Over the decades, I'm mostly encountered feast or famine with player's books. Either they own most of the game line (esp for games with "living campaigns"), or they are allergic to the printed word and fear bindings have cooties. And its not been a financial thing either.

What's been your experience?

The players in my group may have a digital copy of the rules which they most likely had a look at when they were making their characters.

Otherwise its my books.

in my old group, we all tended to buy our own books, as well as many supplements needed for our particular character type. Especially in Shadowrun. the GM would provide us with extra build points to use for our characters if we had our own books, usually half the cover price in points. ($20 book = 10 build points).  We would get the full cost in build points if we bought him a book he didn't have.  When any of us ran our own games, we carried over that tradition.  But that was before the advent of the internet and PDF books.

In middle and high school, only me. As an adult, everyone.

It tends to linger around half for most games, most of the time.  It's slightly below half at the moment because we've added several new players.  Before they joined, it was just over half.  

I think this is a combination of practicability and time.  We start a new game, it starts with just me.  When it appears that the game is going to stick, a couple of players get the books.  That's not enough to pass around, so more get the books.  When we get to about half, that tends to be the players that play the most, which means we've always got at least one book per two players.  That's enough to make the game go well.  Then a few others will get books for gifts and/or on sale.  

I do get asked time to time about my expectations of a system being a long-term game in our arsenal, with the express purpose of deciding whether or not they want the books.

For my old school campaigns I encouraged players to NOT have rulebooks. Philosophically, I wanted them to focus on play rather than "mastering" the rules. For my 5E campaigns pretty much everyone has the PH and several have the MM and/or DMG. I don't like that so much because it means they know the AC and HP and special abilities of all of the monsters, unless I change things.

Our group has 2 main GMs, my brother and myself.  We tend to go out and buy whatever we like and then try to pitch it to the group.  We usually have a copy of the core book and maybe some GM screen/book by that point.  

I'm more likely to buy things in pdf, he's more likely to buy a hard copy.  If the game makes it to the table it's critical to have at least the core in print (because most of the group are Luddites and won't use pdfs) so I'll either get a hard copy too or print out a "player guide" version of the pdf.  

Once we start playing something, if it looks like it has legs, I'd say roughly 1/2 to 3/4 of the players will also buy the core book within 3-4  sessions.  It's rare for everyone buy their own copy, but it's happened. On occasion people will buy splats they are interested in if it relates directly to their character.

About half, but that was not an option.
And of course only when running D&D.

All of them! Because I make them play my games, and give them signed copies.

My kids use my copies because that's how family works.
At work, today's pick-up-game players were: one D&D first-timer, one person who's played less than a dozen times but got the PHB collector's edition for Christmas, two people with lots of 3e/Pf experience but no 5e.
In the usual work crew, even the DM has 3e/Pf on the brain, and only about half the players own 5e books, let alone have internalized any of them or do crazy things like hang out here when they ought to be sleeping.

Most groups I have been in its been mostly whomever wants to run something has the books and passes it around. Or on rare occasion someone buys the books to hand off to the DM to use. This is how I ended up with Torg. Also had an odd one where I was running Albedo at a con and was the only one with the rules. But all the players knew the basic rules without the books.

Usually over tile some of the others will pick up a book for themselves. This seems to correspond to how much they are enjoying the sessions or how much they actually need the books.

As a DM Ive pretty much been the only one with the books at time of running a session. Exceptions have been...

Gamma World
AD&D
5e D&D
Werewolf
Rifts

Dragon Storm is a notable exception in that all players have a copy of the rules as it comes with the starter box where you get your character cards. Same for Ruins World.

Players, in my experience, lean towards online references. Many wont actually buy a book/pdf unless it provides them the abilities that are significant enough to warrant a purchase.

Otherwise it's SRD RAW.

Most players seem to pirate nowadays. I've gotten into the habit of turning away prospects that openly flaunt this and ask me for PDFs and whatnot when applying to my games.

In the 5e game I run, all the players own their own books. I'm the one who doesn't (although I do own the PDFs of the Eberron modules I'm running). My general disdain for D&D is why I haven't purchased any D&D materials (except, of course, the aforementioned modules) since the 3.x days (I think I owned the original 4e core rulebooks, but they were purchased for me, not by me).

Granted, I've played enough to know the rules fairly well and am more than willing to make judgements on the fly.

Until I saw this thread, though, it didn't consciously occur to me that my group had it backward compared to the average group.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1090007Most players seem to pirate nowadays. I've gotten into the habit of turning away prospects that openly flaunt this and ask me for PDFs and whatnot when applying to my games.

Im getting personally tired of it too for games still on the shelves. Or players acting as if they are entitled to a scan of a game rather than buying it. With 5e I just point them at the Basic PDFs or pass around my notes.

With older or really older OOP games its a little harder. Some of this stuff is getting bitchingly hard to come by at sane prices.