Be a Hero, Be a Power Gamer

[telerib]

Had the following idea for the upcoming games:
Donate a pint of blood, get a free stat point (maybe two for the D&D players).

Refining the idea further:
If you can't give blood, volunteer ~5 hours to a good cause, get a stat point.

I'm a little leery of going even further and letting it become a cash donation to a worthy charity, but that might be possible if there's a time limit (say, every 56 days so it's fair to the blood donors) on repeats. I personally think it's more satisfying to buy stuff and give it to the appropriate group (50 lbs dry dog food for an animal shelter, $50 worth of groceries for a food bank), but whatever.

Whaddya think?

Comments

[telerib.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think it would depend heavily on the gaming group in question. To a bunch of high school kids working at the mall, $20-30 is a chunk of change. To a parent on a budget, ditto. But to an IT professional with no dependents, $30 might not even be noticeable.

In a perfect world, the donator would pick an amount commensurate with their income and budget that still satisfied their conscience that they were making a "worthy" donation. But we may be talking about rules lawyers here, so...

*shrug* It's an idea, and easily tailored to individual groups. A GM may decide that only those who participate in a particular Habitat for Humanity project s/he knows about are eligible for the bonus to try and make it a "group experience." Or whatever. I was originally going to make it "blood donation only," except that I have at least one player who cannot give (she has some marks on her arms that give the Red Cross heebie-jeebies) and one whose iron is usually too low to give. I thought they might like an alternative - and it just grew from there.

[cow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree about picking a pet cause or something, having some kind of alternative. I usually can't donate blood because I get sick a lot, and always end up failing one of the "not having had illness X in the last N days" criteria.

The 5 hours of volunteer time is sensible. I give an hour a week, which works out to about the same frequency one could theoretically donate blood . . .