Who Buys the Books at Your Table

[Jester David]

From my persona experience, there tends to be one dedicated gamer at a tale who buys all the books, and several casual gamers that just play and borrow said books. Often, by virtue of being "the person with the books" the collector becomes the DM.
But this is just my experience and I am curious how widespread it is or strictly personal.

So, at your table, who buys the books?

 

[Evenglare]

99% of the time it's me... infact... i havent played with a person that owns more books than I do... I have a problem.

 

[Dice4Hire]

In my group, which has had many members over the years, only people who DM have a significant number of books. Players usually have a couple or less.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I play strictly online these days.

I wonder what my players would would say if I asked them whether they purchased the books they use in our games? Probably best not to find out.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I haven't bought an rpg book in a while, and I don't think my players have either.

In general, when products that we liked were being produced, each player in my group bought a pretty respectable collection (though mine is certainly the biggest).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

In my group, two players (myself and one other guy) buy loads of books. The other guy has a massive shelf of D&D 3rd Edition stuff. (I do the 4e stuff instead.) This guy also has loads of non-D&D RPG books. (I collected d20 Modern.)

Naturally, we're both the most reliable DMs in the group

These days, there's lots of offline Character Builder use for 4e, and SRD use for Pathfinder. Both WotC and Paizo have made it easy to not buy their products, and at the same time it's easier for players to use non-core stuff. (I don't approve of that.)

 

[Stormonu]

I've got more books than I'll ever need, a lot of which are out of print these days. Tend to DM a lot too, I just enjoy DMing more than being a player. In my current group, only one other person seems to buy the books. The others either reference my copies or use electronic versions or resources (I know one uses the pfsrd20 when we play).

 

[innerdude]

Actually, my last two groups have been okay. My Pathfinder group had two players actually go out and buy the core rulebook (shocking).

In my current group (Savage Worlds) one player bought a SW Deluxe hardcover. For the other three, I tend to pick up copies of the Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition any time I see one in our FLGS. Because I know it'll get used / handed down as part of our group at some point.

I gave one player a copy. Bought another player a copy 6 months ago for his birthday, but it wasn't the updated deluxe version. So I bought an updated Deluxe version, "stole" the copy I gave 6 months ago and gave it to another player, and told the other player "Just kidding, the updated version is your real present."

All in all, though, spending $30 bucks to give away three core rulebooks doesn't faze me all that much.

(Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition FTW).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Wet end to buy what interests us- which is how I voted- but functionally, that means one or two people will buy the vast majority of the books for any given system, and everyone else borrows what they need.

Translation: I buy most of the books in the group.

However, book ownership and GMing are not always linked.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Back in college (cripes! that's almost 20 years ago!!!), I was the one who had the most books, but most of us had a decent set: PH/DMG/MC volumes/____Handbooks
About 8 years ago I decided to clear out the books I wasn't going to ever use again (1st, 2nd, & 3rd ed D&D). Ebay was great.
2 years ago, one of our number moved away, and gave me his collection to sell--lots of rare modules (some sold for over $80, even though they sucked as adventures--that's why they were rare).
At the moment, One of our current group has a stable job (teacher), and has bought all the 4th ed books as they came out.
I bought a few myself, mainly to see what the character possibilities were, and to be able to look up the powers not in the character builder. And the local Barnes&Noble was putting a bunch on sale since they were closing that store.

But then, we're a weird bunch, and almost everyone takes a turn as GM.