotlight today.

Monte Cook Games

Monte Cook Games has a sale running through Friday, February 10, that also benefits a worthy charity. The sale is 10% off everything in their online store, boosted to 48% off of any print book for The Strange RPG.

More importantly, Monte Cook Games will donate 10% of all the proceeds from the sale to the ACLU. MCG’s stated reason for this sale is that “these are indeed strange times,” and they point readers to their recently released core values statement—which extolls the virtues of inclusivity, diversity, and truthfulness.

Green Ronin Publishing

Another publisher, Green Ronin, also has a special charitable deal going on right now. Why?

“Things feel different in 2017…It’s like we’ve all moved into a darker timeline, with forces thought vanquished in WWII coming back to haunt us again while a dangerous instability affects America and the world.”

For the month of February, Green Ronin has discounted their recent Mutants & Masterminds sourcebook The Cosmic Handbook on their web store ($19.95 in print and $12.95 in PDF), and they’re donating $10 from each sale to the Union of Concerned Scientists. In addition to this, Green Ronin plans to have new sales every month to benefit additional charities.

“We will use these sales to highlight organizations doing good and important work that can help us all weather the coming days.”

More?

It won’t surprise me if we see more charitable gaming promotions like this, and if you know of any, please let me know and I’ll do my part to publicize them here.

Are these game publishers, and I, and the millions of people protesting and marching, overreacting? I sure hope so. But either way, I’m glad we have people in our society–and our industry–who try to help people targeted by stupidity and hate.