The heartbreak of garage cleaning

[Haltherrion]

I finally tossed my old maps to "Morkhelek" today while cleaning the garage. It was in a small suitcase I've been lugging around for literally 30+ years. It was something like 30 sq ft of maps of a part above ground, part below ground city I did in my highschool years.

It was a huge project at the time but it was not the quality I'd use for anything now and I'd just kept it for sentimental reasons. I realized I never looked at it nor had much interest in doing so. The space it was taking up was modest but it just seemed a waste to carry it around. Funny thing is while I feel a little bad about it, I don't feel all that bad about it.

There are many things I won't toss (old land maps, a very detailed castle I once did, more mature setting notes and bulletins I did for players). But the Morkhelek maps were massive and poorly done; not much to look it except to say, wow I spent a lot of time on this once upon a time.

What do the rest of you long timers do with your old material? Ever faced with tossing some of it?

 

[Redshirt]

I dont think I could ever throw my old stuff out. 25+ years of stuff I enjoy looking at every so often to remind me why I love this game.

 

[Reynard]

I wish there was some sort of role-playing material archive you could send this stuff to. Those maps, characters and adventure notes are cultural documents, at least for our sub-culture. I am sure someone somewhere could write a great dissertation on gamer history & culture if they had access to this kind of archive.

 

[Quickleaf]

Haha that's a good point Reynard

Well when I got out of the hobby for a few years I gave away a nearly complete Planescape collection to my friend's younger brother. We lost touch over the years and I wonder if those books are still with him, passed down to someone else, or *cringe* on e-bay. Would have been nice to be able to pull out the books now and then, but the joy his bro got out of it made the gigging worth the withdrawal.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

Like a "Toys For Tots" but different?

 

[Reynard]

Like a "Toys For Tots" but different?

I'm not thinking of passing along games or supplements or whatever (though I think that is a great idea, especially since retro-gaming is big right now).

I am more thinking about how we collect all this *stuff* and it is a snapshot of our subculture and ourselves at the time it is created. If, for example, you have a campaign world you used for 20 years over 3 or 4 editions and finally give it up (for whatever reason), wouldn't it better be in the hands of some sort of archival organization that can keep it, catalogue it and look at it from a historical and cultural perspective.

I mean, otherwise, it is just in a landfill somewhere and I doubt the alien archeologists who find it sometime after Dec 21, 2012 are going to much care.

 

[delericho]

I have never reached the point of throwing away the stuff. However, much of my old material never gets looked at, will never get used again, and is frankly of very poor quality.

I think, though, that if I ever reached the point where I was determined to be rid of it, I would at least scan it all in to the PC, and thus keep electronic copies. It's not as if storage is expensive, after all. (Actually, I should probably do that anyway...)

As far as culling the set of books is concerned, I think I'd be inclined to get rid of things based first on how easy it is to replace (at least with PDF), and then based on how good it is (there are lots of books that I frankly shouldn't have bothered with).

Gah! Even the thought is horrible!

 

[Dice4Hire]

Yeah, I have some old stuff I would not like to lose. But as for most of it, I am not too attached to it all. For me, the fun is in the playing, not the creating or keeping.

So, the old stuff may help me remember, but it is not primary.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

A little late now, but if so much time and effort went into creating the maps, I would have scanned them before tossing them.

Digital copy=no space taken up.

DS

 

[Ahzad]

I have gotten rid of a few things but I still have the vast majority of the home made dungeons I made in middle/high school back in the early 80's and even though they kind of make me cringe they still bring me some joy.

What I've recently come to slightly regret is getting rid of most of my OD&D/1e/2e stuff. I initially sold it off to buy a computer b/c I was finding out there was some great rpg stuff out here on the internet while using the computer labs at college and wanted my own to be part of it. I've had two big cullings of my rpg books and in both cases it was for computers so I guess it wasn't all bad. I kept all my Gygax stuff and Spelljammer stuff I couldn't part with that stuff for anything.

It's just been the past few months I've been waxing nostalgic and wanting all that stuff back to look at, nothing has ever quite captured my imagination as the early days of the hobby. All that awesome Trampier, Otus, and Dee artwork. The crazy things like dungeonland and land beyond the magic mirror. I miss all that stuff and the feelings it brings up looking through that. Waiting for school to end on friday so you could spend the whole weekend gaming with your buddies