Experience Point: Textual Triage (Part 1)

What are your top three gaming resources? Rel shines a spotlight on three that are true essentials and explains a bit about why.

Today’s topic became so big I had to break it into two awesome parts. Kind of like a calzone.

If the first half of my June was characterized by awesome vacations, the second half has been characterized by moving piles of stuff from one place to another. A dear friend is coming to live with us for few months while she gets settled in our area and we’re making space for her. This is forcing us to do some organizing we wanted to do anyway, but now it’s urgent. Notably it is forcing us to clear out our (junky) guest room and downsize our (cluttered) library. It’s the latter bit I’ll be talking about today and next week.

Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved books and reading. I always fantasized I’d have a whole room devoted to being a library, crammed full of wonderful books! Be careful what you wish for. My wife and I have spent the last 25 years accumulating a big library and now it is weighing us down. And collecting dust. Lots of dust.

We realized several months ago something needed to be done. That something was us going through these books, shelf by shelf, and deciding which of them really needed to stay part of our collection and which needed to be sent to a new home. We got a very small amount of that project done...and then got distracted by other matters. Which was fine right up until we needed the space to shuffle around furniture and accommodate our friend.

There was simply no way to quickly cull the huge piles of books and do it properly, so we are instead boxing most of them up to store in the attic. This will allow us to pull them back out, one bin at a time, and sort them properly. Or we’ll just leave them up there until we die and let our heirs sort it all out. Either way is fine with us. Meanwhile we have pulled out just a few books, ones we can’t live without, to keep around during this interim.

This is an “across the board” book boxing, so it spans my fiction collection, my gaming collection, and even some of the non-fiction stuff I call on for my coaching. I’ve kept one shelf where my entire Larry Niven collection can stay (our guest is a big fan of hard sci-fi so she’ll want to read those anyway) alongside my Steven Brust books (because I can read them over and over). I can live without the rest of my fiction collection for a while.

Among the gaming books I’m keeping around, I wanted to shine a spotlight on three that are true essentials and explain a bit about why:

Savage Worlds Deluxe, Explorers Edition by Shane Lacy Hensley - Savage Worlds is probably my favorite RPG right now and a big reason is how concise it is. Nearly every rule you could need is contained in one small (6”x9”) thin (maybe ⅜ of an inch) paperback. As a bonus, these rules are so well constructed, with such a strong core mechanic, that I rarely need to consult the book anyway. Anything which has us spending more time having fun and less time flipping pages is a good thing. This book doesn’t even take up shelf space because it never leaves my gaming bag.

4th Edition D&D Dungeon Masters Guide by James Wyatt - I know that the Edition Wars are still smouldering, and I’m certainly not trying to reignite them. Truth be told, while I generally liked 4e, I haven’t played any 4e in about two years now. I haven’t run it in about 5 years, and I have no particular interest in playing or running it anytime in the future. That’s why I know this book is great. It’s simply a fantastic collection of GMing advice for any GM of almost any game. In terms of practical advice on group dynamics, world building, adventure design, and many other fundamental aspects of being a good GM, it’s hard to beat. Whenever I feel stuck about a gaming concept, this is one of the first places I turn.

The Pirates Guide to Freeport by Patrick O’Duffy, Chris Pramas, and Robert J. Schwalb - Ok so I’m a sucker for gritty, pirate adventure. Freeport is one of my favorite settings of all time. But this book is way more than a resource about Freeport. The juicy bits of awesome setting, location, and adventure ideas in this book have been mined for nearly every game I’ve run since I got it. Need an idea for a crime family? This book has at least half a dozen that are pure awesome. Need details on a cool location as a backdrop for your big battle? Dozens of them in this book. Want a juicy backstory for a NPC or even a PC you want to play? You’ll find one on almost every page. And it’s all amazing prose without any ugly stat blocks in the way. Truly a fantastic resource.

Next week I’ll discuss the non-gaming resources I need to keep on hand. Meanwhile I’d love to hear what your top three gaming resource books are in the comments here.

 

[CarlZog]

Alternity's Star Drive Campaign Setting -- This has long been one of my favorite space opera settings, but even if I'm running Star Wars, I find endless inspiration in the gritty political machinations of the Star Drive setting.

GURPS 4th ed Basic Set -- I don't get to play or run much GURPS, but I just love the wide open character development prospects of this system and the detailed tactical combat. Just browsing through the rules and character features helps me think up new, interesting NPCs and encounters for just about any game.

Streets of Silver -- An early d20 city book, it is filled with details about a Renaissance flavored city. I've used it extensively with 7th Sea and Freeport type swashbuckling games.

All three of these are pretty old, which reflects their long, consistent presence on my shelf ( though I'm still pretty new to GURPS). Stuff that's currently getting the most use due to my latest projects are:

Edge of the Empire -- I love Star Wars and I really like this new system. I'm getting ready to run the beginner game.

Prime Directive (for GURPS) -- I've gotten big into Star Fleet Battles this past year. PD is the RPG for the Star Fleet Universe, which is essentially the original extended universe for Star Trek.

FATE Core -- I backed the kickstarter for this, and I've been poring over the pdfs with hope of using this system for a pulp action game I want to run.

 

[Umbran]

My wife and I together have some 1100+ novels. We have a small room as a library, with a bunch of double-stacked bookshelves.

Since the advent of e-readers, growth of the collection has slowed considerably. It has had me think that maybe we could get by with some culling of the physical books. Maybe if we want to re-read, we could then pick up the e-book...

Edit: Between this, and the "Describe your non-D&D book collection" thread, I have found an inspiration for some reshuffling that should gain me a small gaming-book shelf in our gaming space. My wife is pleased at this, because otherwise the active gaming books float around without a good home between games.

This balanced with the issue that some of the really cheap shelving we bought when we moved into the house is showing signs that it was not made to last the years, and needs replacing. Maybe it is time to build some shelves (or at least, to check if that would be cheaper than buying them).

 

[CarlZog]

Since the advent of e-readers, growth of the collection has slowed considerably. It has had me think that maybe we could get by with some culling of the physical books. Maybe if we want to re-read, we could then pick up the e-book...

My novel collection has been culled to virtually nothing by the realizations that I very rarely ever reread them within a 10- to 20-year span, and that I can now get them as ebooks if I ever choose to. When we moved the only ones I kept were the special editions of particular favorites.

Even without ebooks, I've come to the conclusion that keeping hundreds of novels for decades just in case I ever want to reread them was simply not worth the space costs. For the few that I choose to revisit, I can pick up a used paperback for $3.

History books, professional books, gaming books and other references are an entirely separate matter, however. Replacement costs are higher and I'm regularly returning to them for one thing or another.

 

[Rel]

Having just lugged roughly 1/3 of the books we'll likely want to donate upstairs to be loaded onto my truck, this culling of our book collection is seeming like either the best or worst idea we've ever had.

 

[elijah snow]

Can I ask how you (or anyone else is storing them)? I've got so many RPG books from so many editions and systems - don't want to part with them but they are everywhere. I've settled on large plastic bins for basement storage. Cardboard is cheaper but seems dangerous.

 

[innerdude]

Like you, Rel, Savage Worlds Deluxe never leaves my backpack. Ever. It's one of those things that if you ever wanted to fire up a game of something, you could literally have a group roll up characters in 15 minutes and play---and generally have it run fantastically.

The other two items sort of have to pass the test of, "What do I pick up to read when I just want some inspiration on a plot idea or scenario?"

For me, one of those is the Golarion campaign setting. Yeah it's a "kitchen sink," but that's kind of the point. When you want to get ideas for a wide variety of scenarios, it helps to have a setting that puts it in front of you.

Lastly, I have to go with The One Ring, simply because every ounce of the books ooze Tolkien. I truly would keep these books on my shelf for the artwork alone. One glance inside, and I'm transported to Rivendell . . . or Edoras . . . or Minas Tirith.

(Just missing the cut is AEG's Ultimate Toolbox)

 

[TarionzCousin]

Streets of Silver -- An early d20 city book, it is filled with details about a Renaissance flavored city. I've used it extensively with 7th Sea and Freeport type swashbuckling games.

I'll bite. What's so great about this book?

 

[CarlZog]

I'll bite. What's so great about this book?

It's in the details, not the overall concept.

Parma is an unabashedly Italian Renaissance city with a fantasy overlay. There's nothing particularly creative about the overall concept. And because it's so Italian, it may have limited usefulness for a lot of folks. But I love Euro-styled swashbucklers and Age of Exploration-flavored settings, so I get a lot out of it.

The real value is in the details. This is a 300+ page book and it surveys the city with encyclopedic detail. Nearly every commercial storefront in the entire city is detailed: What they sell, the general vibe of the place, who the owner is, his/her quirks, etc. But it's not a dry listing of data. Nearly every entry is pretty well written, dripping with flavor, very evocative and believable. You could read right off the page as your PCs walked down the street.

In addition, there are several sections on the politics, religious institutions (which the city is heavy with), and the "below the surface" background of what's really going on. Most good setting books include all this, but again, in Streets of Silver the attention to details make it all work really well, IMO. I find it to be a very internally consistent city, which is a bigger challenge than it sounds, given the amount of detail they put into it.

There is also a lot of typical early d20 crunch, feats and presitge classes, most of which didn't work very well. But unless you're playing 3.0, it's unlikely you'd ever even want to look at most of that (Some of the prestige classes are inspiring, if not mechanically functional).

Streets of Silver was published by a group called Living Imagination, and was part of a larger campaign setting called Twin Crowns. Twin Crowns had some flaws, and I was never quite sure what to do with its cosmology, but I incorporated a lot of its Age of Exploration flavor into a campaign that merged 7th Sea and Skull and Bones.

Streets of Silver and LI's other books are all still available online.

 

[Rel]

Can I ask how you (or anyone else is storing them)? I've got so many RPG books from so many editions and systems - don't want to part with them but they are everywhere. I've settled on large plastic bins for basement storage. Cardboard is cheaper but seems dangerous.

Plastic bins is what I'm using. I'd probably feel similarly to you about cardboard. We're buying the bins from Wal-Mart and they are fairly cheap. I mean that in a variety of ways too. These are not the sorts of rugged bins I'd want to haul stuff around in on a regular basis. But for this kind of "pack them once and store" application, they are working just fine.