Sell me on an RPG book

[D20ragon]

I'm looking to expand my rpg library once more, and even though I've got pretty much every game I could ever hope to play in my lifetime as a PDF, they just aren't quite as satisfying as physical books. So yeah, sell me on an RPG book! :smallbiggrin:

Don't care what system, could be new, could be old, could be a supplement, could be a core rulebook. Just looking for something that's well made, has excellent art, layout, writing, etc. What're y'all's favorites?

[JAL_1138]

1) Savage Worlds core rulebook, Deluxe Explorer's Edition paperback is a good buy, as far as books go. It's a really versatile system (although I'd caveat my recommendation by saying the core gear list gives me some serious headaches for a number of inaccuracies with weapons and armor). The system is designed to be used with multiple genres--fantasy, modern, sci-fi, etc. (with additional rules supplements available for each genre, although you can run a lot from just core), and the core book includes a decent bestiary and a couple of short adventures, all in under 200 pages--and said corebook usually costs about $10.

2) The AD&D 2e Planescape Campaign Box Set is fantastic. Weird, awesome art from Tony DiTerlizzi, comes with some awesome (and huge) maps, well-written, and for one of the strangest and most interesting settings AD&D ever produced.

[harlokin]

Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed.

Character creation has a cool life-path style that generates an origin and social context for your character, as well as little quirks, and outlook/personality shaping past events.

The combat system is great, with the exchanges feeling like a real fight to the death. There are interesting tactical decisions to be made, and the system manages to make fights both cinematic, but still potentially dangerous; yes you can 'one-shot' an opponent.

Magic is dark and dangerous and really fits the theme. It can be a game-changer, but always comes at a cost to the caster, and is never a 'heroic' option.

The carousing phase between adventures is fun, and greatly lends to the the 'Conan feel'.


It also won Best RPG at this years UK Games Expo

[Wraith]

Feng Shui
Also known as "Big Trouble In Little China - The RPG". It's a very pretty hardback book with some lovely illustrations, providing the rules for a game which teaches you how to emulate Hong Kong Theatre-style martial arts films by dressing as a superhero, gaining bonuses for making witty quips in the middle of a fight and by throwing demons and cyborgs through windows at every viable opportunity. It's great fun.

Dark Heresy (1st or 2nd ed.)/Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (2nd Ed.)
The Games Workshop RPGs (by FFG and Green Ronin respectively) are some very, very high quality books with gritty and grimdark settings where death is the least of your worries. They're some of my favourite RPG settings and are generally well regarded; be prepared to scour the internet for a bargain though, as they're both out of print and they're bordering on becoming antiques!

[Rhedyn]

Pinnacle Entertainment Group puts out a lot of good books for Savage Worlds. I just owning them. After my recent foray into POD (print on demand), I've decided that I unreasonably like glossy pages (like paizo and Wotc do it).

That being said, the Rules Cyclopedia is a pretty neat game to just own and the lack of glossy pages works with the old as hell aesthetic.

[Scripten]

Shadow of the Demon Lord

SotDL is a dark fantasy D&D 5e-esque system with some neat design decisions. It feels very similar to 5E while (IMO) fixing some of the more glaring issues with the product and introducing flavorful RP mechanics. The physical book I bought had fantastic print quality on top of the wonderful aesthetics in the book.

[2D8HP]

As a game?
King Arthur Pendragon it's a favorite, great reading, great playing, any edition. The once and future RPG.

As something to read and look at?
Pretty much any 2nd edition 7th Sea book fits the bill.
Great setting details, great art.with pirates!

Just art?
The 3.5 D&D Drow of the Underdark
Hot silky Drow.

[Knaight]

I'm not particularly feeling long writeups at the moment, but I will take the time to at least namedrop Warbirds and Hollow Earth Expedition.

Warbirds: You play elite diesel punk mercenary pilots in the Carribean islands, after they've been transported by storm to the eye of a gas giant. The system side is simple and effective, with some pretty decent dogfighting rules and an interesting set of mechanics about being a celebrity - along with a chapter straight up titled Go Gonzo, which is just the most beautiful thing. The setting meanwhile is actually really well thought out and surprisingly deep, despite also being conceptually ridiculous in the most glorious way.

Hollow Earth Expedition is my preferred system for pulp games. The title basically speaks for itself here, but on the system side it's a medium crunch dice pool system that's very much fast and functional but not hugely deep. If you like framework mechanics that provide just enough support then get out of the way you'll probably like it, and there's a few clever tricks thrown in throughout to make it just work.

Also just look at the covers of these things. They speak for themselves.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/3803/115960.jpg
https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333038220l/396070.jpg

[KillingTime]

Dark Heresy (1st or 2nd ed.)/Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (2nd Ed.)
The Games Workshop RPGs (by FFG and Green Ronin respectively) are some very, very high quality books with gritty and grimdark settings where death is the least of your worries. They're some of my favourite RPG settings and are generally well regarded; be prepared to scour the internet for a bargain though, as they're both out of print and they're bordering on becoming antiques!

I second this.
The 40k franchise RPGs by fantasy flight have been some of the highest quality and extensive publications I've had the pleasure of owning.

[Jay R]

If you like swashbuckling adventures and musketeer movies, then Flashing Blades.

It has classes that are based on actual classes. Where you were born and who raised you. You are a Noble, Gentleman, Soldier, or Rogue. In the Caribbean supplement High Seas, this is expanded to include Sailor, Marine, or Pirate.

There are five dueling styles. If you learned Italian style, your thrusts and lungers are better. Spanish style has improved slashes, etc. [The game was written in the 1980s, and there is no authenticity to the style descriptions.]

Each character has an Advantage (title, wealth, lackey, favor, contact, etc.) and a Secret (secret loyalty, sworn vengeance, secret identity, duelist, inveterate gambler, etc.). These make the characters unique, and are the key to fitting a swashbuckling persona.

The main characteristics are Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Wit, Charm, and Luck.

The skills are a big part of the game. Each class has three skills that cost 1 point each, a set of what you might call "class skills" which cost 2 points each, and the rest are 3 points. Once you buy a skill, your ability is based on the associated characteristic, plus experience. Each skill or fighting weapon goes up individually, based on how much you use it.

Social status is real, crucial, and part of what you're striving to earn.

The game's biggest weakness is, being made in the early 1980s, the assumption was that all players would be guys, and there are no female character types. I invented Actress for as player in my game, and it would be easy to play Noble or Rogue as a woman.

It plays quickly, feels right, and lets players act like a dueling hero.

[JAL_1138]

WotC did some really spiffy reprints of 2e ('95 "black border" two-column version) with semigloss green covers and much better binding/paper quality than any of their 5e books. Probably the best quality printing 2e ever had, and look great on a shelf (although as with all the two-column printings, some cool art from the older 3-column version, such as Larry Elmore's work, was left out and some replacements/additions in the PHB/DMG were...questionable. The MM has a good bit of DiTerlizzi art, though, so it's not all bad.)

[S@tanicoaldo]

He may look very edgy but I love everything Zak Sabbath does.

His Vornheim: The Complete City Kit may be one of the best urban rpg guides out there and it's very useful overal to deal with making NPCS on the fly.

He talks a little about his work here:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjz2kIiwLaY

I think he has a great personality and awesome and colorful ideas, and he did get many rpizes for his books so i'm not the only one to love his work.

[Andor13]

It's practically an antique now, but I love a game called World Tree. The website appears to be dead, but the book is still available on Amazon.

System wise it's nothing special, the magic system is an adaptation of the Ars Magica verb+noun system, and the rest is pretty standard fare.

The races are all "Furry" races, mostly anthropomorphic animals, one non-anthropomorphic race, a race of mini-dragons, and one race of flying heptapodic cephalopoids.

There are no classes, it's a skill based system.

What sets it apart, for me, is the amount of thought put into the setting. Everything is explored in the book, for example: While it's not a level based system, HP growth does exist in the form of a skill that adds to your HP pool. In world this represents a character's soul learning to cling more tightly to his body, so that no one would expect an experienced warrior to die just because you put an arrow into his eye, throat and heart. And as a result of that they tend to favor high damage combat style with hacking/chopping weapons over finesse weapons. System mechanics -> Explanation -> Consequence -> Consequence. The whole book is like that.

The world itself is the creation of a bunch of Gods who made it for their own amusement (including one sort of 'kid brother' god, see flying heptapoids with clubs.) And the gods like conflict, so the world is in the shape of a giant tree, with branches a hundred miles across and thousands of miles long. The civilized (read PC) races favored by the gods live on the flat tops of the branches and the sides are howling wilderness full of monsters. So even in the oldest, most settled and civilized part of the world, you can never be more that 50 miles from monster infested wilderness. The cities in this world take their walls very, very seriously. (They tend to be made of fire, or water, or snakes, etc.)

Great fun to read and provides endless food for thought.

[Nifft]

Don't care what system, could be new, could be old, could be a supplement, could be a core rulebook. Just looking for something that's well made, has excellent art, layout, writing, etc. What're y'all's favorites?

Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved is a very pretty book, with a novel twist on spellcasting and some interesting races.

Dresden Files RPG is a great looking book with an inspiring Session Zero mechanic that I've stolen for several unrelated systems. It's very well written, and if you're familiar with the franchise, then you'll appreciate the margin notes which are written in-character.

[mephnick]

The Symboroum book is beautiful and the system is pretty neat. It's dark, nordic fantasy of a medieval society bordering on a dark, magical forest called the Davokar. It has a corruption system that molds your character as they experience the dark magic of the new land. Add in a lot of strongly written factions and there's some depth. Really thematic. It's a DM never rolls system, that I'm not a huge fan of, but other people love that stuff. Looks great on a bookshelf though.

[2D8HP]

If you like swashbuckling adventures and musketeer movies, then Flashing Blades...


Flashing Blades.does look very cool to me as well, and at least one really good adventure supplement, An Ambassadors Tales, was published for it:


.http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wJLjWaoiX2M/TgD12-13JuI/AAAAAAAADSE/0jOGFuwA4t0/s320/flashingblades.jpg

I like the Three Musketeers!
And the adventures are great!

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51aaa7aGXzL._SY400_.jpg
.

He may look very edgy but I love everything Zak Sabbath does.

His Vornheim: The Complete City Kit may be one of the best urban rpg guides out there and it's very useful overal to deal with making NPCS on the fly....


I bought it and it does look really cool, I also liked his Red and Pleasant Land adventure setting



Lamentations of the Flame Princess
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51kriLxRPnL._SY400_.jpg

Very close to old D&D, I bought it to match the "Red and Pleasant Land" adventure.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OIcsgeAVL._SY400_.jpg.
And thanks for the video S@tanicoaldo, it was fun and I didn't know of the series.

Unfortunately, for me, reading both Flashing Blades and Vornheim males me have to roll a sanity check 'cause the type is so small I have to use a magnifying glass!

Anyway a gorgeous game from way back was Empire of the Petal Throne

http://www.tekumel.com/images/gaming/eptbox.jpg

http://i1.wp.com/tekumelcollecting.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/EPTRulebook.jpeg
My cooler than me little brother got the EPT box set, which seemed really expensive at the time, but it had a gorgeous really thick map, and an exotic setting.

Very cool.

The illustrations that Lisa Free did for Chaosium were wonderful (as always, I'm partial to the ones in Pendragon).

But for new and easy to find, as I mentioned upthread, the new books for 7th Sea are gorgeous.

[Jay R]

Flashing Blades.does look very cool to me as well, and at least one really good adventure supplement, An Ambassadors Tales, was published for it:

There were four, actually:

Parisian Adventures
High Seas (the Caribbean setting)
The Cardinal's Peril
An Ambassador's Tale.

All provided some good adventures and flavor.

[Yerok LliGcam]

www.7dsystem.com

Genre egnostic, simple rules that feel amazingly intuitive and you'll probably never use another dice system ever again.

also check out the youtube channel by looking up 7dsystem on there.

its amazing here's a brief rundown:


no classes

no levels

skills based build your character your way. - want to be a good thief? start stealing things and succeed at it.

7 levels of difficulty

number of dice you roll = how skilled you are in that skill
up to a certain number (think it's 6 + bonuses unless you pick that skill to be your characters 1 specialty in which case it can get another 5-7 ranks)

everything dies at 7 injuries. dragons, pixies, humans, dwarves etc.

dmg is scaled with size. which is just a number to help DM's simplify it

example: size 30 dragon steps on person who's size 5. they take 6x the injuries cuz dragons 6x bigger than them. human stabs dragons foot, dragon only takes 1 injury.

protection value negates dmg.

equipment makes a difference like helmets prevent stunning.


and you can run it using any system because 7dsystem isn't a game, its just a rule book and how to implement it with whatever.

i've run:

D&D
one shot fantasy with whatever
futuristic post apocalypse
starting a star wars one


your players pick it up in minutes
and new players can jump in because the system encourages starting players at 0. blank slates. which makes character creation simple as you just pick a race and give some bonuses based on their traits.

pretty awesome.

hope you enjoy it.

[Scripten]

www.7dsystem.com

-snip-

I had trouble finding a link to any actual rules on the site. There are plenty of supplemental materials, but without any idea how the system works, it's hard to make a decision to put money toward it.

It looks like the only avenue is via Patreon?

[ProphetSword]

Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game by West End Games. The D6 system used in the games is one of the best RPG systems ever created.

[ZenoForce88]

Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny from fantasy flight games are great for a more narritave Star Wars game. Thought the special dice needed may be a bit offputting at first.

To give some more obscure systems a chance.
Tenra Bansho Zero for your over the top hyper Japanese fantasy. Think of it like Trigun, but in feudal Japan instead of the wild west. With magic. Naruto style ninja, cyborgs, and mechas all coexisting. First great for one shots, good for long campaigns with some fiddling.

Victoriana(2e and 3e)/Airship Pirates for your steampunk, with weird science, and airships. Can seem kind of sparse for rules, but probably the best crafting system, and drinking rules I've ever encountered.

For your super silly, there's Teenagers from Outer Space, and TOON. With TFOS more high school anime, and TOON closer to looney toons. In both failing is just as fun and entertaining as success. Especially with TFOS' "too much" success mechanic.

Wanna hunt some ghosts? Cant go wrong with West End Games Ghostbusters or for a bit more complexity Ghostbusters International.

And finaly, if you have kids you wanna get into gaming, or just got some Bronies in your group, Tails of Equestria is light weight, Savage Worlds agacent in mechanics, and can easily be hacked for a more serious tone, without changing or removing to many mechanics.

[Hawkstar]

I am going to have to plug...

Ironclaw. Second Edition The art of the book can be very off-putting (The first edition's art cover was a furry parody of Slayers, apparently as a dare. The second just has terrible art, IMO that clashes with the setting). The premise can be confusing and somewhat off-putting because it kinda feels like they were designing two different games - Character creation puts an emphasis on your species and how it interacts with the world (With Species giving bonuses to skills, specific Gifts(Class features/feats to D&D players), senses, and even activity cycle... and then the setting itself is a somewhat fuzzy but otherwise faithful cultural recreation of Renaissance Europe.

That said, the Cardinal System it uses is an amazing dice resolution system. It sort of combines the scaling dice for skills system of Savage Worlds with a dice pool system, giving a very nice probability curve that helps a player feel powerful and accomplished at things they're good at, while still keeping things grounded with real chances of failure and success. Character creation is also incredibly flexible, with four 'primary' stats (Body, Speed, Mind, Will), and two secondary stats (Species and Profession), and a great diversity of Gifts and Skills.

Combat is also dangerous, without necessarily being overly-lethal. Instead of hitpoints, it uses a 5-step damage track, with effects based on how much damage you fail to 'soak' (Your body and armor soak damage, and with the right gift, so does Will). if an attack hits, but you absorb all damage, you're Reeling, which requires an action (You have two per turn) to clear. If an attack deals One point of damage, you're Injured, which means all future attacks deal an additional point of damage that must be soaked. However, any attack you soak all but one point of damage merely leaves you Injured, which represents minor injuries like small cuts and being battered. If you fail to soak Two points of damage, you're Injured and Afraid (You can't attack or approach your enemy until you Rally. This is often a battle-ender.) There are gifts that grant immunity to the Afraid condition from taking damage. If you fail to absorb three points of damage, you're Injured, Afraid, and Wounded (Wounded is yet another point of damage, and is harder to heal than Injured, representing serious damage like broken bones or bad cuts). Failing to absorb four points of damage renders you Unconscious. You only die if you fail to absorb Five or more. If you fail to absorb six, you're killed so brutally and traumatically everyone around you is Afraid.

I find the system and setting is pretty damn great for emulating stories like The Princess Bride, Robin Hood, and the like. It's also great for running completely non-combat adventures due to the flexibility of the skill and gift system.

[Red Bear]

I think "Blades in the dark" has a nice core rulebook

[Yerok LliGcam]

I had trouble finding a link to any actual rules on the site. There are plenty of supplemental materials, but without any idea how the system works, it's hard to make a decision to put money toward it.

It looks like the only avenue is via Patreon?

check out his youtube channel where he describes the mechanics of the game in a 22video long playlist (each ones maybe 5 minutes i think? i don't remember.)

honestly though. i suggest trying it at least once, he also has gameplay videos of patreons (i'm oslo video) and you can see some examples of the system in action.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA8FQZlMvfWA-Vqd5MCm99Q

my favorite thing about it:

i don't have to buy new books and modules etc. and spend 200+ dollars on a hobby that should be cheap IMO.

[Nifft]

i don't have to buy new books and modules etc. and spend 200+ dollars on a hobby that should be cheap IMO.

You should try hobbies like skiing, or dating.

$200 is cheap.