After supporting a number of children’s charities over the years, I adopted Extra Life as my charity of choice about four years ago. It’s the perfect pairing: supporting a cause I believe in by doing something I love. As someone who was sick a lot when he was a child, I know how much that can suck. Adding in the suckage of it being a disease which is not easily curable (or even incurable) is something I wouldn’t want for any child. The money raised by Extra Life goes to helping hospitals in the Children’s Miracle Network, and in my case, the local Stollery Children’s Hospital. Besides helping children in immediate need, they also conduct research which will someday reduce and hopefully eliminate the diseases which strike at children.

If you aren’t familiar with Extra Life, you might wonder how I raise the money. Simply put, folks can pledge a certain amount to my fundraising effort (I’ve set a $1000 goal this year), and in return I pledge to game for 24 hours. This year I’ll be game mastering a Pathfinder game over the course of the day; for a seat at the table you either have to be running your own Extra Life fundraising effort, or make a minimum $25 donation to mine. Taking a cue from some other great tabletop campaign pages I’ve seen on the Extra Life site, I’ll also have ways people can donate at different levels in order to have an effect on the game throughout the day. I may also be live-streaming the game for the first time, but I haven’t confirmed the details on that for myself, so we’ll see.

It’s also a great social event for my friends. My buddy Devin started Team Knifeshoes for Extra Life, and I’ve been a proud member for the last three years. On the day we all gather at a single house, computers and snacks in abundance, and game our way through the 24 hours. It sort of has the feeling of a LAN party, for those what gamed in that era. It’s an event tailor-made for the introvert in me; being with my friends in a social environment without the pressure to converse (GMing doesn’t count, though is an inherently verbal endeavor). And by November 5th we usually have some snow on the ground, so it also feels good to snuggle up together (metaphorically or not) against the cruel winter winds outside.

There will be future posts with details regarding the game I’m running and how you might, if you’re in the Edmonton area, sign up for a seat at the table. But if you’d like to make an early donation, please check out my secure donation page. While I will collect donations in person, donating through my page is the easiest for all concerned; the money goes directly to Extra Life and you get a receipt from them right away via email. You can even donate anonymously if you wish. And if you’d rather wait and see what I have in store for the game before donating, that’s cool, too. Stay tuned in the coming months for those updates.

And I’ll be saying this a bunch between now and the end of the campaign this year, so get used to it now: Thank-you to everyone who has already donated this year! Between online and in-person donations I’m already a fifth of the way to my goal, and looking forward to hitting and maybe even surpassing it. If the past generosity of my friends and fellow gamers holds, I have no worries on that score.