We come to a strange conundrum in today’s comic. As gamers, we are all about using rare sourcebooks and hand-painted minis and mammoth ivory d20s to game. But as collectors of objet we are all about preserving and protecting our investment. These impulses are in friggin’ conflict.
This is the same reason I get anxious when I contemplate all those cool legacy board games. The idea of affixing stickers to fragile cardboard is terrifying! What if my game is no longer in mint condition? What if my random decisions make for a less useful board in future? What if my mistakes are irrevocable?
This is more than an academic exercise for yours truly. I’m currently contemplating storing my personal collection in an accessible-by-students part of my campus. I want my stuff to get played with, and I’m happy to let randos borrow my source books. The alternative is to watch them collect dust after all. But I also dread discovering that my beloved Werewolf: The Apocalypse novels have been pilfered, or that someone has spilt beverage on my Once Upon a Time cards. I mean, imagine how it would feel if some schmo cracked your lapis lazuli d20 or stepped on your prized mini. Horrible! Unthinkable! Both fireballs and hands will be thrown!
It’s the fundamental conundrum. Games want to be played with. Objects want to be preserved. I am an once Galadriel giving gifts to the Fellowship and Smaug jealously hoarding them.
So what do you say, friendos? Have you ever felt the same? What is your most precious gaming possession? Do you actually use it, or does it sit on a shelf looking cool? Tell us all about your prettiest pretties that must-not-be-touched down in the comments!
Having had a fair amount of gaming materiel pilfered over the years I know exactly what you mean. But packing it away doesn’t always work either. I lost way more stuff to the “Great Garage Flood” then to someone’s sticky fingers.
I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but if you have classic gaming materiel that you are planning on allowing college students to “borrow”, make damn sure that you don’t put up anything that they can get over $25 selling it on Ebay. Because I can guarantee that anything over that threshold will grow feet and walk. It was bad enough when it was just needing money for beer and pizza, but if you are at college/university in a town with a dispensary…
Between hubby and I, we had a fairly extensive collection of older gaming materiel (think 1e/2e stuff). Most of the stuff ended up getting sold when I made the mistake of trying to help get a friend out of debt, but I kept my most beat up books. That turned into a goat rope of epic proportions.
I also collected dice. That wasn’t nearly the stretch it would be today. I’d go broke getting all the neat, resin stuff that’s being made. Lost about 1/2 of the collection when I was stationed overseas and the other half also went into the goat rope. https://imgur.com/gallery/5bH77
We both are of the, “if it isn’t going to be used, even if it’s just for reference, then it’s not getting bought.” Except for the dice of course 🙂
Yeah… I’ll probably put out the stuff I don’t have an emotional / financial attachment to. I don’t mind if some random splats get stole, but I’d be devastated if my Old World of Darkness stuff ran away. Sentimental value and all that!
As a general principle, I prefer gaming stuff that I’m okay with using. If I don’t want to use it I typically don’t even want to have it.
I have felt a similar conflict once.
It was in relation to 3rd edition exalted. I had brought de Deluxe corebook through kickstarter (the one with the nice white leather binding not the one with the metal plate).
It’s a real behemoth of a book, both wide and thick (and rather pretty IMO). I like to call it me Daibook. (in reference to the enormous swords of that setting called Daiklaives for the uninitiated).
If I didn’t put it down carefully the whole table would shake from the impact.
I was torn between being careful for the sake of preserving the book over the next many years, OR making the table tremble in front of my books exalted might. There was something sentimental about the latter on its own.
Pics of the book? I remember seeing that option, but I’ve never seen a finished product.
Sure thing.
I’m not quite certain if there’s a more convenient way to share those in a comment, but here’s an Imgur link to a pair of pictures with a d10 for scale.
https://imgur.com/a/lEhPJjn
I feel you…
I often wish that Onyx Path had split EX3 into two books. They could have put everything related to character creation into one book and had setting and whatnot in another and come out with two reasonably sized books, which wouldn’t have required inventing some new technique for binding such a large book (or was that something they touted for M20?).
I will admit that it isn’t often that I’ve cracked open the book due to how unwieldy it is.
I buy books and stuff to be read and used, so I don’t just collect them on a shelf. But I do take good care of them, so even books I’ve owned for twenty or thirty years tend to be in excellent condition… and I do get tetchy at other people not showing the same care.
I have become much better at keeping my books in good condition since I learned this:
https://www.museumbookstore.com/blogs/blog/how-to-open-a-new-book-properly
I have a set of real stone dice. Not some super expensive stone, just “opalite” (whatever that is XD ), but they are not cheap either, and they look pretty and feel different than the typical acrylics that are the industry standard, or the metal dice I prefer to roll.
I have rolled them once. In a felt lined box. I did not roll any of them together, for fear of chipping or damaging any one of them. (I did not roll the d4, because I don’t like that die.)
I never intend to roll them again, I never intended to use them when I got them. I just think they’re pretty.
—
As for the thought of using game rules and other supplements that just sit in a box, but not wanting them to be destroyed by time and human oily skin (we are just bags of constantly leaking meat and mostly liquid after all), the advent of the digital era and the 3D printer have made a lot of the fear of “wearing out” your precious books and worrying about minis obsolete.
Keep the original intact and make copies 🙂
Well sure. But there’s something nice about that handsome, perusable, physical copy sitting out on the table.
there’s also something nice about keeping that handsome original copy in as close to pristine condition as you can, sequestered behind glass, with a look but don’t touch policy surrounding it… so that it doesn’t get marred by dirty human interactions! 😉
“As gamers, we are all about using rare sourcebooks and hand-painted minis and mammoth ivory d20s to game”
Haha, I feel personally attacked! I bought that exact d20 many years ago, and to this day I still have it on my person almost all the time. I keep it in my laptop case with my decidedly less costly steampunk polyhedral set. With the existence of Foundry, I haven’t exactly rolled for initiative with them in a while, but you never know when a fight might break out. At the very least I have a caltrop or two to aid in my escape!
https://imgur.com/ifmpYhh
lol! I’m considering saving up for the ivory one. What a ridiculous thing to exist!
I’ve never really been much of a collector, the stuff I buy is meant to be used.
But the keyword here is used, not *abused*. I’d never leave any of my stuff to be used by the general public, because sadly a lot of people tend to be pretty callous and uncaring with freely available stuff, if not outright deliberately destructive. The only time I’d consider it would be for stuff I was going to throw away anyway – at that point, who cares if someone tears it up.
I lend my stuff when need be, as I said it’s meant to be used, and regular wear and tear don’t bother me none, but only for people I actually know and interact with personally.
The exception to that rule is stuff I’ve been gifted. Doesn’t matter if it’s the cheap bulk plastic dice bag or the collector edition of Rime of the Frostmaiden, those things are for me and me alone because someone I care about gifted them to me.
It would be less “general public” than “any of the student body that showed up for game night.”
Still, club members interested in gaming seems better than total weirdos.
Of course, I was speaking more in general terms. Basically, the less I know the people involved, and the more of them there are, the less likely I’ll let them use my stuff.
In the case of students, I guess it’d depend. My students (I’m not a teacher, I’m talking hypothetically)? Maybe. The general student body of the school I work at? Eeeh, personally I’d be pretty hesitant, that’s a lot of people I know really little about. But obviously you know your situation better than I do.
Another solution, if it’s possible, is to simply buy stuff specifically meant for this use, and keep your own books and thingies that you’re attached to for yourself – even if the same exact thing is written inside, the one that’s yours is, well, yours, and yes the difference matters. (Humans are weird like that).
“Still, club members interested in gaming seems better than total weirdos.”
I dunno… it’s hard to get “weirder than college gaming club members”. I know some people try, but college age geeks/nerds just have a natural talent for it.
I’m always of the mindset that if I spent a lot of time or money on something, I darn well better get to use it. Most expensive collector’s item? A handfull of the old dual lands from MTG. And yeah, they’re sleeved; but in a deck, and they see regular play.
On the other side of the spectrum, I have a particular miniature of a woman in diving gear, with a particularly nice paint job. I’ve probably had it for 10 years now, and never used it; simply because no story has ever required a diver woman.
And this is why I always spent more on laminating my Cheapass Games* than they cost to purchase in the first place. My groups always used to rib me about that until the great Mountain Dew flood of 96 that destroyed some one else’s copy of Creatures and Cultists (mine is laminated and would have survived, I have both the original put out in The Unspeakable Oath and the standalone version they sold – I laminated the standalone, I never got around to making photocopies of the Oath version so we could play it without having to cut it out of the magazine, luckily it was popular enough they printed the standalone).
.* Peeps of the right age will remember the company Cheapass Game that put out super inexpensive games, they were usually 1-2$ since they were just the printed rules, paper boards, etc. You used game pieces and dice from other games. I still have most of them.
https://crabfragmentlabs.com/cheapass-games
I don’t think i have much ‘vintage’ gaming stuff to be worried about but i do try to care for my current stuff. after all nice board games nowadays are like 60-80 bucks! to this end my hubby and i recently tracked down an electric card shuffler because we don’t want to bridge our cards and perma bend them, not to mention the creasing mishaps that could happen, but also because man its hard to get an even shuffle on like 150 cards at once now isnt it.
we do have a separate table for food and drinks general rule though to avoid this sort of thing. granted all my gaming past several years has been a game for two in our own home so it’s not something we have to worry about much other than my own clumsiness.
i will say I have a long history of being unable to let my stuff be used without my permission in person and generally pretty discerning about whom i would trust to borrow my things. things like classmates breaking my nice colored pencils in gradeschool when my teacher forced me to share and the like. Sure sharing is important but i was RIGHT about other people BREAKING MY THINGS which is wrong. stuff like that kept me keeping a ‘nice pen for my use’ and a pile of ‘cheap pens for customer use’ in retail. can you borrow my pen? NO but you can use this one. maybe retail has ruined me but man you CANNOT trust some people with things that are not theirs because they simply do not care.
Remember, anything flat can be photocopied. Using the material and preserving the original need not conflict. Just like those several-hundred-year-old books kept in climate controlled boxes in libraries while scans of each page are available for researchers.
As for dice, they’re either made such that they can handle the wear of use, in which case, use them, or they’re not, in which case they’re decorative.
Like how some swords are forged so they’ll actually hold up in combat and others are flimsy things meant only to hang on your mantle.
My favorite accidental desecration was when I splattered a mosquito full of blood on a character sheet. I avenged whoever it bit.
Got a collectors Shadowrun 5th Edition Rulebook with a fancy cover and great artwork inside. The bad news is they cheaped out on the bindings so pages are falling out. I seldom dare pull it out of the bookcase lest it fall apart further.
And like probably a no small amount of fellow wargamers, I feel a great reluctance to pull out my lovingly assembled and painted figures out of my glass display case. Sadly my Wolf King will forever be apart from the battlefield.
I have a bunch of dice in a satin dice bag that I never use… a Hollow Knight pin… And a few 3D printed pieces: coin tokens (dragon claw/dragon tail, skull/crossbones), a fennec fox figurine, and a ‘steampunk wagon’ that unfortunately is barely holding itself together due to multiple parts that don’t quite hold together.
I 3D modeled the 3D printed pieces myself, of course. I also 3D modeled my character for use in a D&D campaign for Talespire.
I don’t even crack open the books anymore. It’s so much easier to search, filter, and sort when all the information is gathered digitally. The online tools available for 5e make me weep for how much time and brainspace I dedicated to memorizing rules(or at least page numbers) for older editions (which frankly weren’t nearly as intuitive or streamlined)
I don´t know if it is my most precious, but one of my most prized RPG books are the Discworld GURPS books. While I am most likely never going to play them (It is difficult enough to convince people to play something other than D&D and Pathfinder, let alone GURPS), they are just a wonderful pair of books.
That should be two of my most prized RPG books. The main book and a followup.