By Jason Campbell
Our TTRPG book case has five shelves, full of game books. There’s some duplicates since GamerMomLuna and I merged our TTRPG game book collections <3. I also have my collection of AD&D 1e modules and magazines in a separate magazine rack, to leave more room for books in the book shelves. Today I’m going to look at how many books we have, and how many of them either of us has actually played. For this article “played” means as a player or game master. We’ll look at them from top down. I should note that this is only our physical books. I have to admit that we have more PDFs than physical books, but I’ll leave that for another article. Note that the shelves aren’t really organized, and placement of books has nothing to do with how much we like them, it’s pretty random.
The D&D Shelf
The top shelf is all D&D books. The oldest here is the 1977 Monster Manual, which still has the price sticker from Child World (a toy chain in New England in the 70s and 80s.) I can’t read the price anymore, but it was probably $9.99. I started playing in 1981 and these
books are all my originals saved from that time. Many of these I have duplicates of, as I inherited a friend’s collection at some point. I have many Players Handbooks (except 4e and 3e), and most DMGs (except 2e and 3e). But let’s get to the facts:
29 books total, we’ve played 17 of them.
Most of the un-played books are 5e adventures that I’ve collected and partially read, but not played. I also have the DMG from editions I’ve never run, such as 3.5e and 4e, because I read them for reference.
The Monte Cook Shelf
I’ve been a big fan of Monte Cook Games’ books for about years, and have supported most of their crowdfunding campaigns over the past 5 years.
24 books total, we’ve played 15 of them.
Many of these books I bought knowing it would be a long time before I ran them if I ever did. I’ve read most of them and ideas within have served as references. Many of them I haven’t used yet because I’d like to run a long campaign with them, and I don’t have enough time for that many campaigns.
Kobold Press, Pathfinder and Stuff
The third shelf includes the Paizo and Kobold press books we’ve collected as we’re fans of both companies, and some other books.
30 books total, we’ve played 12 of them.
This one’s interesting. GamerMomLuna played many of the Pathfinder books. I’ve used all the Kobold Press monster books in 5e games. I’m a huge fan of Andrew Kolb’s setting books (Oz, Neverland and Wonderland), but I’ve only run Oz (so far). I’ve run the Kids on … books, as I’m a huge fan of the base system. The Tales of the Valiant game I have plans to run very soon. The oldest book here is the original Toon game, from Steve Jackson. I love that game, but my friends – not so much, so I only ran it once.
4th Shelf
This is a random collection of books.
43 books, we’ve played 10 of them.
These last 2 shelves include some TTRPG advice books (such as Justin Alexander’s So You Want to Be a Game Master), so I’ll include them as “played” if I’ve read them. The oldest book on this shelf is by far Bruce Galloway’s Fantasy Wargaming, an infamous game book from long ago. There’s more books on this shelf because a lot of them as indie books we picked up at cons and they’re just shorter books. In fact the thinnest book, Kobold Press’s Prepared!, is the one I’ve used most often. I’ve used these adventures in a lot of learn to play RPG sessions for multiple game systems.
Last Shelf
The last shelf includes a few duplicates from other shelves and books like Heroes’ Feast, a D&D cookbook and the art books for D&D and Dragon Age.
23 books, we’ve played 9 of them.
Most of the books we’ve played here are duplicates, and many of the advice books are only partially read, so these books definitely need some love.
Conclusion
And the grand total is…
149 books!
Of which we’ve played 63.
That means we’ve played 42% of the books we own.
Regrets?
Not really. Sure, if I added up all the money we spent on these books, and if I could sell some of the unused ones back for that money, it would be nice to have the cash. But I did have the cash at the time, so we weren’t overspending. Some of the books that I’ve read or skimmed and haven’t used because they weren’t for me, I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t tried them. For a lot of the indie books, even if the book ended up being something I don’t love, I’m glad I supported an indie creator. Many of the books – such as a lot of the 5e adventures – I bought as reference knowing I’m not likely to run them. It’s also worth noting that a lot of these books I bought from used booksellers, so I didn’t spend as much money on them as it looks.
For many of these books, I still intend on using them, but my time is limited. We have day jobs and we write this site and other projects, leaving less time to run games than I like. But I still hold out hope.
Game on, anyone?
What’s your percentage? Let us know what you think in the comments!
About The Author
Very cool. A lovely collection. I do a similar sort of separation of my shelves.
We don’t own quite as many books – at roughly 70 books depending on how one counts beginner boxes and duplicates. Best estimate is we’ve played or run around 40 of them, which isn’t too bad. Also, no regrets for the ones we haven’t yet played. “yet” being the key word. And like you said, supporting a smaller creator is always good.