Im not trying to aks about some trigger thing or whatever. I wanted to ask if any of you gamers lended a book/magasine/anything to other players for them to just not give them back and retract from contact. Once it happened to me when i was a teeanger and started with the hobby. Then it happened in a company i worked in, with a person i thought was a normal adult(a cthulhu main rulebook). Now im pretty sure ill never lend anything to anybody ever again. Anybody has similar stuff happen to them?

My most memorable stolen book story was not an RPG book, it was a Astrology book.

I lent it to one girl at University who lent it to another friend who lent it to another friend because it turns out that girls love that horoscope shit.

I lent a friend of mine (he was a player in one of my longest running campaigns in the late 90s) the Dungeoneer and Blacksand books (the Jackson and Livingstone Advanced Fighting Fantasy stuff) and the guy never gave them back. I had half-forgotten it, but then one day the fancy struck me to go read those books again and I remembered lending him the books.

I called him and asked for the books, and he told me he didn't have them. He supposedly lent them to a friend of his who never gave them back. He didn't seem bothered by the ethics of sub-lending stuff that wasn't his in the first place.

Needless to say, we didn't remain friends.

Lent my Spycraft book to a friend. I got it back three weeks later with damage to the covers, spine, and pages. Seems his dog(s?) and kids were quite fond of the book. He did buy me a replacement, so all was good, but I never let him borrow anything else after that.

Not RPG books, but movies on DVD and video games. I don't loan anything out anymore without asking myself if I'm willing to risk it being "disappeared".

1e PH, DMG, MM and Fiend Folio.  Lent to a friend to read over the summer.  He decided to take them while backpacking in Europe to game with and 'lost' them.  Blame myself for being too trusting, assuming that friends would recognise the value they had for me.
Problem is, what's precious to us is just some curiosity or lark for others.
If my friends want to borrow now, they get the pdf, never the print.  Trust no one.

 If I lend someone something, I have already decided I was willing to lose it.  But I am still not willing to lend just anything to anyone.  I did put a box of things in my brother's care when i went to boot camp (incoming list of 1st edition books, PHB, DMG, MM, MM2, UEA, the under ground guide book, wilderness survival guide, Fiend Folio, Deities and Demigods (the illegal one with all the stolen IP stuff, Gamma world box set, oriental adventures) and he lost all of them at some point before I finished my gig.  So he is not high on my list of allowing to borrow.  he did manage to scratch up the DMG since then, but I sure would like to look through my old books.

My first RPG book was an AD&D 2e Player's Guide(or Handbook or whatever). I'd only gotten to read a little of it before it mysteriously disappeared. When I wasn't reading it, it stayed on a shelf in my closet. I never took it out of my room. I just got home from school one day, went to read on it, and . . . poof. 25 years later and it hasn't shown up during a move or anything. I suspect my mom.

Quote from: oggsmash on February 28, 2021, 12:25:05 AM
Deities and Demigods (the illegal one with all the stolen IP stuff

That might be Chaosium's characterisation of the situation, as opposed to most Cthulu stuff being Public Domain even in the 1970s, and Michael Moorcock having granted TSR licence to publish the Elric mythos without checking with his agent. I don't think TSR can fairly be described as stealing any IP.

No, never. The closest I got was when I lent the Pathfinder (1E) rulebook + Monster Manual to the wife of a player who really wanted to become a DM. She told me that, if she "cracked" the feat she would have bought her own copies. Six months into her campaign (where she displayed a real talent for DMing) I simply said "Just keep my books. I will never use them anyway."

Quote from: S'mon on February 28, 2021, 05:01:41 AM
That might be Chaosium's characterisation of the situation, as opposed to most Cthulu stuff being Public Domain even in the 1970s, and Michael Moorcock having granted TSR licence to publish the Elric mythos without checking with his agent. I don't think TSR can fairly be described as stealing any IP.

IIUC, there is a difference between the Mythos being public domain (and thus full of interpretations and contradictions), and the specific description and interpretation that Chaosium developed for "Call of Cthulhu". This is why there are all sorts of "lovecraftian" products (including comics, movies, games and videogames) but also products "officially licensed from Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium" (like FFGs "The Arkham Horror Files"). I think that it must be serious stuff, because these products actually can sport the official "Call of Cthulhu" RPG logo.

Having said that, I never owned the "forbidden" D&D manual, so I can't say if TSR adapted the Mythos as established in CoC or if Chaosium simply decided to be a PitA.

A gaming buddy once got into Warhammer (wargame) and asked if he could borrow all my classic White Dwarfs and a couple of the WHFRP supplements for background info.
He also borrowed my FASA boxed Star Trek set, the one with the rpg and the starship combat game, just for reading.
Then, in a very short time, he suddenly emotionally imploded, fell off the wagon hard, divorced and moved without leaving an address or phone number (that was before cell phones became a thing).

So yeah, that's two big gaps in my collection.

Loaned my Moldvay basic boxed set to a school friend who then "lost" it.  Rather than replace it I got the 1e hardbacks instead.  Similar thing happened with my Warhammer 1e (still nominally an RPG in that edition) as well as the Regiments of Renown boxed expansion. The friend I loaned it to unexpectedly left school and I never saw those again.

Those incidents pale in comparison to what happened to my RPG collection in the late 90's though.  I was between house shares and gradually moving stuff from the old place to the new place.  Came back to find almost all of my RPG collection had gone - probably 15 years worth of various systems books and magazines. It was only much later I found out the shady cousin of one of my housemates had stolen them - loaded them up in his car and sold them on a market stall he ran, likely for peanuts.  I've since replaced some of the stuff via ebay and the like,  but a lot of it was irreplaceable.  Pretty sure my folders of campaign notes,  character sheets, homebrew notes,  self- written adventures etc. was taken as well and probably binned.

Yes. 1979. My ODD box set. Gone from the strategy club cabinet. 🤬

My cousin 'Borrowed' my entire AD&D collection. I guess that was 30 years ago and I'm still waiting to get it back!