The First Cut is the Deepest

This week one of my big tasks is to take a look at my RPG books and select some that I'm going to let go. On the one hand, this should be a fairly easy task: I'm well aware that there are an awful lot that I've never used, will never use, and indeed in some cases can never use. Some of them are actively bad, and there's a good many that have the opposite of their intended effect: instead of making a game better, they make it actively worse.

My intention, with this first cut, is basically to cull almost all of my third-party D&D supplements, which include such gems as "The Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils" (one of the worst books I've encountered), Green Ronin's "Advanced..." books for 3e (which I've never used and will never use - they make a too complex game even more complex), and Mongoose's "Quintessential..." series (which are deeply unbalanced - though there is some interest in that they include some of Mike Mearls' first published works).

Additionally, I've identified some of my games that are ripe for a cull - "Mage: the Ascension" Revised edition (I have, and prefer, the "Sorcerer's Crusade" iteration of that game, so in the unlikely event I play Mage again, it will be that version), "Vampire: the Requiem" and "Dark Ages: Vampire" (same logic), "Shadowrun" 3rd and 4th editions (I had a really bad experience with this one), and a number of near-D&D fantasy games (again, if I play a D&D-like game in future, it will be D&D).

All in all, it actually amounts to about a quarter of the collection. Which is about consistent with all the rest of the decluttering I've been finding myself doing of late. It's also somewhat horrifying, given the sheer amount of money that that represents relative to the amount of use they've seen (not to mention the hassle of lugging all those books through several house moves).

On the flip side, the end result of all of this is that the collection should be a whole lot more compact and should contain a whole lot less dross - the average quality level will be that much higher as a result. And it will free up quite a lot of much-needed space. So that's all to the good.

Still, it's a painful step to take!