#RPGaDay - 30 - Rarest RPG Owned

  

There is - of course - one flaw in this. The measure of rareness is not a consistent thing, as it depends upon the size of the publisher.

So, for example, if you own the original BITS printing of *The Long Way Home* for *Traveller*, and you have an unsigned copy, then you have a truly rare book as most of the hundred or so copies were signed (in return for a donation to charity). Mine is signed, so not quite so rare. BITS is a very small press publisher compared to most of the rest of the market.

If you look at books from the majors, I have *Ringworld* and its companion volume, Chaosium’s d100 BRP take on Larry Niven’s epic SF setting. This was rare, possibly due to the cost that it was when it was initially for sale. It also was discontinued pretty quickly.

I also have a copy of the Last Unicorn Games *Dune* RPG. This is a lovely setting book (the system less so) which sets the action before the Frank Herbert novels (kind of the way way that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have done but not at all awfully). The entire initial print run sold out quickly, as LUG was acquired by Wizards of the Coast (who had planned a d20 Dune version), but then the licence was pulled by the Herbert family. I keep on flirting with selling this as as sometimes it goes for a small fortune, but haven’t quite got that far.

The thing is, in these days of eBooks and print-on-demand, it is hard for a book to go out of print unless it is a licensed article. Even if a publisher shuts down actively, they may as well leave the book on Drive Thru RPG as a revenue earner as it costs them nothing. Thus, a rare book must be out of print and not available electronically.

Ultimately, I think I will pick *The Lost Supplements* for Classic *Traveller*. Those of you who like classic SFRPGs will remember the Keith Brothers. They were prolific in the early days of the hobby. J.Andrew Keith[1] had produced a whole set of books which became obsolete as the line transitioned to MegaTraveller. John Paul Sanders founded Cargonaut Press[2] (now defunct) to (initially) publish the first of these lost volumes, a book on Piracy in the Imperium called *Letter of Marque*. These were soon expanded to a bigger collection[3] of all the unpublished works called *The Lost Supplements Collection*. The material dripped ideas and captured the feel of the Classic (Golden) Era of *Traveller* perfectly.

[1]: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/J._Andrew_Keith "J. Andrew Keith Bibliography"
[2]: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Cargonaut_Press "Cargonaut Press"
[3]: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Lost_Supplements_Collection "Summary of the Collection."