Promo Drinks for Fun and Profit!

Hey SlugFans!

In late 2012, we here at SFG started talking about a revised version of our SlugCrew program, and we decided to create several promo drinks to reward people who ran demos and events for us. We had done a con giveaway card once for En Garde, but that involved tacking a print run of a promo card onto another print run we were already doing with our manufacturer. With the advent of print-on-demand from our friends at DriveThru Cards, it suddenly became feasible and cost-effective for us to design many more promo cards and order only the amount we thought we would need. So we did exactly that and have used them for several different customer appreciation efforts ever since.

Some people have asked us about our promo drinks – what’s been printed, which ones are still available, and so forth. So we created a page on our website for that purpose. We will try to keep that page as up-to-date as possible as we release more promo cards.

We thought it would be fun to share the stories behind each set of promo cards, so that’s what this post is about!

These three drinks were the Minor Reward for SlugCrew folks who did demos for us in 2013. For this batch of drinks, we decided to create zanier, alternate-effect versions of existing drink cards: Barroom Brawl, Monster Attack and Gambler’s Grog. Two of the three mix things up by requiring die rolls, and Gambler’s Grog adds a neat little twist to the original.

Note that we still have a few of these left! While supplies last, anyone who earns the 2014 Minor Reward drinks (shown below) will also receive these!

When we announced our Kickstarter campaign for RDI 4, we knew we wanted to offer promo cards to sweeten the deal for potential backers. We also knew that there was a pretty good chance that we would meet our stretch goals for Natyli and Cormac, so we decided to create character-specific drinks for them. Natyli’s drink went through several iterations in playtest, but the effect we were going for was a stiff drink that turns into a luck potion. We wanted Cormac’s drink to be big and beefy, like Cormac himself. From there, the drink sort of designed itself!

Partway through our Kickstarter campaign, we were contacted by the folks at Loot Corps, makers of the game DrunkQuest. Their own Kickstarter campaign for their 90 Proof Seas expansion was happening at the same time, and the creators asked us if we were interested in a cross-promotion deal. We said yes, so now 90 Proof Seas has promo cards featuring Fiona, the Crimson Drake, and the Red Dragon Inn, and we have these two neat promo drinks based on the Wizard and BrewMaster characters from DrunkQuest. Since the art was done by Loot Corps, the style is quite different from our usual drink style, but we still love the way they turned out!

In late 2013, we needed new promo drinks to use as 2014’s Minor Reward for SlugCrew. We wanted to stick with the theme of character-specific drinks, so Jeff started brainstorming ideas while on a plane one day. After some playtesting and tweaking, these were the result!

Interesting note: starting with these drinks, we moved drink card art production in-house. These drinks were designed and drawn by our own Cliff Bohm.

And, of course, there’s still time to earn these drinks if you go out and run demos and events for us through our SlugCrew and Organized Play programs!

So, we didn’t quite give you the full story about the drinks above. Our original plan was to have three drinks for the 2014 Minor Reward, and to release Ozrik’s Powerale as our Gen Con promo card to correspond with the release of Ozrik himself. But we screwed up and accidentally announced and spoiled the Powerale in our announcement about the new SlugCrew Rewards. Whoops.

However, this was really a first-world problem for us, so we just made a new drink for Gen Con: Eve’s Mystery Mead.

Astute observers will notice that this art (again by Cliff) is a heavily-modified version of Mead.

Our most recent promo drinks were just announced a few days ago. These are the drink cards you can get by participating in a Red Dragon Inn tournament run through our brand-new Organized Play program!

There are a few fun facts about these drinks:

1. They again stick with the theme of character-specific drinks (these are Deirdre’s and Gerki’s drinks).
2. The art was done in-house by Sam Waller.
3. Deirdre’s card uses the new icon-based drink design that we’re rolling out with the upcoming new printings of RDI and RDI 2.

So there you have it – a brief history of Red Dragon Inn promo cards! As you can see, in just two years we’ve released 14 promo cards, and we plan to make more in the future, so stay tuned!