Bundle of Holding

Sometimes, I forget I have a games company.

I run Freeform Games with Mo Holkar. We publish murder mystery games - but they’re actually larps in disguise. Our target market is ordinary people rather than gamers, so we don’t tell them that they’re roleplaying or larping.

Our games don’t involve polyhedral dice (or dice of any sort) or complex rules. Most of them are set in the real world. We do have a small number of games with magic in them, but our games don’t have elves or spaceships or vampires. (Yet - you never know.)

So when I’m hanging out at Continuum or Furnace and chatting to people like Dr Mitch, Graham W, Graham Spearing, Paul Baldowski and the many others forging their creative path in tabletop roleplaying, I sometimes feel a bit inadequate.

So please forgive me for being dead chuffed that the prestigious Bundle of Holding is currently running a murder party bundle featuring eight of our games!

As I type this, we’re only a few days in and already we’ve raised nearly $9,000 and sold over 280 bundles. Woo hoo!

We have no idea how this will impact on our regular sales, but given that our target market doesn’t really know what Bundle of Holding is, and two of our most popular games aren’t included in the bundle, then I’m hoping it won’t have a disastrous impact.

It might even be good for us as a new bunch of gamers discover a way to introduce their non-gamer friends into this glorious hobby.

1000+ person hours of fun

Marcus Rowland writes about our Bundle of Holding offer here.

I like the bit where Marcus notes that there's 1000+ person hours of fun in the package. (I think he's exaggerated slightly - at my estimate, assuming each game is full and entertains everyone for three hours, then you've got over 450 hours of person entertainment. But why quibble?)

He picks up on something I noticed on the main Bundle of Holding page - and that's the comment about printing lots of pages.

Well, I suppose so.

But it's possible I've just become used to printing out lots of paper - it's what these games do.

I don't remember any complaints about paper use from our customers. So perhaps that's just gamers.

Not very “polished”

Here’s a mildly enthusiastic discussion about the the murder party Bundle of Holding.

The comment about our games not being “most polished” is fair, but that’s because we’re aiming for the “readable by people with bad eyesight in dim lighting” look. Which isn’t a jazzy look compared to a modern full-colour RPG. (But then I think most RPG designs are, graphically, a mess. I prefer clean and simple for my RPG design.)

Each to their own - although I admit we could probably do with better covers.