I’d say the industry is as much part of the problem as the cause of it.

Everyone always seems to think that their version of a given rules set for a specific historic era is ‘da best’.
And you do notice that sometimes mechanics are renamed or tweaked just to avoid getting hammered by the corporate lawyers from the big fish in the pond (or a fear of getting ‘ripped off’ if someone else dare to name a space marine a space marine … ).

OTOH … it is difficult / impossible to share rules at a corporate level, because they tend to believe in creating vendor-lock-in as a means of survival (GW being a prime example). We saw what happened when D&D became ‘open source’ by accident … it gave live to a competitor and it must have scared the crap out of WoTC management. Their response was tightening of the screws, because they felt that the open nature cost them sales.

Pairing down game systems from an end-user point of view should be ‘easy’.
Pick systems that avoid vendor-lock-in and you can say good bye to quite a few systems in your possession.
However you’d still would want a lot of the systems, because of the fluff that helps you build your armies …

I have lots of RPG rules systems, many of which I have played at least once, others that seemed like a good idea at the time (but weren’t for a variety of reasons).

Started with one army for Warmachine… Cygnar… added some Mercenaries… fell for the Circle lore and then drifted into Cryx… had a lot of fun playing it… but then scheduling with my wargaming buddy faltered.

Also invested heavily in boardgames like Tannhauser, Eldritch Horror, Imperial Assault, Fortune and Glory, A Touch of Evil… numerous kickstarter games (that I was more excited about during the funding than when it arrived… but that topic is being discussed elsewhere in the forums).

And then GW starter releasing amazing box sets… Necromunda, Pelennor Fields, Soul Wars, Warcry, Kill Team, Blackstone Fortress… and others.

And there’s a lot more.

I like to paint miniatures. When I get time I enjoy solo rules (especially in the last year). Collecting is a hobby too. Finding something that I have never heard of at UK Games Expo is wonderful.

I regret some purchases, but the majority I am happy with.

Are there too many games systems?

In the world… yes…

In my home… no…

In these difficult times we take pleasure where we can… so don’t deny yourself the pleasure of that new box/book smell…

As a boardgamer and RPG’er, I nowadays look for “revolution not evolution” in the sense that I’m looking for new game mechanics, not variations of the same one. For example, the last dungeoncrawler I bought just for the game system was Gloomhaven, with its diceless hand management. Compare this to pretty much every dungeoncrawler since HeroQuest, which was some variant of throwing dice and beating a target number. The last miniatures skirmish game I bought just for the game system was Kobolds and Cobblestones, because I was curious about its poker-based card system. Compare this to almost every wargame that rolls a die to hit and/or take damage (or uses a CRT). My favorite RPG is One Shot World, a rules-light RPG based on Dungeon World, which has a “mechanic” where the game master asks the players to flesh out the world, and Cheat Your Own Adventure, a storytelling game reminiscent of CYOA books. CCGs I made an effort to collect were Mythos and Doomtown, both of which have noticeably different mechanics and themes from MtG. I’m not into Eurogames, but my two favorites are Dominion, which popularized the deckbuilder mechanic, and Race for the Galaxy, a hand management game (that plays very differently from Gloomhaven).

That doesn’t mean I haven’t bought a ton of games for the miniatures, inexpensive games under $20, or deeply discounted games that have had some buzz. That’s already enough to fill two rooms in the house unplayed. Don’t need more.

I am pretty sure I have too many game systems on my shelf.  Mostly because even before Covid I had more game systems then people interested in playing them.  I too, like many of you, have multiple armies for all the big game systems.  These seem to be the focal point for people in my local gaming group.  Even those of us still able to get together to occasionally play, we only play the “main stream” games.  It seems to be a combination of time, familiarity with the rules, and generally playing what is familiar.

Another challenge I have been noticing is that the more niche games come out, the more the group I play in gets broken down into those niches.  From the pool of people there will only be 1 or 2 that play game X, then 1 or 2 different people who play Y and so on.  Which in truth has helped with social distancing since I’ve been able to focus on this or that game a little and the group of people is by nature small.  But back in the days of normal game play, it made it a little difficult to organize something outside one of the big main stream games.