Helpful D&D 4e Books for a D&D 3.5e DM

[nakedonmyfoldin]

I run my games with 3.5e rules, and I have or have read most of the books here. I was just curious if there are any cool 4e books that would help me with brainstorming or content. Like how the BoVD and BoED are really neat content books.

[facelessminion]

I found the good and evil draconomicons to be wonderfully crunchy myself. Nice lore and an interesting look into how dragons can think, being good or evil but either way damn Dragons.

[...]

The monster books are good to adapt, just don't get the first one, it mostly has reprints. Obviously, the CRs of the monsters need serious adjustment for 3.5.

[Desthro]

To be fair, the 4e books do a great job of conceptualizing power in all of its forms, and that alone is huge for anyone sticking with 3.5e. That concept alone can be a huge driving force. Also, if you need help with content, turning to other gaming systems sourcebooks can be incredibly useful, GURPS as an example, has a ton of awesome sourcebooks.

[DeAnno]

You could pick up the 4e version of the Planar Handbook (I forget what its called) and have the PCs travel to an alternate reality with that (vastly different) Planar Cosmology instead of the 3.5e one.

[DeltaEmil]

Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is an awesome product. The Nentir Vale can be put into any setting, and it details a lot of monsters and their motivations, some of them being very iconic or memorable.

[Gemini476]

I've heard a lot of good things about the advice that the 4e Dungeon Master's Guide gives, although I haven't actually gotten around to reading it myself. The Monster Vault books also have a great deal of interesting fluff for some monsters, and the second one is awesome if you're trying to flesh out the Nentir Vale.

But yeah, I'll also echo Desthro's recommendation of the GURPS sourcebooks. Check out some reviews for ones that seem relevant to your game and see what kinds of ideas that you can take from them - it's a very modular system, so most of the page-count is taken up by DM advice and such. They're pretty great.

Dungeon World might also be a good thing to check out - it's available for free if you want an art-less version, but it has a bunch of things that help teach good DMing practices. You could just nick those GM Moves wholesale, actually.

Oh, and if you're interested in a particular setting then just grab the relevant books no matter the system and take the fluff from them. 2E has a lot of good settings that don't have a 3E equivalent, for instance, the old BECMI Gazetteers are fantastic (with a few exceptions), RuneQuest's Glorantha is amazing although honestly you won't want to play it in D&D 3E, I'm partial to Drakar och Demoner's Trudvang, aaand that's pretty much it for fantasy settings that I can think of off of the top of my head. Oh yeah, and consider grabbing The Riddle of Steel so that you can get a glimpse of how to make an interesting and complex melee combat system - I know that there are a few remakes out there as well, although I don't remember the names.

[Brookshw]

I run my games with 3.5e rules, and I have or have read most of the books here. I was just curious if there are any cool 4e books that would help me with brainstorming or content. Like how the BoVD and BoED are really neat content books.

You may want to consider going back an edition rather than forward, there are a lot of great 2e fluff books, the Planes of X books (Law, Conflict, Chaos) are pretty interesting and The Faces of Sigil has some fantastic NPCs. A comparative book for BoED might be Warriors of Heaven while the BoVD could be compared to Faces of Evil perhaps or maybe a Guide to Hell. Hellbound is another great one.