This isn't a New Year's Resolution or anything like that, but I'm going through a purge of RPG materials that have collected and have remained unused since I've owned them. I'm a sucker for sales, and pick up almost anything that I find on clearance at Half Price Books, and delved into the recent Green Ronin/Paizo sale that we had here last month. Not that I need to justify getting four books for the price of a magazine, it makes great sense, but once you have piles of books several feet high, enough is enough!
So I'm curious, am I alone in having a ton of books that I've never read? What do you estimate your percentage of read materials is? How do you decide what should go? I have a bunch of setting books and materials for games that I'll probably never play (Alternity, Last Unicorn's STAR TREK) - should I let go and send them off despite great settings? Or am I fooling myself? Should I also do a d20 purge like so many companies are doing? Thoughts?
I can claim to have read every book I have bought without fail. Note, however, that just because I've read a given game book it does not follow that I remember every rule in detail, nor do I know how to break every feat/class/spell/magic doo-dad. The ones that I keep are the ones that either a) I use regularly, b) I find useful even if not used regularly, or c) I find to be genuinely good reads even if seldom/never used. I can be suckered into buying a book on occasion, but I still read the book even if I sell it off/give it away/dispose of it.
All of them, cover to cover, sometimes multiple reads, barring the new books I picked up from the sale, which I haven't had time to get to yet.
There’s a four-foot pile next to my bed, and I’d say another eight-foot pile in the spare bedroom.
|
Every one of them. I only own a select few though, PHB, PHB2, DMG, DMG2, MM, MM2, Arms and Equipment guide, ToB, Rules Compendium, Magic Item Compendium, and 3 Green Ronin Beastie books(which I just got and am still reading through).
I don't claim to have all the rules memorized or anything, and 3.0 still seems to creep into my head during my 3.5 games, but I attribute that to bad eating.;P
I have dudes in my group that have every single book made and use bizarre combos from many but I know they haven't read through all of them, just use them to cherry-pick KEWL bonuses and Character Opt builds. Maybe a houserule that only books that have been completely read can be used would be a good order.
You will be tested on your knowledge.
;P
Since everyone is saying all of them I'll pipe in and say you are not alone. Heck I'm probably worse than you.
For a good while my life got VERY busy so I stopped playing and reading D&D material.
However I kept on buying books and kept my magazines subscriptions going knowing I'd return to the hobby someday.
Well Im back...And I have this insane anal system to catch up. I am reading everything in the order they were published and released. I read the stuff WotC put out that month, followed by the Dragon issue and then the Dungeon. Then I read one 3rd party book. After that its back to WotC the following month.
I just reached July of 2004 yesterday. That means I am just cracked open The Planar Handbook. After I read that its on to Serpent Kingdoms, then the Eberron adventure Shadows of the Last War, then the July 04 Dragon, then the 04 Dungeon (the Maure Castle issue..I've been looking foward to that one), then something by Necromancer games probably, then on to whatever WotC released in August 04.
So you see why I'm sticking with 3rd edition. Theres still so much matierial "comming out" for me. I mean...the Eberron campaign setting just came out about 2 weeks ago as far as I'm concerned, and the Shackled City Adventure path is drawing to a close. :)
|
|
So you see why I'm sticking with 3rd edition. Theres still so much matierial "comming out" for me. I mean...the Eberron campaign setting just came out about 2 weeks ago as far as I'm concerned, and the Shackled City Adventure path is drawing to a close. :)
Well-played, clerks.
I also haven't read everything I ever bought. The tower of unread "I'll get to them soon" novels and RPG supplements grows. I sometimes worry my home will look like the one in Fight Club - a small corridor in my living room winding through a forest of magazine/book "trees". :)
|
Up until Pathfinder came out I had read everything i owned. Now I've read the non adventure part of my pathfinders, but the adventure part and my GMM have slowly fallen to the wayside, to this point I have 3 PF and3 GMM to read, plus the 3-4 Freeport books I got from the GR sale. I prioritize by type of book - adventure for next game day, creature books, setting building books, item books, class books, other adventures.
Nice to see that some people are 100%. And I'm also glad that I'm not alone in collecting stacks ;) I have been slammed for the last four months, so I hope to get that read:unread ratio a LOT higher (including Pathfinder!). Of course getting rid of that stack of books I don't think I need will help out, too.
Of the RPG books I have, I've read around 2/3rds of them. I go through phases where I'll read a couple a week, then won't touch any for months (other than to prep for games). So no the OP is definitely not alone in not having read his entire collection. In fact, right now I've a back log of 9 books that I got in December alone. I'll get there, damned sales are too good to resist at times.
EDIT: I will say, thus far the Pathfinders get read with in about two to three days of me getting them in the mail, so far they don't end up in the pile. (Which is good, as I don't need more books in the pile).
My friends as well as my fellow gamers call my room the "Wizard's Tower" since I live on the second story of the house...and for some rather obvious other reasons.
Truth is I'm pretty familiar with every RPG book that I own and have at the very least "glanced" through them all if not out-right read them,but like another poster here said I don't know every little detail or rule from them.
|
All of them. If I'm not gonna read it, I don't buy it.
I read insanely fast, 'though. A 200 page Star Trek novel (hardly brain-straining reading material, I'll concede) takes about an hour.
Longer if I'm driving. I get distracted by all those idiots on the road honking their horns and squealing their tires. Can't they see I'm reading? :)
White Wolf game books are the best for sheer reading pleasure, in my experience. Wraith: the Oblivion, Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure!, Kindred of the East and Mage: the Ascension books are the best, but Vampire: the Masquerade, Vampire: Dark Ages, etc. are also good fun. I have almost every book they put out before this latest 'reboot' (which isn't as interestingly written, in my opinion), and I haven't even played some of the genres (such as Wraith, which I suspect is a lot more fun to read than play...). Some books, like the Sons of Ether tradition book, I get all googly eyed and can read over and over, finding new things or new inspirations.
It's my love of reading combined with gaming that made me such a Realms fanboi for so long, since Ed Greenwood managed to write one hell of a setting. It took quite a few hacks coming in after-the-fact and messing it all up to cure me of that infatuation.
I still re-read Al-Qadim and Kara-Tur boxed set stuff for entertainment value, even if the settings have been abandoned. I like the atmospheric writing.
I have a number of books I haven't read, mostly 3rd party and FR stuff, and way more books I don't use. Fluff splats and adventures are great, but too much crunch is a bad thing, a motto I'll carry with me into 4E.
|
I've read all of the books I've bought, but that's only about a dozen hardbacks and the same number of softbacks (including Paizo stuff).
But i'm a big fan of saving money with pdfs for those books that I know I want bits of, but not all of. I've got about 30 pdfs and haven't read any of them all of the way through.
|
|
I'm a loot whore and collect more RPG books than I'll ever want or use. About a year ago, my wife grumbled until I cut my collection in about half. Now I still have several books I've never even cracked the cover on (nor do I know if I ever will).
I've a number of recent AD&D 1st and 2nd edition acquisitions I immediately shelved and haven't looked at.
Exalted 2nd Edition. I skimmed the core book then shelved it and the supplements I've picked up.
A fair number of Sovereign Stone 3e books I haven't even looked at.
Picked up a few Werewolf: The Apocalypse books I was missing this summer. Never looked at them yet.
The Deadlands d20 line...all those books bought and shelved.
Several more too. Yeah, I collect more than I have time to read. I just placed another order for some more Shadowrun books too. My wife is going to be grumbling. I do read and use my Shadowrun stuff though, so she can't complain too much.
I hope.
I have read bits and pieces of all my RPG books, but I have only read two cover to cover (Heroes of Horror & Complete Arcane). I don't have the time that I sometimes think I do when I buy something new.
I'm a loot whore and collect more RPG books than I'll ever want or use.
This is my problem exactly.
I'll oft times get an influx of 4 or 5 books all at once and that will suck my small amount of reading time up. Coupled with the fact that I work at a used bookstore and get huge amounts of fiction and non-fiction books for peanuts on top of buying (getting) lots of RPG books, I simply never have time enough to read them all. I need to go on a book buying sabbatical and desperately catch up on my reading.
The *only* RPG book I've read every page of (and *used* every page of) has been the hardback version of the Shackled City AP. Initially, at $60, I thought it was overpriced, but the game value per page makes it the *best* RPG purchase I've ever made.
I would say I've skimmed through about everything I own, and sat down and read cover to cover maybe two thirds. A lot of the time I skim through, buy it, take it home, skim through a little more, talk to the DM about new class/feat/spell/race/whatever and read the entry to him, skim through again and find something new, talk to the DM again, skim through again, talk again, skim, talk, skim, talk, until I've read the entire book. I would say about 95% of my collection has been completely read, largely due to this practice.
I due have some stuff that has never realy been touched (in other words skimmed through for less than about five minutes). Mostly some third party 3.0 books a friend of mine gave me a while back for some really out there setting, reminded me a lot of planescape. Not that I have anything for planescape, or whacked out settings, I just knew at the time my DM wasn't going to be interested in allowing any of it, so they got thrown in with my second ed stuff and have been collecting dust ever sense. That and adventures. I rarely read through an adventure completely for some reason.
|
|
I can honestly say that I've read 99% of everything I own. Most of it I read cover to cover but on some occassions I skipped around.
One of these days I'll get around to cataloging all the sourcebooks, and boxsets I own.
Getting rid of WEG Star Wars books should be a crime!
I agree... I have quite a few of these..
The Deadlands d20 line...all those books bought and shelved.
You should have bought Deadlands Classic.. IMHO taking Deadlands and coverting it to D20 is like taking every Clint Eastwood western and remaking it with Corey Haim. Call me a purist but part of what is awesome about Deadlands is how the system and the setting compliment each other.
(I also own & read everything Deadlands Classic..)Trent
|
I have a TON of gaming books. I've read what I consider to be the most interesting parts out of all of them, which is to say the crunch. I am a massive crunch-hound and will buy a whole book just to get a couple of crunchy bits I want. (I bought Expedition to Castle Ravenloft solely for the knight of the raven PrC, for instance.) The one book I have in my collection that I forced myself to read the entirety of was Ptolus, and that was because it was so dadgummed expensive that I was going to wring every ounce of value I could out of it. I even tried to run a game in the setting, but it quickly ground to a halt. My GMing style is about 25% villain design and 75% making up everything else (plot, minor NPCs, etc.) in real time as the game's being played. I am a very fast thinker, and while I don't mind referencing rules (because they're usually designed to be quickly referenced) I quickly found out that looking up things I didn't remember in the Ptolus (well indexed & cross-referenced though it is) book threw me for one hell of a loop.
i have two six foot high, three foot wide book shelves in a hobby room in my house dateing all the way back to the original booklet dungeons and dragons.
i have prolly read about 5% of what i have, and have played only a small fraction of the games. i seem to have lost the game aftermath. there are so many of them that i want to play, that i should open my own gamestore, then i can play anything. "attention game store shoppers, there will be no magic being played today. today is metamorphois alpha day. please, all mutants report to table 1."