Reading an RPG for Fun

Of late I’ve been reading some Pathfinder Adventure Paths, in particular Kingmaker and now Second Darkness. Do I intend to ever run these? No, in fact I do not even own the Pathfinder game system and while I own most of 3E, it is not my system of choice these days.

In all honesty, I am reading them for fun, not for any gaming purpose.

Sure, I might use some of the concepts and encounter ideas in one of my own games down the road. I might convert the Adventure Paths to a system I prefer. Or I might even break down and pick up the Pathfinder rule set. But that is not the intent of reading the gaming books.

The books are well written, packed with detail and it all works to stimulate my imagination. Much the same way a novel does. In my imagination I wonder how my players would handle the adventure or how I would do it if I was a player. I imagine the settings and NPCs.  It is all a source of entertainment.

Of course, the thought that I read gaming books for fun didn’t strike me until I was looking over my Mutants and Masterminds collection. While I love the super-hero genre I will never run M&M. I will never use these books. The game is far too bloated with far-flung rules for my tastes. I am actually running a Savage Worlds super-hero game right now instead. However, I own every M&M book I can get my hands on (both by Green Ronin and all the Super-Link publishers as well). This isn’t even a case of “I might run M&M some day”, because I know I never will. But I sure do like to read their stuff.

I have an extremely large collection of RPG games. I know I will never be able to run most of them, but in the back on my mind I have plans to run them at some point. But there are a couple that I know I will never run. Do you have any game rules/supplements that you know you will never run?