Another quote ripped off the Big Purple, but it's a very interesting one:

Quote from: Old GeezerMy gaming buds and I, thirty years later, find ourselves in our 50s. We have marriages, and houses, and jobs, and cars...

... AND INCREDIBLE AMOUNTS OF STUFF.

About three years ago, just before Christmas, my brother said "Don't get me anything for Christmas. I have enough shit, and I don't want anything more that needs dusting. If you really feel the need to get me something, get me something I can eat or drink." And he's not even a gamer.

I've even stopped buying hardcover books. Not because of the money, but because I can put four Discworld paperbacks into the storage space occupied by one Discworld hardcover.

We're ALL like this. I no longer look at a game and go "Hmm, that might be interesting, I'll buy it." Unless it's "I can tell, I will hate myself for the rest of my life if I don't buy this", I AM NOT GOING TO BUY IT. My friends are all the same. To sell us a new game, it doesn't have to be "kind of interesting", it has to be good enough to displace something we've been holding on to for decades.

Plus, we are short of TIME. I glanced at 4E and said, "Too many rules". I've gone back to OD&D. We've dropped "Fantasy Hero" and gone back to "The Fantasy Trip". If character generation takes more than fifteen minutes, we're not gonna play it. If it has more than about sixty pages of rules, we're not gonna play it. If it has a playstyle that does not support "we don't remember the rule and can't be arsed to look it up, fake something and keep playing," we aren't gong to play it.

And if we KNOW we aren't gonna play it, we sure as shit aren't gonna buy it. Our homes are full of thirty years' worth of "This game might be interesting".

I find myself getting closer and closer to this type of attitude. I basically now purchase games that I see as extensions of the games I know (D&D, Basic Role playing variants, even Warhammer 40K games fit in that category). I am more interested in modules than new games. As for entirely new game systems, I'm really not that eager to find new ones.

I already have WAAAY enough gaming material, and basically purchase stuff that complements what I already have in depth, in one fashion or another (accessories, specific variants like Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, miniatures etc), rather than add more and more games laterally speaking to my collection.

What's your take on what Geezer's saying here? What's your personal situation, in this regard?

Quote from: Benoist;429386Another quote ripped off the Big Purple, but it's a very interesting one:



I find myself getting closer and closer to this type of attitude. I basically now purchase games that I see as extensions of the games I know (D&D, Basic Role playing variants, even Warhammer 40K games fit in that category). I am more interested in modules than new games. As for entirely new game systems, I'm really not that eager to find new ones.

I already have WAAAY enough gaming material, and basically purchase stuff that complements what I already have in depth, in one fashion or another (accessories, specific variants like Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, miniatures etc), rather than add more and more games laterally speaking to my collection.

What's your take on what Geezer's saying here? What's your personal situation, in this regard?

I've been considering it, honestly.

I don't believe in the race-to-the-bottom mentality on rules.  For example, I am entirely unimpressed with, say, Geoffery whatever-his-name-is and his "all I need is carcosa and my own fucked up interpretation of OD&D, EVAR" mindset.  On the other hand, I have too much shit I'll never use, ever, at the gaming table.

I thought I'd get back into Heavy Gear...and I have a ton of books I'll never use.

I snatched up the Decipher Lord of the Rings RPG...same thing.  I've still got a linear foot of Battletech stuff I will never ever use.  I've got a whole shelf of games I specifically want to get rid of and haven't yet.  I ditched the WSG, DSG and OA and MotP long ago - I consider the DMG, MM and PHB canon and FF, MM2, D&DG and UA "support" books.

I mean, the list goes on and on.  I really have a lot of stuff I want to get rid of, no joke.

Even the latest Gamma World: it's basically another way of playing D&D. So it's a variant of something I know as well.

I don't plan of getting rid of anything (yet): I basically use everything I got more or less, at least as inspirations for other games I play. But I sure as hell am not going to invest in completely new games now if I'm not sure I'm going to play them at some point (few months) down the road. I'm much more likely to buy something like Majestic Wilderlands (which I did, and it's awesome) which is an add-on to a classic game (OD&D) than I am likely to purchase Goodman's entirely stand-alone/own Dungeon Crawl Classics role playing game. For instance.

I wonder how many gamers are like this, and how many publishers actually realize this about their target audience.

I'm pretty much done buying gaming stuff and DVDs. I've got way more gaming stuff than I need, and I can get any DVD I want from netflix and then send it back, which I've found keeps me from over watching favorite movies.
I'm still open to buy prose fiction and comics, however, in the former case I am only interested in stuff that goes on my kindle, really. As soon as the comic industry swallows the digital koolaid and starts to make buying digital comics more than just an overpriced afterthought, I'll likely get all my comics that way, too, as I prefer to read them on my laptop.

Gaming products are about the only media that i buy very little of - simply what i expect to use.

However, i have too many dvds and about 5 years worth of books i have yet to read.

I would agree too.

The last RPG thing I bought was Savage worlds explorers edition but I won't buy any of the supplements. If I want to play in a setting I will just make up the setting and rip off ideas. I don't need to buy a book for 30 quid that offers me very little and takes up more space.
At the end of the day there is nothing I can buy that I can't write myself. I am sure that that is true of most people on this site. It's just another system variant and a list of stuff. I had played SW once at a con before I has more or less mastered it and went and wrote a mod for Strontium Dog for it in a week.

Odd though compared to the other post from Old geezer about the Model train industry the two seem to directly conflict. One says the hobby base for model trains is small and old but they have lots of money so they buy stuff so rpgs should go for that but this one says that old players won't buy stuff cos they have no space...so doesn't seem like its a great fit for the hobby after all.

This is how I've been feeling over the last year or so.

At the present time, I'm more or less off most of the "treadmills" I was on previously.

Over the last few years, I was on the following treadmills for varying periods of time:

- 4E D&D
- various Pathfinder supplements (excluding the core Pathfinder rulebooks line)
- Mongoose Runequest 2 (MRQ2)
- Dragon Age (Green Ronin)
- 3.5E/4E Dungeon Crawl Classics (Goodman)

I dropped most of these rpg product lines over the last year for various reasons, such as:

- Out of work for several weeks/months at a time.
- Lack of usable material for my present and possible future rpg games (ie. crunch heavy Pathfinder supplements).
- An rpg product line "died" (ie. Heinsoo 4E D&D) or "ground to a halt" (ie. Dragon Age, Dungeon Crawl Classics modules).
- Too many crappy books (ie. MRQ2).

At the present time, the only treadmill I'm still on is the monthly Pathfinder Adventure Path books.  I'll most likely be dropping this one, when the present adventure path (Serpent's Skull) is over in early 2011.

Quote from: One Horse Town;429408However, i have too many dvds and about 5 years worth of books i have yet to read.

Same here for the latter.  (I don't have a proliferation of dvds).

I have an entire shelf full of technical monograph books, which I haven't got around to reading yet.  I keep on telling myself that I will get to it "someday".  :rolleyes:

Way, way, WAY too much fucking stuff.  Even though I prefer books to pdf, unless I 100% intend to play the damn thing, I buy in pdf and put it on my file server.

In 2011 I'm cutting down on my game spending for the same reasons you guys have mentioned. I just have too much and more than I will ever play. It's really getting out of hand in my bookshelf.

And miniatures. Dear God, what the hell is my problem? I love miniatures, but enough is enough.

Nor only am I not buying anything, I think that within the next few months I'm going to do a gigantic purge of my DVD and fiction stockpiles. Money in my wallet, space in my garage and tidy books shelves are all mine for the taking!

I've also done a lot of selling-off. I'm not studiously avoiding buying any more gaming products, but for a while now I've been pretty selective about buying anything else. A gaming product would have to come down to A) either something I am likely to actively use in running a game and doesn't parallel a product I already have, or B) provides a better dose of ideas than or ideas unprecedented buy a non-gaming book.

I'm not seeing a lot of either coming out - that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of good products out there; just not many that aren't competing for a niche I've long since filled in my existing game library.

I spent from 2004 to 2007 or so cleaning my shelves and such. Now I'm reversing the trend a bit. I don't care about having "stuff," but if it seems like it will keep me entertained I'll get it.

I am choosy about what I get now, if I can write my own game, I'll probably do that instead, unless its got a lot of really cool things in the game.  



I went from several large/tall bookcases to about 3/4 of one of those book cases. I've also reduced from about 400 or so novels and research books to about 150. I made a lot of reductions out of necessity to survive there for a bit.

So I've got space.

I'm still cool. I buy anything that piques my interest.

-clash

A decade or so ago, I went through a similar "compulsive completionist" phase in another niche unrelated to rpg games.  At the time I was flush with cash and decided to fill in the gaps in my metal music cd collection.

Basically I went searching through amazon.com and indie/second handed record stores in town and nearby towns, looking for old out-of-print cds of various metal records I use to have or have always wanted.  (Amazon.com and other sites, were good sources for finding metal bands and their catalogs of records/cds I had long forgotten about).  To make a long story short, basically one thing led to another where I was buying tons of cds with each online order or trip to the indie or second handed record store.  I ended up listening to most of my new purchases only once or twice, and then they would go straight to the cd rack to collect dust for many years after.

Eventually I got burned out over this, and eventually stopped buying any new music cds entirely for many years.  These days whenever I listen to some of these more obscure metal cds, at times I wonder how the hell I was ever fascinated with these bands in the first place (back in the 1980's or late-1970's).  Since then, I haven't felt any "itch" whatsoever to "complete" my metal music cd collection any further.  (In fact, I really don't care anymore).

My recent burnout over 4E D&D and rpg gaming in general (ie. compulsive completionist treadmills), feels very similar to this previous burnout of attempting to "compulsively complete" my metal cd collection a decade ago.