[OT] What is the most "wasted" money spent on a gaming item.

[Angcuru]

Tie between $12 for a d100 and $20 for Sword and Fist. never use either.

 

[Sanackranib]

biggest waste

for 3e it would have to be the monternomicon and savage species. I still havn't gotten the epic level handbook and untill I get a player or one of my oun characters up to 19th level I probably wont get it. on a side note that book was a big waste for a former DM who killed off my 9th level character (necromancer on the way to become a true necromancer PrC) with some epic level spell that did 44d6 - "save for half don'tcha know" of course that kinda killed off the game and I havn't gamed with the guy since . . . perhaps that wasn't a total waste after all . . .

 

[Silver Moon]

Mark me down for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game Second Edition rule and sourcebooks (1992-1994). I bought a whole stack of nine different hardcovers at a convention once. They were half-price ($ 10-15 each rather than $ 20-30) which seemed like a real good deal at the time. Never used them, and everyone I know who now plays Star Wars uses the D20 system. They are Star Wars though, so may be worth something someday as a collectors item.

I've also spent maybe $ 300 to 400 on miniatures during the past few years. That may not seem like a bad investment, except I don't know when I'll ever have the time to paint them. Heck, I still have about 100 unpainted minitatures from when I went to GenCon.....back in 1994!

 

[tburdett]

All of the AH Runequest stuff that I bought. I had almost every RQ product that AH put out. We played for about a year and then switched to Hero. Nobody every wanted to play RQ again. Finally the group fell apart and both the RQ and Hero stuff has been sitting on one of my bookshelves, or in drawers. I just recently took the RQ stuff into the local Half Price books. The four drawers full of 1st - 4th edition Hero stuff will go next.

 

[pogre]

1. $1,000.00 worth of Flintloque miniatures. Yikes!
Bought almost all of it at once too

The miniatures are cool I guess, but I did not really enjoy the game. I only painted a big unit of Rat Scotsmen for a friend, and they took a year. Most of the stuff is long gone now.

2. $600.00 of Warzone - yep, bought it all at once. Sold it a year later after not painting even one figure.

3. $250.00 of Museum Scale Battletech - not so bad when I sold it a couple of years later I made my $ back. The idea of course was a HUGE game of battletech. Dumb. Never painted one of the mechs.

4 on. Too many purchases under a $100.00 to warrant mention

 

[Gothmog]

Worst Non- D20: I bought the Synnabar book for $5 in a used game bin a few years back. Worth the laughs, but I'll never play it.

Worst D20: Epic Level Handbook or Forgotten Realms Campaign Sourcebook. ELH because I'll never run epic, and I'm not sure why I bought it- guess I'm a sucker. FRCS because I loathe the Realms, but I couldn't pass up a used copy for $10.

Best RPG purchase: Back in high school, a guy I knew wanted to get a new stereo system for his truck, and was desperate for cash. He sold me a bunch of his older brother's old 1E and OD&D stuff for $30. When I looked through it I found I had the OD&D white box (1st printing), and a 1st printing Players Handbook autographed by Gary Gygax himself!

 

[333 Dave]

Biggest waste? Second edition Forgotton Realms boxed set, you know, the grey box with elminster on the front standing in front of the planet....

It had enough info that you could kinda play in the realms... if anyone wanted too... not that I had a gaming group back in 2e days...

 

[Viking Bastard]

I have tons of stuff I've never actually played or have no interest
to play. But I don't consider them bad buys, because usually they
have all the great fluff I want. I value good "fluffy" material over
the so called "crunchy" bits every time.

Stuff I think was a horrible waste of my money include:

AD&D 2e Arabian Adventures. I never really cared for AD&D.
It just turned me off. But I was interested in playing an Arabian
game, so I bought this book. What a waste of money. It had
nothing but rules in it. I was expecting setting material and GMing
advice on how a Arabian campaign would be different. Maybe I
expected all the wrong things, I still wonder if there was a companion
book to this, kinda Core Setting book, which I believed this to be.
I still ran that Arabian campaign but it crashed and burned pretty
quickly. Not that I blame the book for that, mind you.

Alternity's Star*Drive core setting book (was that '*' supposed
to represent something? I've always wondered). Now this is a book
that was full of both "fluff" and "crunch". But it was just so BAD.

There are others, but these are the ones I remember from the top
of my head.

 

[Mythtify]

its a long while back, but Space 1889. What a waste of ink.

 

[Aeris Winterood]

And I bought some of those hematite dice - the really small ones. Their cool (both metaphorically and literally) and all, but I don't like using them because they don't roll really well. They were $35.

$35.00 ???? I got mine for 25 bucks... and yeah, they are small and I probably wont use them.... as for other "wasted" items... Geez.... I buy everything d20 and use 1 percent of it....so I am one of THOSE people......or is it idiots?