Do You Write In Or Modify Your Game Manuals?

[Terry DM]

By that, I mean ... besides putting your name in the book, do you write in, dog-ear, attach labels, remove pages, or any other type of modification to your game manuals / rule books?

I've always treated my D&D books with the utmost care and respect ... but I recently picked up a less-than-perfect 2nd-hand copy of the 3.5 DMG for my game, and after seeing margin notes, etc. from the previous owner, I figured "It's already been marked up a bit ... I should throw some labels on this badboy to speed things up.", so I did ...

Now years ago, this would have been blasphemy to me ... but I started to wonder if others gamers do this?

 

[Aus_Snow]

besides putting your name in the book

I don't even do that. With any books at all.

So, that would be a "no".

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

For the longest time, years and years, I never marked anything in a book. Then I started writing my name inside the covers after a player at a table claimed my book and denied it was mine. The scuffs were familiar to me as my own skin, so I knew it was mine. Ever after than I wrote my name in my books.

Not long after that I decided I would write published errata into the book where it had room for it. Did this in 2nd edition and 3.x books. I figured since only I would be using this book might as well make it even more useful.

 

[The Shaman]

All the time, all kinds of books - mostly margin annotations, occasionally short commentaries in the fly leaves.

It's fun to go back and see what I was thinking twenty years ago.

 

[Cor_Malek]

Stamp in Ex Libris, and that's that. When I absolutely need to write inside of books, I use small post-it like strips, but it never came up with RPG manuals.

 

[S'mon]

Yes, loads of pencil marks.

 

[delericho]

I did with a few books (2nd Edition PHB and DMG; "The Complete Fighter's Handbook"), but never did so for long. When 3e came around, I started with the intention to keep my books up-to-date with errata, but that immediately fell by the wayside when the first book I tried to update was "Sword and Fist".

I wouldn't even try with 4e - my 4e rulebooks are essentially paperweights at this point.

 

[Gilladian]

I have put semi-permanent page flags on the important page margins of my 3.5 books. I have alphebetical tags for the MM, and tags for the XP, magic item, random trap generation pages, etc... in the DMG.

It helps a lot, but if I sold the books, they'd peel out harmlessly.

I do also write my name in my books. Too much PH confusion, otherwise.

 

[IronWolf]

The only time I write in my game books if if they will be traveling with me to a convention. Then they get my name in the front cover and certain page number of the book inside as well.

 

[Lhorgrim]

Until last week I had never even written my name in an RPG book.

I use clear plastic slip covers that a friend gets in bulk from a library supplier, and I slip one of my business cards inside the interior of the front cover to show it's my book.

I've never payed much attention to errata before. My groups had pretty much just informally adopted updates about issues that really bugged us and ignored the rest.

After reading the errata on the 4E Magic Missile a couple weeks ago, and because I'm looking to get a new group started (the old one didn't survive the switch from 3.0 to 3.5), I decided I needed to update my rule books.

It took me an entire weekend, but I printed, cut, pasted, scratched out, and penciled in all the current errata into my PHB.

To be honest, I would have happily spent another $30 bucks or so to purchase a new rulebook that was updated with all the errata, but I understand why that isn't practical.

I don't think I'll ever do this drastic errata updating again, as long as the errata for a book isn't more than I can print out on three or four pages and keep in the back of the book.