Rules Cyclopedia
Advanced Fighting Fantasy (and Stellar Adventures)
My D6 books (Star Wars and Mini 6)
Barbarians of Lemuria, Legends of Steel BoL Edition, and Dogs of War
Age of Shadow (my favorite version of BRP)
Beyond the Wall
Stars Without Number

That should cover everything. Several different flavors of fantasy, and I'd probably go with Mini 6 for modern or Sci-Fi, although I have some other choices there as well.

Several setting books and generic supplements that I didn't mention as well (although many of those are electronic).

I've been working on that.

Down to:
Palladium (entire collection)
L5R 4th Ed
Castles & Crusades
Mongoose Traveller 2nd
Cyberpunk 2020
Warhammer FRP 1st ed

Everything else has slowly been moved to the basement and most of those to the willing to sell list.

D&D Rules Cyclopedia
Shadow of the Demon Lords
Champions 4E

All of them. My collection is already narrowed down to what I want. If i had to move to a Tropical Island, I would take ...all of them, and build a hurricane proof bunker as well. There's no school like the old school!

Hero 6e 2 volume core
Mythras
Tunnels and Trolls 5e

I would threaten like Solomon to split the baby and then find out who the true mother is.

This sort of exercise works best when a scenario is given or at least some constraints given.

For example, a while back, I invented the challenge of what would I take with me in a brief case. Possible scenario to support that - we've been given one hour to evacuate due to an unexpected change in direction of a wildfire. We didn't have any inclination before to worry, so we haven't spent the last two days moving stuff.

In that scenario I think it's a given my laptop goes (good, all my digital content is safe). My RPG hobby is significant enough to me, and the most important stuff is easy to hand, so I could spend 5-10 minutes stuffing my backpack with my laptop and some games. I'd be able to fit a bit more than my briefcase challenge. Then I need to go upstairs and help my wife grab other important stuff. There won't be time or space to pack boxes of gaming stuff.

So into the backpack goes: OD&D and supplements, Classic Traveller and a few supplements, Burning Wheel Gold and Codex, First Fantasy Campaign, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, RQ1, Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror, and then I start figuring out what else I can stuff in there that's easy to hand. Even though they are reasonable to hand, my Dungeon Magazine, White Dwarf and Different Worlds collections don't make it.

Sadly my LEGO collection burns up... Not even worth trying to take any of it.

Now a different tack would be to focus on the print RPG stuff that I don't have in digital form in any way (and things like poster maps that even if I have digital forms of just will never be the same without referencing the paper map).

Also the future will hold an inevitable downsizing and my wife isn't going to give me a whole room to myself. I will have to pare the RPG collection down to a shelf or two or maybe three. Hopefully by then, even more of the stuff is available in digital form, preferably legitimate copies. I'm not sure what happens to the LEGO in that scenario, I hope to have more time in retirement to build with LEGO (and play RPG games), but the way I enjoy the LEGO hobby right now is that the storage space I need dwarfs even my peak sized RPG collection. I have picked up some books showing micro scale LEGO collections so maybe I'll manage to reduce the LEGO collection to the equivalent of a book case. Hopefully there will be good evidence that playing with LEGO is a good way to stave off dementia and Alzheimer's (RPGs should be good for that too... but there's a lot more potential for solo fun with LEGO).

So with that, I don't accept the following as a response to this challenge:

Quote from: GameDaddy;1110914All of them. My collection is already narrowed down to what I want. If i had to move to a Tropical Island, I would take ...all of them, and build a hurricane proof bunker as well. There's no school like the old school!

Yea, we could all imagine scenarios where we can keep everything. But eventually life will hand us a situation change where we can't just build a bunker for our stuff.

Frank

Hmm. Probably:

• Original D&D books (little brown books + supplements)
• 1e AD&D hardbacks (PH, DMG, MM, D&DG, UA -- the others I can do without)
• Greyhawk boxed set (1980)
• RQ2
• BRP Gold Book

Quote from: Aglondir;1110743B5? That's something you don't hear too often. I finally sold my B5 books last year. What's in your collection?

B5 was one of the best sci fi series ever made,  but tragically I think it will be mostly forgotten,  if it hasn't been already.  The original cast was such an indispensable element of the show. With so many of them gone now,  a remake just wouldn't be the same.

It's mostly the reference materials and spinoff books that were available for the TV show before the advent of the Mongoose B5 RPG. I also have the DVDs, of course, and a complete digital archive of the Lurker's Guide. I also wrote a 30 page PDF of my own, "The Gamer's Guide to Babylon 5," that had a cutaway of the station and a bunch of adventure locations.

I started running my own B5 game using a homebrew system, then switched over to WEG Star Wars. Easier to get players and find equipment and ships that had already been playtested.

Interesting question!

Rifts main book
Rifts Vampire Kingdoms (original version)
Palladium Fantasy 1st edition
DCC rule book
Lotfp Grindhouse box set
Maze of the Blue Medusa
The Dungeon Dozen
Scenic Dunsmith
Chained Coffin box
Vornheim

I'm doing this in reverse, as I am rebuilding a physical library nearly from scratch. Combination of what I have/what I plan to get (titles in italics are strong maybes) :

D&D5e Players Handbook
D&D5e Dungeon Masters Guide
D&D5e Monster Manual

Ultramodern5
Neurospasta
Apex
Ultramodern5 Redux (backed the Kickstarter)

Primeval Thule: Campaign Setting
Primeval Thule: Players Companion
Primeval Thule: GMs Companion

Adventures in Middle Earth: Players Guide
Adventures in Middle Earth: Loremasters Guide

Adventurer Conqueror King System
ACKS Player's Companion
ACKS Heroic Fantasy Handbook
ACKS Lairs & Encounters
ACKS Domains at War - Battles
ACKS Domains at War - Campaigns
ACKS Domains at War - Troops and Terrain
ACKS Guns of War

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery
Dark Albion: The Rose War
Dark Albion: Cults of Chaos
Lion & Dragon

King Arthur Pendragon
KAP Book of Sires
KAP Book of Uther
KAP The Great Pendragon Campaign
Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne
Paladin: Adventures

Mekton Zeta
Mekton Zeta Plus
Mekton Zeta Tactical Display
Mekton Zeta Starblade Battalion
Mekton Zeta Mekton Wars 1: Invasion Terra
Mekton Zeta Mecha Manual 2: Invasion Terra Files

Cyberpunk 2020
CP2020 Maximum Metal
CP2020 Deep Space
CP2020 Firestorm: Shockwave
CP2020 Firestorm: Stormfront
Cyberpunk Red (when released...)

So most of a single, 6' tall bookshelf.

Keep:  most of my Traveller books (mainly Mongoose, but The Traveller Book and some older adventures are valuable references), all my ACKS books, entire line of L5R 4e.  A bare majority of my small press/OSR books, though many do need cleaned out.  Mothership.  As reference works despite not running it, AD&D DMG, MM, PHB and Oriental Adventures.

Miss the most out of what I lose:  Rolemaster.  It runs faster and smoother than people give it credit for.  Roll percentile, look up result, done.  Faster than D&D, if people aren't fucking around slowing it down because they're still pissed off about character creation.  But character creation is a real issue, its day has passed in the wider community, and I'm just not going to get to run it again with everything else I have available.

Unfortunately I have allready had to do this during an emergency and 90% of my gaming stuff is in storage now.

What I have on hand are BX D&D, AD&D, and 5e. As well as my Gamma World, Star Frontiers and Albedo stuff. Mainly as these are the games I end up playing or referencing most.

I'd keep the books that contain the most bang for their size. This would include a number of non-books: stapled-together sheets printed double-sided from PDFs. I imagine I could fit dozens of these simpler games in the place of a single Call of Cthulhu tome.

And then Dungeon Crawl Classics and Burning Wheel.

Quote from: Razor 007;1110446This is purely a mental exercise.  Which books give you the most enjoyment and value?  Which books are must haves, for you?

I can't even do it in my head

My tomb will have bookshelves.