By now, if you're into tabletop games, you've probably heard of ZigguratCon, the first gaming convention in a war zone.

It's being run by soldiers in Iraq. Since they're low on supplies, they're taking donations.

Coincidentally, I've been busy moving.

I have a closet full of games. I had been planning on eBay-ing the lot of them, but then I thought, "Hey, maybe someone can give them a better home."

So I contacted SPC Amberson, who is running it, and asked him if they needed anything else. He answered in the affirmative, and I put together my list.

Follow up:

Now, here's the deal: I'm a slightly obsessive compulsive packrat-slash-collector. I never play any of these games anymore, but I always feel like I need to collect them. But I'm tired of moving them. They're heavy.

They're not getting used.

They take up lots of space.

So I used this as an opportunity. My games could help other people.

Before pulling my shelves clean, I took a picture.

I made up some rules for myself:

• Only send stuff in good shape. That ancient copy of AD&D "Oriental Adventures" with masking tape on it, the one I don't know where I got it from? I'm not sending that. The only exception was my copy of Renegade Legion Centurion, since despite having a somewhat smooshed box still had everything you need to play it.
• Try to send whole systems. At first, I'd pulled down some Savage Worlds games, but I realized - I had to send the main rulebook if they wanted to know how to play. Sure, theoretically, I may play it again some day, but I wanted to be sure - and I live right around the corner from a game store, and I have disposable income - so I sent it.
• Include everything. Am I sending a copy of Silent Death? (Yes!) Then include miniatures, star maps - all that jazz.

So with rules in place, I started pulling stuff off. Soon my closet looked like this:

Getting all that into boxes, then down the stairs to the ground floor, was also fun.

From there, they went down another flight of stairs and into my car along with a handtruck. Off to the post office!

There, knowing that SPC Amberson had requested priority mail, I filled out five Customs forms, five Priority mail address slips, and handed them over to the nice lady at the desk. She'd weigh each box, tell me how much the subtotal was, then have to get help from the lady next to her to carry the box to the, uh, place that they take them.

Why help?

BOX 1: 28 pounds, 13.4 ounces
BOX 2: 40 pounds, 9.0 ounces
BOX 3: 39 pounds, 4.4 ounces
BOX 4: 28 pounds, 12.6 ounces
BOX 5: 44 pounds, 0.2 ounces

Yikes.

Good thing I borrowed my brother's law firm's handcart!

Finally they were all gone. Now it's just up to USPS to get them there, hopefully in one piece.

If you're wondering what I sent, here it is. There are probably things I missed in there; for instance, most of the box sets had additional materials inside of there, I found extra counter packages for Crimson Skies, etc. Also, those boxes don't match up to the weights above; the boxes in the list are in order of packing.

Hopefully this will help make a difference.