A hoard reclaimed

Returning home to my parents house for the first time since the pandemic and since I started this blog I got a chance to see what last gleanings of my RPG collection might have remained there. I recalled having pushed a lot out the door to charity shops, to friends starting up and to interested good homes as my call on the shelf space dwindled with the frequency of my visits. I thought I knew what was still there - magazines mostly but no - there were nuggets of gold too!

These particular treasures were a happy surprise - the AD&D Monstrous Manual and '95 DMG together with the Castle Guide and the Complete Book of Villains. I knew I had saved some of my favourites but I was sure all my system books had gone out the door to people just getting into the game last time I was home. In addition the old Deities and Demigods was one I was sure that had gone out the door to a worthy home - well it has come back to an appreciative home now.

These were particularly fun finds in conjunction with my recently getting my hands on For Gold & Glory. I will dig through the DMG again.

The other finds were expected - my near-complete collection of Arcane magazine and my Dragons from mid 90s up to mid 2000s. Arcane was an interesting one, it was what I would now say is a classic 'early-cycle' RPG magazine like early Dragon or early White Dwarf with a very broad ranging spread of articles catering to all niches of the hobby. I missed issue 1 but got in from issue 2 onwards. It was a great omnivorous magazine and helped me win a 'most geeky' showdown once when I was able to show I was wearing an Arcane t-shirt - out of print, short run RPG magazine was reckoned as the nichest marque being represented.

Last was the big block of Dragons - about 1/3 of which I managed to transport back with me. All through the 90's these were pure monster-of-the-week fodder for my long running AD&D game - whenever something interesting turned up it got wedged into the next weeks game.

One thing I did notice was how trashed the old issues were - both through hard use and the covers falling off because they were saddle-stitched. There were the ones I damaged myself fair enough but then I forgot that I had paid for a bunch of old issues from before I started collecting that I recovered from various game stores and tail-end boxes that were missing the covers and oftend a few of the pages - one of the magazines is missing up to page 10. It was so hard to get anything like this in the west of Ireland at the time that I still considered this good enough to drop cash on.

More tales on the sections of the hoard anon but for now just to note my good fortune at finding that I had not been quite as generous in the past as I thought. All the 3e stuff, lots of other supplements and the likes are gone but obviously past me had stayed their hand over these particular gems through each of those previous winnowings. Thanks, me!