Quote from: Crabbyapples;634746How many copies of the core rulebook of your primary game (or other games you play consistently) does your group own between all members?

Usually just me.

I've never required my players to put any more financial investment into a game other than showing up and maybe bringing snacks.

Every RPG purchase I make is potential blog content (or reading material if I don't review it and never run it), so I'm cool with putting the money in.

Each person at the table has their own copy of the D&D core rulebooks, either in hard copy or PDF form. In addition, there are an additional one or two copies (depends on edition) floating around the room that we have devoted to playing D&D.

Most of the time, I'm the only one with a rulebook. My players just show up and read my book as required. If there are key things they need to know I tend to put them on my home-made character sheets or make some handouts for them to read. Also, my group has a private message board where I can post key stuff they need.

I can never get my players to pick up a book ha ha.

It got to the point where I tried to start collecting dues, which didn't fly!

-M

Through my 35+ years of playing RPGs, generally only a couple of players in the game bought any rule books. Generally they just used mine (if I was GM) as needed. Only when we were playing games of my own design have most players had copies of the rules as I'd give them one.

In my current Microlite74 Wilderlands campaign, everyone has a copy of the rules (because I gave them one). Some players have never bothered to read them, however.

When we convert the campaign to my new Lords & Wizards project, everyone will get copies of the current rules in PDF as I update -- and will get a free printed version of the final version when it is done. Like with M74, however, I know there will at least be a couple of players who never even crack open the rules.

Typically? One.

RPGPundit

Counting married couples as a single unit, about 50%.  In earlier decades, it would have been nearly 100%, but nearly half are now just using SRDs.

I should mention, though, that the availability of an SRD had a major impact on the choice of system, especially when dealing with younger players, part-time players and newbies who are just getting their feet wet.

Amongst the 4 members of our group, we probably own around 20 versions of the RQ rules.

Among me and the 4 other players, all of us own 3rd Edition and Pathfinder Core Rulebooks.

3 of us (including me) own the Mutants and Masterminds RPG.

One of the players owns the 4th Edition Core Rulebooks.

I own the core rulebooks for 1st Edition Reprints.  The guy with the 4th Edition books has original copies of 1st Edition.

None of us (to my knowledge) own 2nd Edition or Basic D&D copies.

Typically we only expect the guy GMing the game to have or even read the game books. As most of us GM there is of course some overlap. We pretty much all have our copies own ICONS and some version of D&D and Fate in our respective collections.

I'm usually the one who runs games and consequently the one who buys the books.

Depending on the group, 1 or 2 other people will eventually a core rules book.
The most popular game for player participation in book buying was pathfinder, followed by Mongoose runequest 2 (Legend).

Let's see...

Across my first AD&D group 5 of 8 people had at least the PHB, some even the DMG and MM. (We had rotating DMs.)

In another AD&D campaign one (of 4) players had the PHB.

In my Midgard campaign all 6 players had at least the two main box sets. (5 of them were GM's of their own Midgard groups.)

In my M20 games (mainly one-shots) everyone left the table with a print copy of the game. (Of which I still have a couple hundred copies...)

In one Warhammer campaign I was the only one with a rulebook.

In another Warhammer campaign I provided the players with photocopies of the advance schemes, skill list, and spells.

In all other games I was the only one with the rules, especially when they were one-shots or homebrews.

Of course, here in south america books can be harder to come by...