Fifty-One RPGs and Counting

So yesterday, when I should have been error-proofing some Java code, I found myself in Google Docs compiling a list of all the RPGs I own. I decided to only count RPGs that I've got in hard copy and at least bound in some fashion - either in a binder, bound at Staples, or put into a presentation folder of some sort (sitting in a manila folder on the floor of my home office didn't cut it).

Here's the list as it now stands:

1. Barbarians of Lemuria
2. Barbarians of Lemuria - Revised
3. Basic Role Playing
4. Broadsword RPG
5. Call of Cthulhu
6. Castles & Crusades
7. Chivalry & Sorcery
8. Conan the RPG (d20)
9. CORPS RPG
10. Cthulhu Dark Ages
11. Dice & Glory RPG
12. Dungeons & Dragons - Advanced 1st
13. Dungeons & Dragons - Advanced 2nd
14. Dungeons & Dragons - Basic Black Box
15. Dungeons & Dragons - Basic Red Box
16. Dungeons & Dragons - Rules Cyclopedia
17. Dungeons & Dragons - Third Edition
18. Dungeonslayers 3.0
19. Extreme Vengeance
20. Feng Shui
21. Gear Krieg
22. GORE - Generic Old School Role Playing Engine
23. GURPS - Third Edition
24. Hackmaster
25. Harnmaster 3rd Edition
26. HARP - High Adventure Role Playing
27. Heavy Gear - The Role Playing Game
28. Hercules & Xena RPG
29. Infinite Domains
30. Labyrinth Lord
31. Mazes & Minotaurs
32. Mazes & Minotaurs - Revised Edition
33. Mechwarrior - The RPG
34. Midgard
35. Millennium's End 2nd Edition
36. Morrow Project, The
37. Open Core Quick RPG
38. Palladium RPG
39. PDQ Sharp!
40. Rolemaster Standard Rules (RMSR)
41. Savage World of Solomon Kane
42. Simple Sixes RPG
43. Sorcerer RPG
44. Star Trek (FASA)
45. Star Wars (WEG)
46. Top Secret S.I.
47. Traveller - Mark Miller's T4
48. VIOLENCE - The RPG
49. Weird Wars
50. World of Darkness
51. ZeFRS RPG

There might be some quibbling about the D&D products being divided up too finely, but by and large I'm separating them not by "system" so much as by "role-playing game"; thus, Red Box D&D on my list has a different entry than the RC or Big Black Box D&D. Also note that GURPS only has one entry when I've easily got two dozen or so GURPS books, so I think it's somewhat balanced out.

In my mind, it's a pretty substantial list, and I think it says something about my personal gaming philosophies as well as the attitude I like to maintain here - no one rule or system or RPG gets special treatment because "it's what the blog is about". T&B isn't an "old school gaming" blog, and it's not an indie gaming blog, and it's not an apple box for talking about how kewl 4E is (note that it's not on the above list). I'm an RPG junkie and more than anything else I collect RPGs because each and every one of them has at least one little nugget of something cool that can be mined and used later on, either in campaigning or in designing my own home-brew systems.

For example, Infinite Domains might have been a non-starter system (anyone else out there even own this game?), but I actually thought their rules for magic were really cool - they involved "weaving" threads of different kinds of magic into an effect, and the more skill you had in various magical abilities, the more "threads" you could weave in of that ability. It's a little like the way Mage: The Ascension handles building magical effects, but much more structured.

Anyhow, I'm sure this list will grow - this of course doesn't count at least a dozen or more PDF files I have yet to print out and bind, as well as a few systems that I still want to get my hands on (like TLG's StarSIEGE). I might have to write up a couple of mini-reviews of some of the more "lost in the pile" RPGs or other particular favorites of mine, when time permits.

Comments and questions are, as always, welcome.