What to bring?

I'm getting ready to make a big move to a smaller space, from my nice colonial house into a small city apartment. This means that a lot of stuff is getting sorted through and packed up/recycled/junked/given away... It's never an easy process, especially after you've been in one location for nearly a decade.

A big part of this process has been dealing with my gaming stuff, both the minis and the RPGs. Since I can't bring everything, I’ve had to go through everything. This took a lot of time and effort that I felt like I could have spent doing more productive things, like actually packing, but it was unfortunately a necessary step to actually be able to pack the things I wanted to pack.


Before


After

Given the limited space, I had to be fairly brutal about what I was bringing, so if I haven’t even thought about touching it in the last year or so, I didn’t even consider bringing it. For example, the 40K and Warhammer Fantasy stuff. None of the Star Trek models I’ve gotten over the last couple of years to go with the giant DS9 model I’ve had for about as long as I’ve had the house and still haven’t built. Then there’s the terrain… Even the stuff I’ve built recently takes up a lot of space, so it’s staying too. Same for the Hirst Arts stuff. Not only is it space intensive, it’s also messy. I’m also leaving behind my bin of prepainted minis since I’d rather have minis I painted myself, and my big glass display case.

What I am bringing with me is my Bones minis, all the minis I’ve painted up for Frostgrave, a selection of assorted random fantasy and sci-fi (both painted and not). I’m also bringing a box of bases and basing material, and of course paint. Lots of paint, really, and the tools that go with it. I’ll be adding to that the Bones 3 shipment, due any time now, and the Base Boss kickstarter, also due anytime now… Honestly, I could probably bring half these minis and not run out of things to paint for a couple of years. This just gives me a lot of options.



As far as my RPG collection goes, the shelves of printed out PDFs in binders all neatly organized have all been tossed into the recycling bin. It just doesn’t seem worth it to pack them up. All my 2e, 3.x, 4E books are packed up, along with all the Alternity, Star Trek, and most of the Star Wars RPG books. All boxed sets are packed up too.

Picking what to bring was a little easier. The Rules Cyclopedia was a must, as were the DCC core book, and the 5e core books. I also decided to bring the WEG Star Wars core book. It’s a great system! I also decided to bring Tales from the Floating Vagabond and Starships and Spacemen 2e. As I’m giving myself a paper box worth of space, I had some room to play, so Creature Companion and Stonehell were easy picks, as were A Red and Pleasant Land, Vornheim, Lusus Naturae, Petty Gods, World of the Lost, Slumbering Ursine Dunes, The Doom-Cave of the Crystal Headed Children, and SLUGS! I’m also bringing a stack of DCC adventure modules.



It’s an impressive stack that fits shockingly well into a relatively small space. And even with all that in the box, there’s still room for my Frostgrave books and Rogue Stars, not to mention my dice and tape measures and stuff.

All in all, I’m finding the experience to be only a little painful. We’ll see how I’m feeling once I’m actually moved! But I think it’ll be fine. I will certainly not be lacking for games to play or minis to paint! Now I just need to find some regular gamers to game with!