Well it's been a month since our move-in, and the vast majority of my book collection now has ample shelf space. I am still clearing out some books, several boxes to be specific, and eyeballing all the other stuff I have. I'd rather get it all to fit on the shelves I have rather than watch every ounce of free wall space be consumed by shelves of books....we'll leave that to my study, and of course my son's room, which increasingly growing in book volume as he absconds with my collection into his own (or adds new stuff). Some of this is just kizmet....turns out for example I was never likely to run Fallout RPG, but my collector's penchant made it super easy to simply give him the books I had on hand so he could then run it. I had a spare Call of Cthulhu Keeper's Book which is now his, too. Drew the line at the Malleus Monstrorum set, though. He made off with it, but in exchange for its safe return I promised him I'd snag him his own copy.
This is the delicate tet-a-tet we have in house. As a gamer dad I have All The Books and All The Money and as Son of Dad he has to figure out how he can best whittle All The Books and All The Money away from me. Luckily for him I am fine with this! Now I just need to narrow down our understanding of what is definitively up for grabs vs. what I am using. For examples....
Carbon 2185 - a 5E-powered cyberpunk RPG I snagged in 2022 during the abominable Florida Expedition, has been lounging around in the collection for a while. I like the premise, but never could find the right time to try it out. Now my son has it, and is running games in it, and I have even gotten to play in one. It's fun stuff! So my buying this book then has profited for me in spades.
Rokugan - Off limits! Well, sort of. This book provides copious setting content and rules for the Japanese themed campaign in 5E I am running on Saturdays now, and as such I need the book very much. But my son has extracted much from it in the process for his characters, too.
Malleus Monstrorum - we solve this by arranging for him to work off and earn his own copies. He's drafted up a prolific Gaslight campaign for Cthulhu, and I expect we'll be playing in it sooner or later. My son is obsessed with Tarot and the Simon Necronomicon so it behooves me, as his father, to try setting him straight on his mythos lore by making sure he has copies of these books, at the very least. Must avoid summoning unintended things, right?!?
GURPS - For reasons perhaps caused by me talking it all up too much, my son wants to learn and run GURPS, too. Fine with me! As one oddball youtuber commented, GURPS is now "D&D, but for nerds" and that has never been truer than now in the zeitgeist of D&D becoming so mainstream.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I am finally, at last, getting a chance to really let my collection breathe, watch it get more synergy thanks to my son, and also allow me to eyeball what I have and make realistic assessments of why I have collected some of the stuff I have, and whether or not it may be better suited elsewhere. We'll see! The new place has engrained a satisfactory sense of "no rush, I can take my time on this" that I hadn't felt before.
I've written a lot but no pictures. Time for some! Here's our dominion (walking on a nearby trail):
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