But Wait, There's More!

20 pounds, 11 oz. of rattling Stuff, from the very generous Ancient Wonders, is winging its way to troops. The Loot was Substantial, and worthy, so make sure to thank them, and the other Dice Depots!

If you have Loot of your own, it MUST mail TOMORROW to make it there, and it MUST go Express Mail. Other services will not make it there in time.

A filled out example of the customs form is below, for your convenience.

Two more cartons

The World Wide Web is wide, indeed

From Down Home, 2,400 miles from Portland (and 200 miles from my hometown of Collier County, Fla.) is a report from RPGA-TAMPA. Go, Bucs!

RPGA Tampa
From: Dominick Trascritti
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 12:24:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [RPGA_Tampa] Tampa Area Gamers step up for Ziggurat Con

Tampa Area Gamers is supporting Ziggurat Con, June 9, 2007, in Baghdad Iraq.

http://operationdicedrop.blogspot.com/

We put together a package and shipped it out, Eric put it in the mail today. We hope it will get there in time. It had donated gear from TAG members, Emerald City and Pendragon Games. The value was estimated at some where over $240.

I am very proud that TAG works hard as a group to take time to donate to important causes. These guys are over there to keep us safe at home, and events like this ensure that they know that are in our minds and our prayers.

Let me offer a word of thanks to all the members who could put something in the box. If you could not, please contact Eric and slip him a few bucks for the postage.

A quick inventory was:

1 Emerald City Dice Set - Large - Opaque Red
1 Emerald City Dice Set - Large - Opaque Black
1 Emerald City Dice Set - Small - Opaque Black
1 Emerald City Dice Set - Small - Translucent Aqua
1 Emerald City Dice Set - Small - Opaque Green
1 Emerald City Dice Set - Small - Transparent Orange
1 Emerald City Dice Set - Small - Opaque Red
1 Chessex Dice Set - CHX 25311 Arctic Camo
1 Chessex Dice Set - CHX 25347 Silver Tetra
1 D&D Miniatures Battlegrid - unpackaged
12 Randomized D&D Miniatures Dungeon Tiles - unpackaged
1 D&D Miniatures Boosterpack - Underdark
2 D&D Miniatures Boosterpack - Unhallowed
2 D&D New Players Kit
1 Star Wars Miniatures: Starship Battles Starter Kit
1 Star Wars Miniatures: Starship Battles Booster Pack
1 D&D Monster Manual
1 D&D Monster Manual II
1 Wizards of the Coast Prize Box - Assorted Dice & Miniatures

Late to the party? How you can ship direct to Ziggurat Con

AWRIGHT YOU MEATHEADS!

THIS IS THE YEW-NITED POSTAL SERVICE FORM TWO NINER SEVEN SIX A, OBTAINED FROM THE RACK ON THE WALL OF YOUR FRIENDLY LOCAL POST OFFICE.

DO NOT TRY TO FILL IN AND CREATE THIS FORM ON LINE, AS THE MUTANT THUMB-BRAINED PROGRAMMERS WHO CREATED https://sss-web.usps.com/cns/landing.do HAVE YET TO MAKE THAT ACTUALLY WORK FOR APO AND FPO ADDRESSES IN EYE-RACK.

IT MUST BE SUBMITTED, ONE FORM PER PACKAGE, FOR EACH PACKAGE SHIPPED TO EYE-RACK.

PARCELS MUST BE TAKEN TO THE POST OFFICE DURING OFFICE HOURS; YEW CANNOT DROP A PARCEL IN A BOX AFTER HOURS.

PARCELS SHALL NOT CONTAIN ANYTHING TO OFFEND THE SENSIBILITIES OF THOSE FINE PEOPLE IN EYE-RACK. IF IN DOUBT, LEAVE IT OUT. YES, PHIL FOGLIO, THIS MEANS YOU.

EACH PACKAGE TO EYE-RACK MUST BE WELL-SEALED, WITH CORNERS TAPED OVER, AND A SHIPPING LABEL CONTAINING YOUR ADDRESS AS WELL AS THE DESTINATION ADDRESS, WHICH IS SHOWN ON THE FORM AS AN EXAMPLE FOR YOU DEBUTANTES.


IF YEW TRY TO SHIP BY MEDIA MAIL TO EYE-RACK, YOU ROLL A FUMBLE, AND GEE-EYE JOE AND GEE-EYE JAME GAMER IN EYE-RACK LOSE. IT WILL NOT GET THERE IN TIME FOR ZIGG-UR-AT CON, AS THE DEADLINE FOR MEDIA MAIL HAS PASSED.

IF YOU TRY TO SHIP TO EYE-RACK BY PARCEL POST AFTER MONDAY 21 MAY, YOU ROLL A FUMBLE.

IF YOU TRY TO SHIP TO EYE-RACK BY EXPRESS MAIL AFTER SATURDAY 26 MAY, YOU ROLL A FUMBLE.



THE BLACK ITEMS IN THE RED BOXES DO NOT CHANGE, EXCEPT FOR BOX TEN, IF YOU ARE RICHER THAN PAUL ALLEN AND CAN AFFORD TO SHIP BY EXPRESS MAIL.

ITEMS IN RED TYPE WITHOUT A RED BOX WILL CHANGE, DEE-PENDING ON THE CIR-CUM-STAN-CES OF YOUR SHIPMENT.

BOX FIVE LISTS INSURANCE, WHICH IS OPTIONAL, DEPENDING ON WHETHER YOU WISH REIMBURSEMENT IN THE EE-VENT YOUR PRECIOUS PARCEL IS SPINDLED, FOLDED, MUTILATED OR RUN OVER BY A HUM-VEE.


SAID PACKAGE SHOULD NOT EXCEED 34 INCHES IN LENGTH, NOR SEVENTEEN INCHES IN WIDTH, NOR SEVENTEEN INCHES IN DEPTH. IF YOU DO, YOU WILL REGRET IT, FOR THE RATES FOR THOSE LARGE PARCELS ARE SPEN-DY.


ANY QUESTIONS?

AH CAIN'T HEEEEAR YEW!

Parcel Eight ships courtesy new benefactor

Mike Caron of Far Far Away chipped in $50 which pays for Parcel Eight, shipping tomorrow. Thanks, Mike!

Yet Another Gift

O. D. D. thanks Antonia Cabal of Milwaukie for a $10 donation. That Grrl Gamer's gift will cover the remaining fraction of freight cost for parcels Six and Seven (the OSFCI purchase).

The Parcel Post shipment of Grrl Gamers' dice, card and board games will roll out this weekend. Then, a Monday night sweep of the three game stores generously serving as Dice Depots, followed by a hurried trip to the Main Post Office, will close out Operation Dice Drop.

Bring out your dice!
Bring out your dice!

I'll be checking with those three stores:
Rainy Day Games in Aloha
Empire Games in SE Portland and
Ancient Wonders in Tualatin
to get estimates of weight, so I can calculate freight and insurance costs for the Monday close-out shipments, and then will advise tomorrow how much I THINK we'll need to round out Operation Dice Drop for Ziggurat Con.

From a faraway land

Michael Mallon of Houston, TX found us through the D&D Archive and asked we take a look at it. He also sent a contribution of $100, which after PayPal fees, nets us $96.80. That erases our deficit from shipping parcels 1-7 and buying the merchandise for parcels 6-7. Kewl!

Parcel 8 will ship out courtesy that kind contribution as well. That has the dice bags, minis and card games from Grrrl Gamers, their dice and dice from the gaming distributor's going-out-of-business sale, We're holding off to package as much as we can in one carton, for a box of up to 34" long, up to 17" wide and up to 17" deep is the most cost-effective shipment, less spendy than two smaller boxes of the same total weight.

You can ask for a shipping kit of cartons and customs forms from the Postal Service; our was requested Tuesday and arrived Saturday (your mileage may vary). More tips on packaging are at the Postal Service web site.

A Generous Gift from OSFCI

Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc., has granted us $300 for purchases and shipping of merchandise to Ziggurat Con. Excellent!

OSFCI operates Orycon, Oregon's long-running science fiction convention in November, and GameStorm, Oregon's premiere gaming convention, held every spring.

It was their generous donation which enabled us to buy and ship the large purchase of RPG books sent Tuesday.

However, Operation Dice Drop is still in the red. Ixias kindly donated $50, which helped with the $74 postage charges for the first five cartons. The $300 OSFCI donation was totally consumed by the unxepected bargain purchases, nearly paid for the freight (only $5 short), leaving nothing left over to cover the back charges for mailing the first batch. Not knocking OSFCI, or Ixias; their generosity has gotten us this far, but no farther.

Merchandise is accumulating at our Dice Depots, no funds are left to ship the loot, and we're $30 in the red.

Please consider a donation to Operation Dice Drop. A small amount allows us to ship some large happiness to GI Joes and Janes stuck in the sandbox, and helps them keep making their sanity rolls.

You can PayPal it to JOHN (at] 503BARTLEY [daht} COM and feel free to ask me any question about what we're doing and how we do it. We keep open books here, you've seen the receipts we posted here to show the mailing costs, and we also list what's gone already.

Yet Another Dice Depot for your convenience

Ancient Wonders of Tualatin is our new Dice Depot on the South Side, serving Clackamas County and nearby environs.

They're at 19060 SW Boones Ferry Road, and will provide a 20% discount to any purchases sent directly to Ziggurat Con.

Thank you, Ancient WOnders!

WOTC is on board!

Wizards of the Coast's News section on their home page for Dungeons and Dragons now links to the Wikipedia article on Ziggurat Con.

That Wikipedia article also cites a KPAM-AM radio interview... anyone happen to have recorded that, so I can link to it?

A new Dice Depot on the Eastside

There's a new game (store) in town, and they've enlisted with Operation Dice Drop as a Dice Depot.

Empire Games, 7979 SE Foster Road, will hold your donations until Shipping Day (21 May).

Empire's location is a little funny; even though the street address is on Foster, the store fronts onto SE 80th. It's the first building at the NW corner of Foster and SE 80th, and is behind the south corner of Freddie's.

Cartons Six and Seven on their way

Now, good gamers, let's change our plan.


Tuesday's RPG manuals are on their way, and that's great news for the gamers in The Sandbox.

That marks the end of what we can count on for Media Mail shipments. To get there on time, from now unti 21 May, shipments must now go Priority Mail. That last batch would have cost 3.27 times as much, $17.11 more per carton, if sent Priority Mail instead of Media Mail. (We know we can't afford to Express Mail anything.)

From now on, when you drop off gifts at Dice Depots for us to ship, please concentrate on dice, minis, and card-based games, which are much lighter than RPG books.

The one likely exception is the Dungeons & Dragons Players Kit 3.5th Edition which is pretty darned light, and contains everything needed to keep a MilGamer happy.

Last Load of Books

A gamer friend of ours, Amy Kennedy-Mehegan, runs open gaming on alternate Saturday nights in Westmoreland. She was also kind enough to tumble to a don't-miss bargain: ABC-Northwest, a major game distributor (with whom she is not associated), is shuttering their doors.

So, that distributor's Going Out Of Business Sale became a winfall for Operation Dice Drop. A carton of RPG books has been acquired (more about the benefactors who paid for that tomorrow) when Amy drove down to Salem to Loot The Bodies at the distributor.

Vampire: Storyteller Screen # 10757
Vampire: The Requiem Core Bk # 10741
Werewolf: Storyteller Screen # 10758
Werewolf: The Forsaken Core Bk # 10743
D&D DMG II # 10014
D&D Monster Manual II # 6829
D&D Monster Manual III # 9697
D&D Monster Manual IV # 11332
D&D Arms & Equipment Guide # 7988
D&D Complete Arcane # 9900
D&D Complete Divine # 8906
D&D Complete Mage # 11585
D&D Complete Psionic # 10687
D&D Defenders of the Faith # 6001
D&D Song and Silence # 6500
D&D Spell Compendium # 10316
D&D Sword & Fist # 5733

Plus
Dice OPQ 12mm 50D6 Asst.
which follow in a Parcel Post shipment.

Those books ship today, and that wraps up what we can do with Media Mail, the cheap way to ship to APO addresses.

That shipment exhausts all the donations we have on hand, yet there's still merchandise to ship (a list of THAT will follow later this week). We still need funds for shipping dice, card games, board games, and those few books which folks may bring in, in the last few days before our cutoff date of 21 May, the last day for Parcel Post shipments.

So, consider the virtue of small contributions which will make a big difference to games out in the Big Sandbox. If you can help, e-mail me at john (at] 503BARTLEY [daht) com which is the PayPal address for contibutions.

Books Away!

Seven, count then, 7, cartons of books are en route to Camp Adder tonight from SE Portland, thanks to the generosity of Ixias and OSFCI.

More books follow tomorrow, and then we concentrate on dice, miniatures, board and card games.

From here on, books won't be spurned, but if there's a choice in books what we contribute, let's concentrate on core rulebooks for the game systems asked for, i. e., D&D 3.5, B5, White Wolf, et al.

And, again, thank you!

Looting the Bodies at Rainy Day Games

Wow. $529 in new or near-as-new donations collected at Rainy Day Games in Aloha ship out tomorrow AM. That's in addition to the contributions from the Grrl Gamers of Portland. See the list, below.

That doesn't count the dice, card games, board games & miniatures, which must ship via Parcel Post.

Grunts, Portland likes you.

Comics:
Dork Tower (6)
Knights of the Dinner Table (8)
Nodwick (4)
PS 238 (3)

RPG manuals & supplements:
BESM D20 Special Edition
D20 Xcrawl Adventures in the Xtreme Dungeon Crawl League PHD-1000
FF Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore
FF Legends & Lairs: Monster's Handbook
FF Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes
FF Legends & Lairs: School of Evocation
FF Legends & Lairs: Spells and Spellcraft
FF Legends & Lairs: Twisted Lore
MGP Babylon Five Heroes and Allies #3514
MGP Quintessential Cleric #4003
SJG Star Munchkin RPG
WOTC 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide
WOTC 3.5 Monster Manual
WOTC 3.5 Player's Handbook
WOTC Deep Horizon (L13)
WOTC Hearts of Nightfang (L10)
WOTC Kingdoms of Kalamar (L8-L9)
WW Creature Collection #8300
WW Relics & Rituals #8310

CafePress store for OperationDiceDrop

I'll be posting here the sales and revenue data from the new CafePress OperationDiceDrop store, http://www.cafepress.com/dicedrop.

Go there. Buy kewl stuff.

All net proceeds (i.e., revenue received from CafePress after they deduct management and other fees) will go to buying dice, books and games, and shipping purchased and donated games to Iraq, and after that closes out, to other combat (including 'peacekeeping') zones.

Accumulated non-books to ship by Parcel Post

The result of my wife's Grrl Gamer group and their dice-bag sewing parties:

30 bags of dice w/ a D20 std set within each bag (see above)
2 lb, 8 oz of assorted types & sizes of dice, batched in ziplock bags or in Altoids tins
50+ terrain pieces in shoebox
One plastic box assorted minis, individually wrapped in paper towels to minimize transit damage, w/ matching WOTC D&D character cards. (How many? Well, > 2 dozen.)
Another pack WOTC character cards.
Two sealed tubes of Pringles (mmm, snacks make the gamer)
450-card deck, Illuminati New World Order, the One With Everything set, w/ manual book
Net Book of Riddles.txt (loose leaf paper in a folder)
Lord of the Rings / Return of the King card set, in plastic box (Be the first in your tent to collect the Balrog!)
And, the aforementioned books (see previous post).

They will ship Parcel Post once batched into the optimum size-weight groups. (Anything over 34" long, 17" wide OR 17" deep is much more expensive, so multiple parcels are often more cost-effective).

Personal contributions - Monday's book shipment

Here are the books which will ship Monday from Liberty Hall, 97267, via Media Mail:

F&SF magazine (screened for censor's sensibilities)
Analog magazine (ditto)
AD&D PHB TSR2159
Babylon 5 Ship Plans Vol 1 MGP 3353
D&D 3.0 DM Guide TSR11551 (2 ea)
D&D 3.0 Monster Manual II WOTC 882680000
D&D 3.0 Monster Manual TSR11552
D&D 3.0 PHB TSR11550 (2 ea)
D&D 3.5 Defenders of the Faith WTC 11840
D&D 3.5 DMG #177520000 (Qty 2)
D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms Campaign Settings
D&D 3.5 Map Folio I 886480000
D&D 3.5 Monster Manual #177550000
D&D 3.5 PHB #175240000
D&D 3.5 PHB Deluxe Edition
Dragon Issue 348, October 2006
GURPS Atomic Horror SGJO2295 6065
GURPS Werewolf The Apocalypse SJGO1995 6077
Jayne's Intelligence Review: The Royal Manticoran Navy ADA 21951
Vampire: The Dark Ages WW#2800


These are personal contributions brought to us by friends.
More will follow from gaming stores.


They will ship Media Mail (AKA Book Rate) once batched into the optimum size-weight groups. (Anything over 34" long, 17" wide OR 17" deep is much more expensive, so multiple parcels are often more cost-effective).

New Dice Drop Depot: Rainy Day Games in Aloha

Rainy Day Games at 18105 SW Tualatin Valley Highway in Aloha is now supporting Operation Dice Drop!

From the owner of Rainy Day Games:

Rainy Day Games would love to participate in Operation Dice Drop. In addition to serving as a collection point I'd also like to offer a 20% discount to any customer that wishes to purchase something from my store for Operation Dice Drop. I will also make some donations from my store.
Please keep in touch and let me know if there is anything else that we can do to help out with this effort.
- Steve Ellis, Owner
- Rainy Day Games, LLC

I'm looking for an Eastside gaming store to serve as another location, and maybe Gresham. I'll be making calls on a few prospects, later today, and will post any successes here.

The Anonymous Benefactress

Benefactress No. 1, Ixias, has donated $50 American to help pay for shipment of dice and books to The Sandbox as a aprt of Operation Dice Drop. Thank you!

That will allow shipment of two (2) Media Mail book-only shipments of 20 lb each (which MUST ship by Wednesday 9 May, one week from today) and a mixed-bag of dice, cards, board games, figurines and remaining books (which MUST ship by Monday 21 May). Multiple shipments are better, for if parcels get larger than 34" long or 17" wide or deep, costs more than triple.

Early Shipments Are Like Gold.
Let me repeat that.
Early Shipments Are Like Gold.

Please, people, drop off your books at Rainy Day Games (more about that in my next post) or send them yourselves, to make that Wednesday 9 May deadline for the best possible Military Mail rate!