In Denmark, we have a strong tradition of advent calendars. They’re in the TV, on the radio, on the internet, all over the place, for both kids and adults. And they are also in the role-playing blogosphere: over the last several years, several Danish bloggers have run advent calendars, posting a series of posts on some topic leading up to Christmas. I sort of did it last year, but I didn’t follow through on it. This year, though, I’ve decided to do an official one. The title of it is: What my Bundles held.
See, over the last three years or so, I’ve bought a surprising number of Bundles of Holding. 24, to be exact. Which fits with the number of December days until Christmas Eve, which is what we celebrate here in Denmark.
A Bundle of Holding, for those who don’t know, is a bundle of role-playing books, sold together at a low price with a percentage of the money going to a charity. The concept was inspired by the Humble Bundle, which is the same thing, but for computer games.
You can pay what you want for the bundles, but the more you give, the more you get. Bundle of Holding usually has a minimum price that will give you access to some components of the bundle, while paying more than the average that people have paid up to that point will give you more content. In that way, there is often an incentive to buy early, before the price goes up. No matter what the average is, you always get a pretty good deal – sometimes even the average price is below the price for the more expensive parts of the bundle. That means that it’s tempting to buy the bundle if there’s one thing you are interested in, and a few you are not actively disinterested in.
And so, long story short, I’ve ended up with a bunch of bundles with loads of books I’ve not even looked at. And that is what this bundle is going to do: I will go through the bundles, and select one book from each that I will look through and give a very quick review of. I’ll describe what it is, what my immediate impression of it is, and what I might consider using it for. I might also mention other books in a given bundle that I find to be an interesting honorable mention.
The posts will go up here at some point during each day. Feel free to comment on the posts if I’ve misunderstood the book, or if you have questions or comments about them. Also, happy December!