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terça-feira, 13 de agosto de 2013

Passing it on

I live in a small town in the coal hills of eastern PA. It’s nice looking if you like mountains, but it’s hard to get used to. My town is also very, very poor. We bought our house here, because our home state of New Jersey is very expensive, and housing costs are high. We have a bigger home here in PA than that we could afford in the garden state.
  For the first 4 years we lived here, there were no hobby stores in our area. That’s just recently changed. A new gaming store just opened up about 7 miles up the road.
  I did a blood bowl demo there a week ago, and just did a second demo. I had a good turnout, with about 15 kids/young adults each time. I set up 4 pitches, and a few of my friends helped with the rules. We had a blast, and I hope some of these new people will come to out tourney.
 There was a kid of about 14 who was at both demos. He didn’t play, but he watched the games with intense interest. After the first game, he asked me and my friends quite a few questions about BB, and he really seemed to grasp the mechanics of our game.
  I asked him, after the 2nd demo, if he'd like to join our league, and he said he'd love to, but he had no ride from his town, about 8 miles away. I told him I could give him a ride, if he was serious about playing.


I told the boy to contact me via email and I’d sort him out. He had no computer. It’s just him and his mother. At the end of the day, his mom came in and said how the boy talked about the game. All he could talk about.
 Well, I decided to make the kid welcome. I asked what team he liked, and he said orcs. Seems he's played D&D a few times. As I have about 12 complete orc teams, I asked my wife to paint one of the plastic GW orc teams I have, and I’m gonna give it to the kid, along with a printout of the rules and I’ll give him a set of dice (do I really need 60 block dice?)
  Why am I doing this for a kid who may play only a few times? Just for the good will of the act. The kid comes from a poor family. He may not have the money to buy all that’s needed for BB, but I can help with that. I need the good karma...

3 comentários:

Laughing Ferret disse...

Very cool. You might have changed his life in a small but fun way.
Speaking as someone who grew up poor and couldn't afford any gaming items- the donations from others I got meant a lot to me.

Axtklinge disse...

Thumbs up to that BFG.
Bet the kid will cherish every single bit of your gift.

bound for glory disse...

i think i'm getting to the point in my life where giving something to someone is way better that the other way around.