[shopping] The role of collections in our lives

First Age

D&D h@ck3r and Hopepunk
Thing is.. almost every book on my shelves spark joy, but only when I have time to take them down and look at them. However, en masse, I feel burdened by not using them.

I think that means I need to re-educate my joy centres.. I have the space .. the money is spent .. they look great..

Sigh, still feel bad..

Aargh, the badness returns/recurs.

If it helps, and there are enough similarities, see it through my eyes and fulsome shelvage. I am soon to retire, and my funding stream is already limited and curtailed. The flow in is now budget limited and the choosing more considered and tailored.

That big library is now an unbridled joy. I will have time to dip, to flit and to dive in. Will I play them all? No. Some I know were follies, but beautiful ones, that I can enjoy for what they were. They will tempt and call me to try them, and I will have time and may humour them (yeah Trudvang). Others are clear session filling collections that I will continue to gather at my now slower pace (Traveller of all kinds, D&D4e, others).

So, rather than divest, which is another valid option, I have embraced, seeing through my new 'life phase' eyes, an esoteric library of past purchases, echoes of old sessions, good reading, beautiful images and latent potential.

That's my take. 😉
 
So, rather than divest, which is another valid option, I have embraced, seeing through my new 'life phase' eyes, an esoteric library of past purchases, echoes of old sessions, good reading, beautiful images and latent potential.

That's my take. 😉
Yes!
It does help, and on the whole I see the Library as a genuine investment for my retirement.. a trove of resources to keep me in games and reading for many years to come.
 
I look around (currently in what was the 3rd bedroom, now a small cosy office) and wonder how much more strain a floor can take. Got three Billys (of Ikea origin) creaking under the weight of games I have never, or not likely to play. Then I think 'If I sell them all, I might want to read them some day and have to buy them back'. So I don't sell them.

More puzzling was why I thought it prudent to buy up every cheap copy of the Rules Cyclopedia, Mutants and Masterminds (various versions) DC Heroes 3e and a few other games I have like, 9+ copies of. Other than 'it was cheap' I got nothing. Maybe I bought then in a bundle/lot (remember when ebay wasn't 'HOW much for that???) and chucked them in a box. Well, having finally settled the dust from a marriage break up and bought my own house after years in rental I've started to dig stuff out of storage. Four Billys stuffed full of books and not in a neat way.

Ah well, I'll get there. Rearrange, reorganise, read. Maybe. My new problem is how goddamn small the font seems to be in most books these days (damn you Mythras) and how crap my eyes are. I'm hoping to teach my youngest son how to play RPGs but feel I'm doomed to failure when I have to explain there's no keyboard/mice and no shortcut to dance the floss over your defeated enemies corpse.
 
I suggest that you may find very good prices for those copies of the Rules Cyclopedia. (Might even like a copy meself)
Is that DC Heroes 3e, the M&M compatible version? If so then they will probably get snapped up.
 
Most of the RCs I have are battered from too much use. One even suffered from the infamous (and to my eternal shame) 'banana incident'. Not as deviant as it might sound, instead I left my lunch (a banana) in the same bag as the game books and forgot about it. The book survived but it kicked off a personal quest to replace it with a pristine copy and turned into a 'buy up every copy you can find' as it was the second I'd ruined (one is held together with tape, or rather the pages hold the tape together, it's that battered).

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DC heroes 3e refers to the book on the right hand side of this picture:

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Sweet spot is the boxed set in the middle but it's still the greatest supers game ever in my humble opinion. Not perfect of course, and I run it with 2D12 and my own table replacing the ones in the book, but otherwise covers street to cosmic better than everyone else.

I do have Mutants and Masterminds 1e to 3e and the DC Adventures books (there are four I think - core, good guys, bad guys and universe) which is the same as the M&M 3e game but character creation is a ballache.

As for selling some, not decided what I want to do yet. Most of the books out of storage still have a damp smell which does fade over time, so I guess next year (depending on how skint I am) I'll have another purge.
 
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