Avatar Legends, Root RPG, Bluebeard’s Bride and more offered cheap in Magpie Games’ charity bundle
Proceeds will benefit Child's Play Charity.
Several of Magpie Games’ popular and award-winning tabletop RPGs can be snagged at a discount in a new Humble Book Bundle that benefits US paediatric hospital aid foundation, Child’s Play Charity.
The Best of Magpie book bundle contains plenty of tabletop RPGs you know - Avatar Legends, Masks: A New Generation and the Root RPG, but the entry bundle also grants access to digital version of several ashcan games (early or incomplete, but still very much playable) from Magpie’s catalogue. Like all Humble Bundles, buyers can choose amongst several tiers to pay their desired amount and snag a varying number of digital files.
At the baseline $5, buys gain access to three annual editions of the Fate Codex Anthology, which contains adventures, essays, game mechanics, design notes and play tools from dozens of industry artists. There’s also six ashcan RPGs currently living under the Magpie banner, including CEO Mark Diaz Truman’s Our Last Best Hope, Shakespearean storytelling game The Plays the Thing (plus a collection of short stories titled By No Means Vulgar), Kate Bullock’s artists-against-the-world Crossroads Carnival, Sam Saltiel’s Passing about aliens hiding in plain sight amongst 1950s American suburbs and The Ward: Acute Edition, which balances the stress, camaraderie and absurdity of working in a medical environment.
Increasing your purchase to $15 more than doubles the number of digital RPGs included in the bundle. Everything from the previous tier carries forward to join the excellent teen superhero simulator Masks: A New Generation and three supplements. Undying lets players tell stories about vampires across the ages - and their myriad grudges and plots - without needing any dice. Cartel is Truman’s longterm passion project, combining elements of 2000s/2010s prestige television such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and El Mariachi into a deadly game of power and money in the Sinaloa drug cartel. Pasión de las Pasiones, created by Brandon Leon-Gambetta, channels the best and most dramatic telenovela plots, while Epyllion is a bit like if She-Ra or My Little Pony was full of young, fire-breathing dragons, instead.
At $25, the final tier serves up the whole enchilada filled with a sizable portion of Magpie Games’ whole portfolio. Folktale-come-collaborative RPG Bluebeard’s Bride is accompanied by three supplements - The Books of Rooms, Lore and Mirrors. Together, they’re a formidable way to play the original and then endlessly remix the Bride’s horrific experience. Those who fancy more woodland derring-do can look towards the Root RPG, which adapts Leder Games’ super popular asymmetrical board game into a game of outcasts, colonial power and surviving in the wilds. The Travelers & Outsides and Clearing Booklet are also included.
The main attraction will likely be Avatar Legends, the tabletop RPG sensation that officially adapts the beloved animated series The Last Airbender and shattered crowdfunding records a couple of years ago. The core rulebook and Wan Shi Tong’s Adventure Guide come as digital copies if you’re eager to start bending immediately, while RPG newcomers can use the digital starter set and introductory missing, An Urgent Request to practise their forms and breathing, first. While supplies last, this tier also earns you a physical edition of the starter set that will be shipped to your home (although shipping costs are not included and will be collected separately.)
Child’s Play Charity has been operating in gaming adjacent spaces since, raising funds to stock children’s hospitals and paediatric wards with video game consoles so that young patients forced to spend long periods under medical care can at least play together. Bundle buyers can adjust how much their donation is split amongst the charity, Magpie Games and Humble Bundle.
The Best of Magpie RPG Book Bundle runs through April 12th, and the digital files should be compatible with most modern e-readers and mobile devices.