The Great Library
off Culver St
By Frank Gori
The feeling children get on Christmas is mine once a month.
I’m a Paizo subscriber you see, so once a month I’m getting my AP subscription
and even if I peeked at the PDF beforehand I still get excited to rifle through
the pages to admire the art or the stat blocks or that freshly printed smell.
While I recognize that the world is changing and PDFs are
eventually going to replace the printed word, I’m a hold out. As much as I
appreciate my PDF library and how much more inexpensive it is and as much as I enjoy
the system reference documents, the books still have more power over me.
I’m not alone.
About five years ago I became fast friends with Jeff Harris.
We discovered a mutual love of melee weapons, music, gaming, and books. Jeff was
responsible for dragging me kicking and screaming out of 2nd ED
AD&D and into 3.5. I didn’t want to leave 2nd Ed I was
comfortable there and I had most all the books.
Trying 3.5 was a revelation. Many of its mechanics were
similar to house rules I had invented and the skill system made more sense. I
quickly became hooked as my imagination fired up infinite build possibilities
and the best part was Jeff had all the books. When I say Jeff had all the books
I mean he had D&D 3.5 books. His favorite I think was the miniatures handbook.
Jeff was generous with his collection allowing any of his
friends to borrow books. My favorite was the book of nine swords in particular.
I think Jeff may have regretted letting me borrow that one but it never stopped
him from allowing me to do so again. His was the great gaming library for a
time.
When we switched to Pathfinder his collection stopped seeing
as much loving use. The Book of Nine swords started sitting longer and longer
my ambition to one day convert it to Pathfinder forgotten. But Jeff would still
pull them out from time to time, showing us what came before and how it could
be born again in Pathfinder (for the few things that died in transition.) In
particular we missed the monsters that aren’t open license like the displacer
beast, the beholder, or the mindflayer. Perhaps we took the great gaming
library for granted.
It’s gone now.
Saturday is when we game with the group. The days when life
doesn’t interfere and allows us all to get together around the table and laugh
and enjoy whatever adventure sparks out collective imagining in the moment. For
my current crew I’m bringing the books and we are playing the Wrath of the Righteous
AP.
Someone stole that joy away from my friend this past
Saturday. In a careless moment Jeff’s wife left his front door unlocked. It is
a safe suburb where they live, such acts aren’t uncommon and they are the type
of people that know their neighbors.
What hurts the most is it had to be a friend or former
friend. Jeff’s entire hardcover collection of 3.5 books is gone, his favorite
melee weapons gone, his big bag of dice gone, his minis gone, a few other items
like his wii and ps2 are also missing but what’s telling is that other items of
value were not taken. Someone stole the items that would hurt my friend the
most, the things he took great pride in.
Perhaps I’m being over dramatic but it wasn’t just from Jeff
this person stole. It was more like this person burned down the library of
Alexandria. Jeff kept track of his books but he leant them to any gamer with a
curious nature and a promise to handle with care. In a way the person that
stole from Jeff stole from everyone Jeff games with and that’s pretty shitty.
Jeff said he’s not going to replace his collection with real
books. Given his collection cost roughly $50 a book and there were 80+ of them
I do not blame him. At that cost perhaps the security of a file is better than
the smell weight and feel of a book. Still it saddens me that this happened.
The ad money from
this blog will buy us a lunch once a month, but I’d like to help Jeff in some
way. If you’d like to help Jeff out in some way or send an email showing
support he has permitted me to share his email address is featherwitharrows@gmail.com .
On the off chance you have information on the sudden appearance
of a large sum of 3.5 books in Western NY let us know.
I just want to take a moment to thank everyone for their support and well wishes. Also I hope something is learned from this experience of mine, that is sometimes good deeds are paid back in black treachery but that should not stop us or change our desire to still help. However I will be much more cautious, and I really urge everyone to check your residence and be aware of spots that bad folk can take advantage of. Thankfully no one was hurt and the house is undamaged, but who ever this was (the short list of suspects is pretty short) also took my wife's feeling of safety in our own house from her, and very nearly caused several of our rescue cats to become lost outside where they were in danger. That I cannot abide, though I suspect Karmic justice will find our burglar.
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