Never before have I used so many books in a session

[HellHound]

Today was a great game session, but never before have I referenced so many rule books in a session that didn't involve levelling up or character creation.

First off, I don't normally reference the DMG or MM at all in an average game... the PHB of course for spells.

But today, I referenced 18 books during actual game play, plus three manuscripts that haven't yet been published:

Monster Manual (Gnolls)
Dungeon Master's Guide (NPC stats for level 10 Drow Wizard)
Player's HandBook (Bunch of spell descriptions)
Monster Manual 2 (two varieties of dinosaur)
Fiend Folio (Monavic Deva)
E.N. Treasure Troves - Figurines of Wondrous Power (Oak Turtle figurine)
Necromancer's Legacy (for a feat)
Player's Guide to Faerun (for a feat reference)
Faiths & Pantheons (to look up Torm)
Complete Divine (Spells)
Three Arrows for the King (Archer class features)
Dungeon 104 (Demonskar Legacy - converted to an underdark adventure)
S&SS Advanced Player's Guide (Critical hit tables)
d20 Future (weapon stats - characters previously finished the Barrier Peaks adventure and I keep fudging the weapon stats on the fly)
Expanded Psionics Handbook (Power descriptions)
Complete Arcane (Spells)
Underdark (Spells, Wandering Monsters, Prestige Class abilities, enclosed spaces rules)
Hyperconscious (Duncharath stats)

I've never seen the table SO covered in books, especially books open to various pages for the convenience of players and myself during game play.

(It has occasionally been so encumbered in the midst of my writing frenzies, but never during play)

 

[Agamon]

Wow, and you had time to actually play? Kudos! I assume you have your books on shelves around your "DMing station"? Finding the books themsleves would be time consuming if they were in piles around the table, let alone finding info in them...

 

[HellHound]

A mix. The ones I expect to have to reference are on the table in two stacks - core and near-core rules (DMG, PHB, MM, XPsi, S&SS Advanced Player's Guide) and not-quite-core but high probability of reference (Complete X, FR books, Hyperconscious), and the rest are on the bookshelves behind me.

 

[Quickleaf]

Have you ever considered a "closed-book" policy while you're actually role-playing? I only allow players to reference the books (myself included) before we start play, during our break, and after the session. All our resources are in the adventure write-up and the character sheets, and are easy to access.

 

[HellHound]

Quickleaf - that would require that I dedicate a lot more pre-game time to prepping the game. Something I have none of as a father of two, professional publisher, publicist for a concert promoter, and also being in search of other gainful employment.

Effectively, either we run the way I do (which is quick, it takes me less than a minute to reference a spell, creature or item, and I do it when the players are talking, working or conversing in character), or we don't play at all.

I just don't have the time to work on full adventure write-ups.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Monster Manual (Gnolls)
Dungeon Master's Guide (NPC stats for level 10 Drow Wizard)
Player's HandBook (Bunch of spell descriptions)
Monster Manual 2 (two varieties of dinosaur)
Fiend Folio (Monavic Deva)
E.N. Treasure Troves - Figurines of Wondrous Power (Oak Turtle figurine)
Necromancer's Legacy (for a feat)
Player's Guide to Faerun (for a feat reference)
Faiths & Pantheons (to look up Torm)
Complete Divine (Spells)
Three Arrows for the King (Archer class features)
Dungeon 104 (Demonskar Legacy - converted to an underdark adventure)
S&SS Advanced Player's Guide (Critical hit tables)
d20 Future (weapon stats - characters previously finished the Barrier Peaks adventure and I keep fudging the weapon stats on the fly)
Expanded Psionics Handbook (Power descriptions)
Complete Arcane (Spells)
Underdark (Spells, Wandering Monsters, Prestige Class abilities, enclosed spaces rules)
Hyperconscious (Duncharath stats)

I tend to reference a lot of books in play, but Wow! That's just silly!

 

[EricNoah]

It seems silly, but D&D/d20 has been selling itself as a "toolbox" type of game. Except that with printed books, the individual tools are kind of stuck in their toolboxes and you can't just bring the tools you want to the table with you. In theory I love the idea of picking and choosing stuff from a variety of sources and synthesizing it, making it all work together. As we can see, in practice it might be less handy than we'd like.

 

[HellHound]

I guess people are getting the wrong idea about this... I have a very organized approach to this, and can reference something in well under a minute. Something I learned from Vampire was never to be ashamed to opent he book and read a bit during the game.

Now, I've also run games (in this very campaign, such as the game last weekend) that only involved opening the PHB to reference spells. The thought of actually writing down EVERY spell I may need to run an urban adventure off the cuff is daunting, so having them in game notes fashion wouldn't make the game any quicker than just using the PHB.

In today's game, I spent perhaps slightly more than 20 minutes going through books in a 10 hour session. This was mostly done during snack breaks and lunch, then setting up the books to the pages I needed and setting them around the table where I could reference them.

 

[MonsterMash]

Phew that's a lot of books. Personally I don't mind referencing stuff, but what I did when I had some more time was copy some monster stats into text files to cut and paste into my notes to save looking things up, but I do have to reference the PHB and MM fairly regularly and sometimes the DMG.

I tend to run a more 'core only' game so would probably never have to reference so many books.