What do you do with your old RPG notes/maps/NPCs/PCs/etc?

[Eyes of Nine]

I was going through a bunch of binders, notebooks, and loose papers last night.

Found the notes from my Megatraveller campaign of the early 90's; and the GURPS campaign I ran with a buddy in the late 90's; as well as the binder for the Dungeon World campaign I ran for a couple of years in the mid-teens; and all the material from the 4e campaign I had prepared to run for my sons in the late oughts, including their first characters...

I can't bring myself to toss them; but I'll never use them again. If I was to run any of the above - I'd do it using new stuff, with probably different rules; etc.

What do people do with the artifacts of games past?

 

[HippyCraig]

Scan it into the computer and shred and recycle the paper. You can always use the scanned docs as inspiration

 

[MNblockhead]

Apparently I leave them with friends. An old friend of mine gave me an overflowing three-ring binder a couple years ago when I started playing again. I must have given it to him around 1989, before I went to college. I'm glad to still have the physical version. Old crinkly graph trace paper, characters written in pencil on loose-leafed college-ruled pages, they exude nostalgia. Looking over the materials, I can see that my spelling and punctuation is (a bit) better, but my graphic-design skills are not much improved.

"Gothic hero type"... of course.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I went fully electronic years ago, so I recycle documents, and often re-use pdfs.

Other than some stuff from '79-82, I threw all the rest away in various moves.

 

[Scott Christian]

I have lost most of mine during moves.

However, my friends have tons of our original stuff. But I believe all the adventures I wrote are gone with the exception of say the last 15 years.

 

[Cadence]

They're mostly in a box in the basement... I should probably scan a lot of it in just in case.

 

[Ath-kethin]

They sit in folders on my bookshelf.

I've lost tons and tons of stuff; the oldest notes I have are from a 3.x campaign I ran back in 2002-2004. I really wish I still had the character sheet from my first character ever, back in 1994.

I reuse ideas and sometimes NPCs and items. I had a villain who has appeared and tormented players and characters alike across multiple campaigns, games, systems, and genres from about 1995-2003. Everybody hated him, and my friends, former players still talk about those adventures.

 

[Asisreo]

Reduce the ones with bloated info, reuse the revised or already good ones, recycle the scraps of the truly awful ones.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I've kept everything from the early 90s onwards since I have been DMing the same campaign setting since the beginning. I've also written some novels in the same setting, so they are useful in that sense as well.

 

[R_J_K75]

I still have some old folders and binders laying around but lost or threw out a ton of stuff over the years. I used MS word and other programs to create my adventures since the late 90s so most of that stuff is on a hard drive but finding anything Im looking for is pretty much a fools errand although I do get lucky from time to time. What I get a kick out of is the notes I find that were humidly scribbled during play on printed out adventure notes. Some of its pretty hilarious if I can remember what its about, others I cant read or make no sense. As I generally dont re-use old adventure ideas theres not much use for most of that stuff so I'll probably go through it soon and get rid of what I dont want.