Last year Venture-Captains Nicholas Ruchlewciz and Jimmy Dick ran a very small multi-table special for their two lodges as part of a charity event benefiting Toys for Tots. This small event was successful and served as sort of a dry run for planning a larger event in 2022. This year in 2022, we put together a much larger event with a pretty ambitious plan to run a nationwide multi-table special for live tables at FLGSs. From November 25 through December 11, this year’s event, Toys of Boundless Wonder, was underway. On December 10th, lodges across the nation assembled at their local FLGS and participated in what we believe was the first ever multi-table special for live tables in multiple locations.
Just like last year, the overall goal was to raise funds and gather up toys to benefit our local Toys for Tots chapters. As we all know far too well, we are all still struggling to adjust to life after the Covid-19 pandemic. The intense fluctuations in the supply chains coupled with a sudden demand for oil as global industries rapidly ramped up production have driven prices up resulting in a high inflation rate which has not been seen since the latter half of the 20th Century. This inflation has hit everyone across the board, but it is our lower income earners and their families who feel the harsh impact the most as primary bills have to be paid, thus resulting in little to no money to pay for secondary needs like toys for children.
I can’t speak for the entire United States, but I know that the local Toys for Tots organizations in Missouri and Illinois put out a notice that there was an increased amount of emergency assistance requests this year. Times are tough for many people, and that gives us a chance to help out others who need it. That was what was in the mind of Nicholas when he originally began to assist Toys for Tots in the Northern Virginia area several years ago through Organized Play events at his local FLGS.
Last year, he and I began to work together to make it a bit larger and decided to incorporate the PFS2 2-00 The King in Thorns multi-table special into the event as a test run for something bigger in 2022, which would then help even more people.
With the successful conclusion of this year’s event, we are happy to announce the results (to the best of our knowledge) of Toys of Boundless Wonder 2022. We had 31 PFS2 scenario tables, 1 SFS scenario table, 6 bounties, 4 sessions of the PFS2 Beginner Box, and 1 Dark Archive session table ran over the 17 day period. In addition to those tables, there were 18 tables of the PFS2 3-98 Expedition into Pallid Peak multi-table special ran on December 10th at FLGSs across the United States. We used Organized Play’s Interactive Presentation for 3-98 and ran it over a Twitch stream while we used a Discord server to communicate tables successes. It worked out pretty well. We found several areas where we could have done better and plan to act on that for next year’s event.
Next year? Did I say next year’s event? Following the conclusion of the event, the consensus view of everyone was that this was a great success and that we had a lot of fun playing the game. With such positive feedback from the participants, we feel like we really should plan to do it again in 2023 and incorporate the lessons we learned this year. Not only that, but while we purposely did not seek out exact dollar figures per location, we asked for a general and confidential estimate of what was raised for Toys for Tots. We are happy to say that somewhere between $4000 and $5000 was raised for Toys for Tots during the event. That exceeded our goal for this year quite well.
Not only that, but next year we plan to advertise this event on a much larger scale than this year’s event. So, if you are interested in participating in our 2023 event, we want to make sure to reach out and involve you in it.
As we post the rest of the images that were sent in by our various tables, let us first thank everyone who played at our tables or ran a table for Toys of Boundless Wonder this year. we also want to thank our FLGSs who provided table space for us, opened early or closed late in order to accommodate the running of the special on the 10th. We want to extend a big thank you to our Organized Play coordinator, Alex Speidel who gave us the support of Paizo’s Organized Play via the Interactive Presentation and extending our participants the Convention-level Achievement Point bonus.
Plus, thank you to everyone who offered any form of help to us as we got things going. Yes, that means the several of you who offered to help me get the Twitch stream set up. Oddly enough, the hardest part there was realizing my PC was the problem and not the Twitch stream itself. It ran superbly on my gaming laptop!
Finally, Nicholas and I would like to extend a big thank you to every person who volunteered their time or chipped in any amount of funds for Toys for Tots this year, or for that matter, any charity. We really are in it together and as roleplayers who work together to overcome all of the obstacles placed in our scenarios for our enjoyment, we know that when we work together we accomplish far more than working individually. For those who wish to donate to Toys for Tots this year, there is still time to do that. Just click on this link to the Toys for Tots donation page and you can contribute via digital means. If you do decide to donate, please accept our heartfelt thanks and huge thumbs up!
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Xathos (Jimmy)
The League of Aroden 