My Quest for All the Things
How 4th Edition Turned Me into a Collector
On Sunday, July 22, 2012, I made my first ever Dungeons and Dragons purchase. It consisted of the Red Box Starter Set1 and the Halls of Undermountain adventure. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but these two products were just the beginning of my 4th edition journey. By my count, 4e has 78 official products including books, adventures, Free RPG Day content, and box sets. And I want them all.
I have never been into the hobby of collecting things. I tried with stamps and football cards and even comic books at one point, but it never stuck. I never saw the appeal in seeking out things. But 4th edition has shown me that I just never found the thing I was really interested in collecting. Indeed, I am on a mission to own all of the products in some form.
I want to take a moment to talk about my collection. Not about the books themselves, but rather my journey and approach to building my collection.
Let’s dig in.
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Perhaps the biggest challenge when deciding to collect all the products is to build a good list of the products available. Some people complain that Wizards published too many 4e products and that was one of its failings. I, for one, am glad that they published so much content in the short time that 4e was around. It gives us plenty of material to work with.
All of the 78 4th Edition products were released between December of 2007 and August of 2012. That is 56 months. During the first 56 months following the launch of 5th edition, Wizards released just 22 products.
My starting point was the list of 4th edition books on Wikipedia. This is actually a very accurate list. It contains nearly everything except the Free RPG Day content. Over the years since I started collecting, I have come across additional sources and found that the Wikipedia list was solid. I think my original list was 74 items and I’ve only added four that were missing.
I consolidated the list of books I am targeting over on my website. If I come across additional titles I am missing, then I will update the list.
A Slow Start
When I first got into D&D, I was in a particularly tight spot financially. After purchasing those first two products, I had to wait a long time before I could pick up anything more. I was anxious to get a Player’s Handbook, but needed to be patient. It was months before I finally got my hands on it.
I picked up a few more books and box sets over the next year, but along the way I learned that 4th edition was actually dead. Wizards had already announced D&D Next before I ever made that first purchase, but I did not realize it until much later.
I was so naive that I assumed the next edition would just be an expansion of the 4e rules that I loved. I stopped buying new stuff and waited for the new edition. By this point, I had purchased a total of nine products.
The Gap
It didn’t take me long after starting with 4th edition to realize that 4e games were hard to come by. It seemed if I wanted to play an RPG, it would have to be Pathfinder. So I set my 4e books aside and moved to Pathfinder just so I could play a game.
At one point, a local game store was closing down and selling everything at a discount. I picked up a couple of his 4e books, but, sadly, could not afford to get any more than that. Those books were the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and the Adventurer’s Vault 2. This was in 2014 and it turned out that these would be my last 4th edition purchases for a really long time.
Rediscovering the Magic
When 5th edition launched, I played it exclusively. I honestly forgot how different it was from 4e. Meanwhile, the 4th edition books sat on my shelf and it seemed that they would just be a part of my past.
Then, in 2022, I decided to start a D&D channel on YouTube. At first I talked about nothing but 5th edition. Then the OGL issue happened and it changed everything. Suddenly everyone hated D&D and wanted to play all the other RPGs out there. While I did not develop a hatred for D&D, I did start looking at other games like Dungeon Crawl Classics and Pathfinder 2e and Fate and a host of others.
And somewhere during all that, I pulled my 4th edition Player’s Handbook off the shelf and gave it another look. It still had post-it notes in it from the last game I was in the middle of when 5e dropped 8 years earlier. I was instantly transported back to when I first got it. I remembered the rules and how different they were. It was a rush of nostalgia that immediately drew me back.
I started re-reading the books that I had. By this point I had looked at all these other RPGs and all of the earlier editions of D&D. I was no longer that noob at the game store buying my first D&D books without any clue what they were. I was now a paragon-tier adventurer seeing 4th edition against the landscape of all the other RPGs out there and realizing that it was something special.
I now had a full appreciation for the rules and I knew immediately, that I need to have all the things.
The Quest Begins
The time was now Spring of 2023 and I had a total of eleven D&D 4e products in my collection. I put together the list of what was out there and formulated a plan.
Format
The first question I needed to ask myself was, do I want physical copies or am I okay just owning the PDFs? All the books are available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG. If I just wanted to have access to the content, then this would be fine.
While I definitely wanted digital copies of everything, I knew from the beginning that I would want also physical copies of most everything. I needed to be able to page through a physical book. Just the PDFs would not be enough.
Original or Reprint
This led me to a more philosophical question. How important was it for me to have an actual original copy of a book versus a Print on Demand (PoD) reprint? Would I feel I was missing something if I did not have the original?
In the end, I answered this question on a case by case basis.
There was no question that I wanted original copies of the books that were the most important to me. All the core rulebooks and the powers books and the campaign settings and a few others would all need to be originals. For the rest, I would get originals if I could, but I would be okay with PoD reprints if necessary.
And so with my target list established and my guiding principles in place, for the past 2 years I have been slowly adding to my collection.
Collection Update
I now own 50 physical copies of the 78 products.
Here is a breakdown…
Originals of 46 products
Both an original and a PoD reprint for 5 of the books
ONLY a PoD reprint for 4 books
Multiple copies of several books
Having so many duplicate copies might seem like a waste when I still have 28 books to add, but I have my reasons. First of all, these are my favorite books so I want to make sure I have extras in case something happens. And, I also go camping and like to do D&D stuff in the camper. So I stash copies of the core books out there so I do not have to lug them back and forth.
At this point, I honestly own most of the books that I feel are ‘must haves’. If I was unable to buy another book, I would be okay. The products I don’t have are most of the adventure modules and the monster supplements and a couple setting guides. I want them eventually, but these remaining items are purely for completion of the collection.
I should add that a few of the products will be very hard for me to get. An original copy of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting goes for around $90. Same for Demonomicon. Shadowfell: Beyond the Gloomlight ($150). Madness at Gardmore Abbey ($195). I will have some hard choices to make once these are the only products missing from my shelves.
It has been quite a journey. I also own the core books for all of the other editions of the game. But 4th edition is the only version where I want all the things.
I never thought I would be a collector, but it has been a lot of fun.
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