# Experience Point:  Textual Triage (Part 1)



## CarlZog (Jun 27, 2013)

_Alternity's Star Drive Campaign Setting_  -- This has long been one of my favorite space opera settings, but even if I'm running Star Wars, I find endless inspiration in the gritty political machinations of the Star Drive setting.

_GURPS 4th ed Basic Set_ -- I don't get to play or run much GURPS, but I just love the wide open character development prospects of this system and the detailed tactical combat. Just browsing through the rules and character features helps me think up new, interesting NPCs and encounters for just about any game.

_Streets of Silver_ -- An early d20 city book, it is filled with details about a Renaissance flavored city. I've used it extensively with 7th Sea and Freeport type swashbuckling games.

All three of these are pretty old, which reflects their long, consistent presence on my shelf ( though I'm still pretty new to GURPS). Stuff that's currently getting the most use due to my latest projects are:

_Edge of the Empire_ -- I love Star Wars and I really like this new system. I'm getting ready to run the beginner game.

_Prime Directive_ (for GURPS) -- I've gotten big into Star Fleet Battles this past year. PD is the RPG for the Star Fleet Universe, which is essentially the original extended universe for Star Trek. 

FATE Core -- I backed the kickstarter for this, and I've been poring over the pdfs with hope of using this system for a pulp action game I want to run.


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## Umbran (Jun 27, 2013)

My wife and I together have some 1100+ novels.  We have a small room as a library, with a bunch of double-stacked bookshelves.  

Since the advent of e-readers, growth of the collection has slowed considerably.  It has had me think that maybe we could get by with some culling of the physical books.  Maybe if we want to re-read, we could then pick up the e-book...

Edit:  Between this, and the "Describe your non-D&D book collection" thread, I have found an inspiration for some reshuffling that should gain me a small gaming-book shelf in our gaming space.  My wife is pleased at this, because otherwise the active gaming books float around without a good home between games.

This balanced with the issue that some of the really cheap shelving we bought when we moved into the house is showing signs that it was not made to last the years, and needs replacing.  Maybe it is time to build some shelves (or at least, to check if that would be cheaper than buying them).


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## CarlZog (Jun 27, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Since the advent of e-readers, growth of the collection has slowed considerably.  It has had me think that maybe we could get by with some culling of the physical books.  Maybe if we want to re-read, we could then pick up the e-book...




My novel collection has been culled to virtually nothing by the realizations that I very rarely ever reread them within a 10- to 20-year span, and that I can now get them as ebooks if I ever choose to. When we moved the only ones I kept were the special editions of particular favorites. 

Even without ebooks, I've come to the conclusion that keeping hundreds of novels for decades just in case I ever want to reread them was simply not worth the space costs. For the few that I choose to revisit, I can pick up a used paperback for $3.

History books, professional books, gaming books and other references are an entirely separate matter, however. Replacement costs are higher and I'm regularly returning to them for one thing or another.


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## Rel (Jun 27, 2013)

Having just lugged roughly 1/3 of the books we'll likely want to donate upstairs to be loaded onto my truck, this culling of our book collection is seeming like either the best or worst idea we've ever had.


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## elijah snow (Jun 28, 2013)

Can I ask how you (or anyone else is storing them)? I've got so many RPG books from so many editions and systems - don't want to part with them but they are everywhere. I've settled on large plastic bins for basement storage. Cardboard is cheaper but seems dangerous.


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## innerdude (Jun 28, 2013)

Like you, Rel, Savage Worlds Deluxe never leaves my backpack. Ever. It's one of those things that if you ever wanted to fire up a game of something, you could literally have a group roll up characters in 15 minutes and play---and generally have it run fantastically. 

The other two items sort of have to pass the test of, "What do I pick up to read when I just want some inspiration on a plot idea or scenario?"

For me, one of those is the Golarion campaign setting. Yeah it's a "kitchen sink," but that's kind of the point. When you want to get ideas for a wide variety of scenarios, it helps to have a setting that puts it in front of you. 

Lastly, I have to go with The One Ring, simply because every ounce of the books ooze Tolkien. I truly would keep these books on my shelf for the artwork alone. One glance inside, and I'm transported to Rivendell . . . or Edoras . . . or Minas Tirith. 

(Just missing the cut is AEG's Ultimate Toolbox)


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## TarionzCousin (Jul 3, 2013)

CarlZog said:


> _Streets of Silver_ -- An early d20 city book, it is filled with details about a Renaissance flavored city. I've used it extensively with 7th Sea and Freeport type swashbuckling games.



I'll bite. What's so great about this book?


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## CarlZog (Jul 3, 2013)

TarionzCousin said:


> I'll bite. What's so great about this book?




It's in the details, not the overall concept.

Parma is an unabashedly Italian Renaissance city with a fantasy overlay. There's nothing particularly creative about the overall concept. And because it's so Italian, it may have limited usefulness for a lot of folks. But I love Euro-styled swashbucklers and Age of Exploration-flavored settings, so I get a lot out of it.

The real value is in the details. This is a 300+ page book and it surveys the city with encyclopedic detail. Nearly every commercial storefront in the entire city is detailed: What they sell, the general vibe of the place, who the owner is, his/her quirks, etc. But it's not a dry listing of data. Nearly every entry is pretty well written, dripping with flavor, very evocative and believable. You could read right off the page as your PCs walked down the street.

In addition, there are several sections on the politics, religious institutions (which the city is heavy with), and the "below the surface" background of what's really going on. Most good setting books include all this, but again, in Streets of Silver the attention to details make it all work really well, IMO. I find it to be a very internally consistent city, which is a bigger challenge than it sounds, given the amount of detail they put into it.

There is also a lot of typical early d20 crunch, feats and presitge classes, most of which didn't work very well. But unless you're playing 3.0, it's unlikely you'd ever even want to look at most of that (Some of the prestige classes are inspiring, if not mechanically functional).

_Streets of Silver _was published by a group called Living Imagination, and was part of a larger campaign setting called _Twin Crowns_. _Twin Crowns_ had some flaws, and I was never quite sure what to do with its cosmology, but I incorporated a lot of its Age of Exploration flavor into a campaign that merged _7th Sea_ and _Skull and Bones_.

_Streets of Silver_ and LI's other books are all still available online.


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## Rel (Jul 3, 2013)

elijah snow said:


> Can I ask how you (or anyone else is storing them)? I've got so many RPG books from so many editions and systems - don't want to part with them but they are everywhere. I've settled on large plastic bins for basement storage. Cardboard is cheaper but seems dangerous.




Plastic bins is what I'm using.  I'd probably feel similarly to you about cardboard.  We're buying the bins from Wal-Mart and they are fairly cheap.  I mean that in a variety of ways too.  These are not the sorts of rugged bins I'd want to haul stuff around in on a regular basis.  But for this kind of "pack them once and store" application, they are working just fine.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 3, 2013)

Honestly, if I had to radically pare down my RPG collection, I'd probably do something like hold onto one version of HERO plus a couple of its sourcebooks, then a smattering of setting books (usually the main book) of RPGs like RIFTS, Space:1889, Deadlands, and so forth.

With that, I could at least run any kind of campaign in any setting I wanted in HERO.


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## Gilladian (Jul 4, 2013)

My husband and I are moving in with my recently-widowed mother; this entails merging her book collection (she was a rare book dealer for over 20 years!) and ours - I'm a librarian and we're all 3 avid readers... as you can imagine, it has been a difficult task. Fortunately, the library book-sale takes donations of all kinds. I'm paring down my fiction collection to nearly nothing - as people have said, between ebooks and cheap paperback replacements (plus interlibrary loan!), I don't need to waste the space on physical books for pleasure reading. I've only kept maybe a hundred or so paperbacks, excluding my full collection of Andre Norton; I just can't let those go!

Hardbacks (mostly nonfiction) I'm having a slightly harder time with. I think I'll keep most of my medieval history titles, and a few of my other history books. I'm getting rid of most of the science books, as they're either out of date or the library owns copies. I have a BIG shelf full of origami books - those are almost all going to be donated to the library collection itself, as I haven't done any serious folding in years. 

As far as storage goes; plastic is good, but make sure to include something to protect from mold growth; and books do need to breathe - if they're in airtight containers, they'll yellow and age a lot faster than if they can outgas a bit. Especially paperbacks; the paper has high acid content and gets brittle very fast when trapped in its own fumes.

Anyone want a full set of Dragon magazine from about issue 32 onward? only slightly used! :^)


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 4, 2013)

> Anyone want a full set of Dragon magazine from about issue 32 onward? only slightly used! :^)




Already got one, don't need a duplicate...


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