I only consider it too many when it becomes a burden. If you’re spending a fortune on Zine Quest but struggle to pay your grocery bills that month, maybe it’s too many books. If your book shelves are all full and you’ve run out of space in your home to add additional book shelves, maybe it’s too many books.
And of course, i f you yourself feel like the engagement with most of your collection is unsatisfying, then too, maybe it’s too many books. It might sound stupid and like a stereotype, but ask yourself “does this book spark joy?” If yes, it’s not too much. If no, get rid of it.
Personally I have quite a large collection - about as large as I can go, as I actually reached the point where I’m literally running out of space in my home. But my pile of shame is tiny thanks to me GMing 2-3 game sessions a week, so I’m still getting joy from over 90% of my collection.
I don’t play official D&D anyway, but if I also exclude D&D retroclones, and only naming 1, then it would be Mausritter.
Depends on what you want/expect and what your experience is with the hobby.
If you already play tabletop games, and have an idea what kind of rules work and what don’t, and you’re just making a game for your own group, it can be pretty easy.
If you wanna make a commercially viable product, it’s going to be harder of course since a lot of extra factors come into play like who is making the art, the layout, the editing (NEVER EDIT YOUR OWN BOOKS! Always get a second pair of eyes to do the editing.), how you’re gonna handling marketing, distribution, etcetera. And even systems-wise some things will become important that aren’t important with a personal game, like system licenses (OGL, CC, All Rights Reserved, …) and game balance becomes a lot more important as well in a product you’re exploiting commercially.
If you’ve never (or only rarely) played games before and want to make something to play with friends, it’s going to be rough, but I’m sure you can make that work. It’s what people in the past did and while the very first designs of tabletop games were rough, there’s still people 50 years later who swear by them, so they can’t be all bad.
But if you wanna make a commercially viable product while having no clue of what works and what doesn’t, honestly, I don’t like to step on dreams, but I’d recommend to play games online for a few years and then try again. If you don’t got friends who like to play then visit LFG forums or whatever fits.
It’s one thing if you’re playing a duet RPG with a GM and solo player (or GM-less duet ttrpg, not sure of that exists?). But the last thing i’m interested in is ‘exploring sex and romance’ while I’m sitting around a dinner table with my sister, my brother in law, and three friends I have zero interest in. All while half the table is munching on Cheetos.
I’ve run a 5 games in TOR2E so far, no campaign, just one shots. I find it falls into the same trap Free League regularly fall in (see also Twilight 2000 4th edition for example), in that it’s too crunchy to be a really good narrative system but at the same time it’s too loosey goosey to be a really good gamist system. Because of this, the system fails to really hit the spot with either audience.
The starter set with Shire adventures is really to be avoided if you care at all about the lore; with the way they treat existing book characters. But outside of starter set, I feel like TOR2E really hits the spot when it comes to emulating the feel and ambience of Middle Earth.
If you’re really a big fan of Middle Earth I can definitely recommend TOR2E, just without the starter set. But if you’re not a hardcore fan of the setting I’m not sure the system has enough pull to draw you in.
As far as alternatives go; I’ve not played the current 5E adaptation, but I’ve played C7’s 5E adaptation “Adventures in Middle Earth”, and personally found it absolutely horrible. It was a good version of 5E, but it was nothing like Middle Earth. A lot of core D&D 5E gameplay and tropes are inherently incompatible with Middle Earth setting in my opinion.