my brother-in-law Ken had been going to gencon since gc2, had played d&d with gary at his kitchen table, and had one of the best wargame collections in the country. my mom wouldn`t let me go to gencon 10 (at the playboy club-gamers and bunnies what a sight that would have been) since i was 11, so he bought me my first d&d set instead. i loved tolkien (the silmarillion came out that year) so frp was perfect for me. i was already a baseball card collector, i thought i could never catch up to Ken`s wargame collection, so i started collecting frp items. i had a very large collection, but when i started working for a distributor (and could buy at big discounts), i decided to try and get one of everything ever printed in the history of frp. crazy idea but here i am 20 years later and there are about 200 old (i.e. pre 1998) things i need. i still game (played last sunday), but i think of myself as a curator of a museum mostly, saving the relics of the hobby we love.

Why do I Collect RPGs?

So I can get "the REAL power!"

Obviously, my own motives are nostalgic and sentimental, although I am an active gamer and do use the ideas in my games.

Has anyone noticed that the poll results appear to be flipping us the bird?

Well, although I chose "active gamer', which is quite true, it's really for quite an amalgam of reasons: the nostalgia,  the joy of collecting something I love, and to a certain extent (albeit very low on the totem pole so to speak) the value of these thing as collectibles. I'm not super hardcore, but I do have few decent things in my collection, although I would never dream of selling the stuff, because in most cases I went through too much to get it! Anyway, I'm just glad there is a community of people out there who have a similar mind set towards gaming.

FormCritic wrote:What kind of RPG collector are you?  What is your main reason for collecting in the role-playing genre?

Do you collect because you are an active gamer?

Do you collect for historical and preservation purposes?

Do you collect for the pure joy of collecting something?

Do you have other reasons not listed here?

I voted for historical and preservation purposes, but I actively play AD&D (although I certainly own more books that I could ever need for gaming actively), I certainly enjoy collecting (finding good deals, finding rare items, the fun of the community here, etc.), and I also listed other for my interest in Greyhawk

back up fuel for when global warming turns the british isles into a frozen waste land....

I mean 54N and no snow. what is hat about?

at a pinch ...  the sound basis for a new home make over show : wall-paper the rooms of houses in pages form your favourite module. Rule books are kept for the bog

Hi:

I am bumping this strand from last month.  

Anyone else want to weigh in?  

Finding an early blue book with Hobbits for $1.48 at Half-Price made me wonder what else was out there. I snapped up every copy of OD&D  remaining on the shelves of 1987 Houston retailers.

Most other gamers thought I was completely crazy to want the poorly-designed old books with goofy amateur illustrations, so I ended up inheriting their unwanted collections. The end of college was a goldmine: two copies of Deities with Cthulhu, monochrome modules..

But it was slow going after that. The selection at bookstores was tiny, & for some reason Half-Price Central Austin kept RPGs in a box behind the counter next to pornography.

The internet changed everything, allowing me to obtain what I only had seen before in old Zocci catalogs. Still wish I had found the Wee Warriors books before everyone realized they were collectible.

i picked the reason other than the above, cos its a mixture of all of them.

Al