Do you modify/write-in your game books?

[Emirikol]

I write in my books and tear out pages to hand to the players. My Curse of Strahd is a mess.
I use an extra soft pencil for making notes bc I oftentimes erase and give the books away to the younger kids at my son's game days (back before the end of the world).

 

[Esau Cairn]

There is an entire field of academic research which involves studying the marginalia of what authors have written in the books they read and research. Personally, I find such notes and notations of some authors to be far more fascinating than the fiction they produce.

Through more than half my life, I never even stamped an intaglio in any of my books; I was furious when my mother wrote my name in a couple of books she sent to me when I was a freshman in boarding school. Then I read Nabokov and was compelled by the words to begin marking the most glorious sentences in the history of English language literature, along with notes and references and allusions to other works.

After that, marking my rpg books was not only inevitable, but became worth hours saved during game play. Those with pages that could be marked. Sticking tabs on glossy pages is about as far as the medium effectively allows.

Of course, in recent decades, using pdfs provides the best of both world; perfect copies and the ability to mark them up with notes and tabs, etc. But pdfs aren't a well-thumbed book nor can they ever be.

 

[Maxperson]

I used to write my name inside the cover of my books, but one day I realized that every other player at the table religiously wrote theirs inside their books, so I stopped. Now everyone knows that the ones with no name are mine and I get to keep my books nice and clean.

 

[Jd Smith1]

But pdfs aren't a well-thumbed book nor can they ever be.

And therein lies their beauty.

 

[Arilyn]

The librarian thing is interesting. They've hammered into us not to write in books, but casually, even cruelly stamp "discard" into old unloved books, and toss them on to the "free books" heap. Nothing sadder than that. They end up in their forever homes at my house.

 

[jasper]

I never write in my books, except maybe to put my name inside the cover. Maybe.

If I need to bookmark something for a gaming session, I usually just put a Post-It note in while I'm prepping my materials, and then remove it after the game.

I come by it honest; I worked in a library for 4 years.

AND LOW THE HERETIC REVEALS THEMSELVES. Smug them. Wipe chocolate melted bunny juice on them. Dog ear them.

To the tune of "it is my party"
It's my book, and I'll write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
You would write in too, if if you were smart

….

It's my book, and I'll write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
You would write in too, if if you were smart

…

I've got reason to smile

It's my book, and I'll write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
You would write in too, if if you were smart

…..

It's my book, and I'll write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
You would write in too, if if you were smart

Oh, it's my book, and I'll write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
Write in if I want to
You would write in too, if if you were smart
It's my book, and I'll write in if I want to

 

[fba827]

I never write in a book, until/if I do for some reason - then it gets written in everywhere

 

[CleverNickName]

You would write in too, if if you were smart*

*Citation needed.

;-)

 

[Dyson Logos]

What kind of monster would write in a book?

 

[Esau Cairn]

But pdfs aren't a well-thumbed book nor can they ever be.

And therein lies their beauty.

Mumbly-mumbly something about lies in the eye of the beholder (which is not at all the same as a Beholder's eye).

I see beauty in the many lives of each dog-ear'd page.