Updated to reflect change to how the package download works, and additional information.
Found via twitter/blog post from Alexander Williams, the role-playing game digital content vendor DriveThruRPG has put together an amazing package of donated digital RPG (PDF) content for people who donate $20 through them to Doctors Without Borders Haiti Earthquake Response: an assortment of $1481.31 in list price worth of specific gaming books.
A full list of what’s included can be found here. It includes some pretty popular indy titles, such as Beast Hunters, Three Sixteen, and Spirit of the Season. There’s also the tie-in RPG for Joss Whedon’s hit show Firefly, Serenity, which is $30 all by itself—and much, much more.
This is a chance to do some good for people in need—and even if you couldn’t care less about the plight of Haiti, the opportunity to get nearly $1500 worth of RPG e-books for $20 is worth seizing for its own sake.
(On the down side, in order to purchase every single item with the coupon, you will need to spend some serious time clicking through 12 pages of order listings to click “Add” on each of 174 game titles. An email to DriveThruRPG customer service confirmed they do not yet have a way to “add all items” to their cart.)
Update: DriveThruRPG has changed the way the donation order works. In order to slow down the hammering of their servers, they will now add the books to your account within one business day, then allow you to download them within two business days after that.
At the time I was editing this story, a ticker on the list page said “So far, gamers have donated $19,225.00 to help Haiti!” and the figure keeps increasing with each page refresh. DriveThruRPG will also match $5 and $10 donations made through the program. (Update: A day later, the total stands at $58,860. Way to go, gamers!)
DriveThruRPG notes that the high volume of traffic caused by the offer is making it hard to deliver the downloads, and asks that people hold off downloading their purchases for a few days—like most other e-book vendors, DriveThruRPG will allow purchases to be downloaded at a later date.
(We have mentioned DriveThruRPG in the past as a proponent of digital watermarking rather than DRM, and in conjunction with a free giveaway of White Wolf’s Exalted RPG.)
Up to $63,950.00 now.