Bundle for Buffalo combines nearly 200 RPGs for community support in wake of deadly shooting

Itch.io hosted game collection Bundle for Buffalo is crowdfunding support for a Buffalo-based charity and community action group by selling 180 tabletop RPGs, books, comics and other artwork at a minimum $5 price tag. The money raised will support the New York-based city in the wake of a mass shooting hate crime that targeted Buffalo’s Black community and led to the death of 10 people.

The mass shooting on May 14th, which targeted a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, was unequivocally ruled a racist hate crime by police and investigators. The New York state government and other agencies have provided aid to those affected, and the beneficiary of the bundle’s sales is among them. Black Love Resists in the Rust is a community group that self-describes as a “member-led, abolitionist organization” lending development and justice work within Buffalo. BLRR has been supplying mental health resources and access to fresh foods since the shooting.

“Words are not enough; ‘ally’ is a verb — we must be actively anti-racist. And so, we created this bundle to support the victims and survivors through providing funding for Black- and Brown-led grassroots social justice work in the Buffalo community,” writes Lynne Meyer, one of the bundle’s organisers.

The collected games, all of which were donated by their designers for the bundle, offer a variety of experiences for both single players and groups of any experience level. Those individuals wanting to adventure by themselves should check out David Blandy’s Lone Eons or Odin’s Beard Games’s Runecairn: Wardensaga. The former is a science fantasy solo RPG that uses a deck of cards as an oracle for mythopoetic storytelling in a post-human future inspired by our current climate crisis, and the latter is a mixture of Dark Souls-esque combat, Norse mythology and a rules system inspired by Cairn and Into the Odd.

A much less serious entry is the gleefully crass Fuck You, I’m a Goblin from Therapuetic Blasphemy Games. This hack of Lasers & Feelings slaps a DungeonMart name tag on the players and plops them into woefully underpaid positions at the dungeon department store to cause all manner of mayhem and attempt to survive one more shift. Like other L&F hacks, this game can hit the table and be ready to play within minutes and actually works better the less prep the facilitator does.

Tarot cards have long been a handy tool for playing analogue games, either used as an alternative oracle in place of standard playing cards or more directly accessing their interpretive nature. Major Arcana takes a slightly different tack by combining 22 games, rules and experiences where each one is inspired by tarot’s major arcana. Designer Alex Wilcox wanted the games to carry the same reflective quality as a tarot reading so that any and all of the games can be enjoyed but also thoughtfully deployed.

The Bundle for Buffalo on Itch.io will remain active through June 20th at a base price of $5. A few outfits have offered special deals for those who donate above the minimum ask, and more might crop up as the crowdfunding initiative continues into June. More information about Black Love Resists in the Rust can be found on the organisation’s website.