Have enough books?

[Desdichado]

Sure, I've got enough. I'm running a game I'm very satisfied with currently using about 5% of my d20 material, if that. The next half dozen or so campaigns I could possibly envision are currently encapsulated well by the books I already have too, for that matter.

However, picking up, reading, and even occasionally using new material is part of the hobby for me, to a limited extent anyway. Do I need Monster Manual III? Certainly not; I'm crawling with monsters from dozens of sources. Doesn't mean I don't want it, though.

 

[Wombat]

I think I am pretty close to my saturation point.

I haven't bought a D20 book in a couple months now. There is nothing on the horizon that is turning my socks blue, either, so I'm not sure I'll be picking up much else. I am willing to be surprised, however

I think I am more interested in the Ars Magica retool coming out in November.

D20, though, may have reached its limit for me. Not bad, have a lot of books, plan on continuing to play, just feel no pressing need for more matieral.

 

[jester47]

Yes. Pertty much I am topping off things. I plan on 2 more Monster books (Tome 3 and somthing else), Sandstorm, Libris Mortis, Beyond Countless Doorways, Complete Adventurer, Codex Anathema, Grimtooths Traps, Dead Mans Chest, there are rumored to be 2 Fiend books coming out from WotC in the future.

This will give me the Core, 6 other monster books (8 if you count the two from 3.0), 3 books on planes, a book that expands on fighting, a book that expands on adventureing, 3 books that expand on environment (hot, cold and sea), 5 books on the very type of monsters I love to use (dragons, undead, abberations, Demons, Devils), a book on races (SS), 3 books on traps, and 2 books of alternate rules. Plus assorted PDFs and such. That gives me everything I ever really wanted from the game.

25 Books, not counting adventure and setting materials. Some of these could be duds. And I hate race books and specialised class books (as Complete Arcane and Divine seem to be).

After that it is pretty much bona fide Judges Guild Classics, FR expansions, CSIO, Wilderlands, Bards Gate, City of Brass, a few PDFs and the occasional adventure/supplement that makes me say WOW.

JG is going to make new stuff, but I am pretty much only into CoT, TM, CSIO, DT, and the Wilderlands Box Set. Bards Gate and City of Brass are the other for sure Necro titles. Shining South, and Ancient Kingdoms are on deck, as are any future realms supps. Most of this last stuff is stuff that has been promised for a while and is only now coming out. So I am almost at the end. I quit collecting sometime in 2006.

Basicly, I want 1st ed campaigns with d20 rules.

Aaron.

 

[Tetsubo]

I'm a collector of RPG's. I've been buying them since 1978. I currently have six bookshelves of them. I see no point in the future that I will stop buying them. They are about the only new books I buy. I use them for pleasure reading, gaming inspiration, rules reference and sketch ideas. I just like RPG books. So my answer would be No, not enough books.

 

[Aliro]

Blasphemy!

One can never have enough books...too many, yes, but never enough!

Cheers!

 

[shilsen]

I had enough books when I bought the three core ones. Sure, I buy another every couple of months or so, and that too only something I'm absolutely sure I'll get to use, but even if I never bought another D&D book again, I'm good.

 

[Nightfall]

I will never have enough books until I get more Scarred Lands stuff...and then I still want more!!

 

[woodelf]

I've been coming to a realization about my gaming materials over the last few weeks. I've got lots of gaming materials, and I think I have enough.

In terms of 3.x D&D/d20 Fantasy Books: 3.0 Core, 3.5 Core, Psionics Handbook, Expanded Psionics Handbook, Epic Level Handbook, Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, Unearthed Arcana, all 5 3.0 Something & Something-else Class Splatbooks, Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds, Monster Manual II, Arms & Equipment Guide, Savage Species, Oriental Adventures, Deities & Demigods, Manual of the Planes, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, Monsters of Faerun, Magic of Faerun, Races of Faerun, Faiths & Pantheons, Lords of Darkness, Player's Guide to Faerun, & Unapproachable East, Everquest d20 & Wheel of Time. I've also got all the D&D free mini-adventures downloaded, copies of the really good old web features like Spellbook, Dragon Magazines # 286 to #322, Dungeon #91 to #111 and all the product Web Enhancements (and the big 4-part map of the Realms from Dragon Magazine is up on my bedroom wall).

As for pre 3e/d20 books I own and still consider useful: Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog, Wizards Spell Compendium (all 4 Volumes), Priest's Spell Compendium (all 3 volumes), Faiths and Avatars, Powers and Pantheons, Drow of the Underdark, & Pages from the Mages, Warriors of Heaven, Oriental Adventures 1e, Guide to the Astral Plane & the Planewalker's Handbook, and all the free 1e/2e downloads on the WotC site. (And that's not counting probably 2 dozen 2e core/player's option books or the Complete Handbooks which were cheese of often limited usefullness)

That isn't even touching all my d20 Modern books, d20 Babylon 5 books, Spycraft, every d20 Star Wars book made, and then my dozens of d6 Star Wars books, a shelf full of World of Darkness, GURPS, Brave New World, almost everything made for Star Trek (Last Unicorn version) and Alternity Stardrive/Dark*Matter materials.

I've got more dice than I can hold in both hands cupped, probably at least a pound of them, with a dozen of even the little-used d12, and a d30 just to cap it all. I've got loads of plastic minis (back when HeroQuest was out I bought two copies of the core set and all 4 expansions released in the US, so I've got lots of simple minis and furniture), and probably around 100 or so mage knight & heroclix minis I picked up for cheap, and a handful of WotC collectable minis and a few metal minis that were cheaper to pick up than get the plastic collectable version (like a mind flayer). I've got a library of terrain tiles and battlemats reflecting different styles of terrain and modular room tiles I cut out of foamcore. Not to mention lots and lots of legos which include dozens of those little minifigs for using as modular minis for just about any setting.

Then it hit me. I'm done. I've got just about everything I could want. I've got more "Crunch" than I'd need to run any setting I could ever want to (especially since my interest is mostly in FR & Planescape for D&D, and Dark*Matter, Star Wars & Babylon 5 for other settings). I'm a prolific writer of homebrew classes/feats/spells, and have enough to fill at least one sourcebook if I wanted to. I've got all the setting materials I need for those settings to run a dozen campaigns in each one. I've got minis (or at least counters) for the monsters I want to use,

I realized I don't need MMIII or Frostburn to game, and Eberron doesn't interest me and I've got enough other things to plunder for ideas without it. I barely use MMII, and the DMG has rules for ice and snow, and I like the Realms too much to devote myself to a new setting just because it is new). I didn't need A&EG because Aurora's was far better. While I love the Realms, and I'm most knowledgable about realms lore among my entire gaming group even I can't keep up with the minutiae of every new book, so I'm just fine with what I have already. I already am running a homebrew blend of 3.0 & 3.5 with some d20 Modern elements and variants from UA thrown in and I really like it, so I've got no interest in the inevitable 4e or anything beyond. Moving to an incompatible 4e would just ensure I never buy another D&D product.

I'm not burnt out on gaming at all, I still run a game every week and want to game more often. I might pick up a nice mini if I can get it for really cheap and it would go well with my game, or if I see a nice book for cheap in a used-books pile at my FLGS. However, I seem satisfied with the gaming paraphenelia I have generally, I have no plans to buy any new books, and nothing out there just screams "buy me!". Of course the spiralling cost of new gaming books isn't helping at all, I've seen a few that seemed kinda interesting, only to look at the price and think it's just not worth it.

Is anyone else in a situation like this?

I think part of your situation is something that i've been decrying about the RPG industry far years now: it's all the same. That is, i look at your list, and i see a whole lot of very similar stuff: with the exception of Star Wars [d6]--and maybe even that--it's all of about the same crunch level; the style of that crunch is all pretty close to the same (i.e. gamist/simulationist in roughly equal measure, again excepting Star Wars); the settings are all fairly straight-forward humans-plus-near-humans-in-a-familiar-world-with-different-trappings; they're all about larger-than-life heroes in those settings; and so on. In movie terms, you've got action movies covered--sure, some are scifi action movies (Predator), some are fantasy action movies (Conan the Barbarian), some are comedy/action movies (True Lies), some are action thrillers (Eraser), some are superhero action movies (Batman & Robin), and some are even deconstructionist action movies (Last Action Hero), but they're still all action movies. There isn't a single Dangerous Liasons, Kissed, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail among them.

So, yeah, why *would* you want more of the same, especially since, unlike movies, you're not just stuck with what you've got--you get to mix-n-match the bits to create endless variations on a theme, and even if you don't, no two sessions are gonna be the same. And this isn't an attack on you: as commercially-visible RPGs go, you've got a fairly broad selection. But 95%+ of commercially-visible RPGs fall into maybe 5%, tops, of the potential spectrum of the RPG medium.

The things you list that you don't need, don't surprise me, because they're more or less "more of the same". And, unless you're a collector, once you have more of one thing than you need, you have enough. And a lot of the stuff you don't have, you can create quite easily: you don't need another book full of alternate planes, because you have the toolkit bits in MotP [however anemic i may think that toolkit is], and your imagination. But RPGs are a big category, and there're things out there that are *very* different from what you have, and could give you things that you *don't* already have, and couldn't easily improvise (the important word here is "easily"). Frex, Control makes control of the GM's seat a competitive exercise. Or Trollbabe, where scenario building and challenge levels are in the hands of the players instead of the GM. Or Everway, which is subjective and holistic instead of numerical and reductive. Or Dread, which aims to simulate a mood rather than a setting or genre. Or Donjon, which puts narrative control, rather than success, at the center of the mechanics. Or EPICS, where you start playing the character before you create the character. Yes, some of these things can be done with one or more of the RPGs or RPG supplements you list, with varying degrees of effort and fiat. But none of them are *intended* to handle that, and certainly none of them encourage it.

So, yeah, if my collection looked like yours, and all i saw at my FLGS were more books of the same stuff, just different widgets, i'd probably be done buying for a while. Even if my tastes ran to preferring that style of RPG, which they don't. In fact, i more or less reached that point more than a decade ago, in a lot of ways--i had more than enough of what i already had, and needed to get something different. Which is part of why my RPG collection doesn't look much like that at all. I don't have a single WotC book newer than Faeries, though i have probably 6 shelf-feet of AD&D1/2, and a fair number of fantasy D20 System books. In fact, right now i'm actually at almost the exact opposite point: i've had my fill of narrativist systems for a little while, and have just started a D&D game [Arcana Unearthed, Book of Drawbacks & Distinctions, Grimoire II, Mystic Secrets, and Artificer's Handbook for the crunch, Land of Fate (Al Qadim) for the setting]. In the end, i'll probably gravitate back towards the lite narrative systems, because i get frustrated with all the crunch rather quickly. But for right now, it's a welcome change of pace.

Of course, all this is not to say that there's anything wrong with just not buying RPG stuff anymore--it *should* be about the playing, not the buying. But if nothing is catching your eye any more, it just might be because you're jaded, and it'll take something different to intrigue you again--and you're not likely to find something different among the commercially-visible RPGs.

Oh, except you can never have enough dice.

 

[was]

Never happen. I'll always want more.