New Money, Ergo New Book

[Mooseman]

The only question is, what new book should I get. What is this board's opinion? Keep in mind, I'm a DM, not a player, but I would be willing to share the book with my players, so I'd kind of want something that has stuff for them too. Any ideas?

[Neon Knight]

What books do you have already?

[Fireball.Man.Guy.]

Tome of Battle is a great book, and people on these boards usually think of it as a messiah, but it's more player-orinted. If you like dragons Dragon Magic is good, with a bunch of monsters and items and campaign ideas.

[brian c]

The climate setting books (Sandstorm, Frostfall, Stormwrack...) are pretty cool, but it really does depend on what you have already and what you like. PHB2 is great also.

[Fax Celestis]

If you DM, the DMG-II is gold.

DMG-I should have been titled, "The DM's Mechanics Book", while the DMG-II should have been titled, "How To DM Properly."

[PnP Fan]

It all depends on your game and your players.
If you do lots of dungeon crawls, Dungeonscape.
If you want generic rulebook that can enrich your games, PHB II.
If do lots of city games, Cityscape.
If you enjoy Eberron like my group does, Secrets of Sarlonna provides lots of wierd setting material that you and your players can enjoy.
I personally didn't find a whole lot to be happy with in DMG II, but it has some interesting magic items in it (like magic locations).

[Fax Celestis]

It all depends on your game and your players.
If you do lots of dungeon crawls, Dungeonscape.
If you want generic rulebook that can enrich your games, PHB II.
If do lots of city games, Cityscape.
If you enjoy Eberron like my group does, Secrets of Sarlonna provides lots of wierd setting material that you and your players can enjoy.
I personally didn't find a whole lot to be happy with in DMG II, but it has some interesting magic items in it (like magic locations).

Really? The DMG-II and the Tome of Magic are the two books out of my collection that I'm pretty much endlessly rereading.

[Renegade Paladin]

DMG2 is something that's infinitely useful for a starting DM. A lot of the advice it gives is stuff I've been doing for years already, but I still get a lot of mileage out of it. I wouldn't say it's rendered obsolete by experience, though I've heard it said.

[Matthew]

We really need more information to provide a reasonable answer to this question. What books do you have already? What kind of campaigns do you run? Are you using a prefabricated or a Home Brew Campaign World?

[Bears With Lasers]

I suggest you get a non-D&D book. Branch out to a new game or system. Get Spirit of the Century, for pulp-action awesomeness. Action! Adventure! Dinosaurs and zeppelins! Death rays! Jet planes! Heroes arriving in the nick of time! Fedoras! Long coats! Dinosaurs IN zeppelins!

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I'm looking forward to the Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium - they'll save me from buying all the extraneous bumph that comes in splatbooks, and get me the bits I really want: cool items and new spells.

[Khantalas]

Get Hunter: the Reckoning. Vampire: the Masquarade. Mage: the Awakening. As long as it's ol' White Wolf books, it is probably great.

[Bears With Lasers]

Actually, I'd say the new World of Darkness books are much tighter both thematically and mechanically.

[Fax Celestis]

I suggest you get a non-D&D book. Branch out to a new game or system. Get Spirit of the Century, for pulp-action awesomeness. Action! Adventure! Dinosaurs and zeppelins! Death rays! Jet planes! Heroes arriving in the nick of time! Fedoras! Long coats! Dinosaurs IN zeppelins!

...I thought that was called Exalted?

[Khantalas]

I wouldn't know, I couldn't get a look at it yet.

Though I hear the new WoD doesn't have Hunter.

[Fax Celestis]

I wouldn't know, I couldn't get a look at it yet.

Though I hear the new WoD doesn't have Hunter.

It will. Hunter in oWoD took a while to come out too.

What I miss is Wraith.

[Bears With Lasers]

...I thought that was called Exalted?

Exalted doesn't have zeppelins or fedoras, which may well be the two most important components of pulp action.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Eberron has Dinosaurs and Zepplins without excluding the possibility of fedoras. I guess that isn't what you're talking about though.

Doesn't the New World of Darkness have a pseudo version of Hunter as it's base (non Vampires/Werewolfs/Poorly-thought-up Golem wannabe undead PCs) setting or do 'Hunter: The Reckoning' characters get to much supernatural stuff?

[Fax Celestis]

Eberron has Dinosaurs and Zepplins without excluding the possibility of fedoras. I guess that isn't what you're talking about though.

Doesn't the New World of Darkness have a pseudo version of Hunter as it's base (non Vampires/Werewolfs/Poorly-thought-up Golem wannabe undead PCs) setting or do 'Hunter: The Reckoning' characters get to much supernatural stuff?

nWoD is different from oWoD in that mortals are viable characters. I don't doubt the introduction of a Hunter line at a later time, though.

[Strengfellow]

I need to get the 3.5 PHB give it a solid going over and then find a group.
Which should be fun.

[Mooseman]

Ok, sorry for the lack of clarification; all I have is the 3.5 core, and I'm running a homebrew campaign right now. Thanks for all the suggestions so far though, guys.

[Stevenson]

Cityscape is great even if you don't do city adventures a bunch. In fact, especially if you don't do city adventures a bunch. It's very refreshing to go in to a different field then what you're used to. And city campaigns are very intruiguing and different.

[Wizzardman]

Get Dungeonscape. The Giant wrote some of it. Enough said.

[/supporting the website]

Well, I dunno. VtR has a decent thematic flavor to it, and is cheaper than many of the newer books [as VtR is old now], so you may want to go for that. Exalted is also supposed to be really good.

Alternatively, you could grab the Spell Compendium or some other random item from the D&D shelf. Avoid the relatively thin ones; they cost just as much as the other books, provide far less good content, and generally aren't as good quality as the others [and bad quality from Wizards is really bad quality].

If you're desperate for a new campaign setting that should be fun, check out the Black Company sourcebook from Green Ronin [I think Green Ronin published it--I could be wrong]. Its a rather nice setting, with an entirely different magic system and a gritty/dark world. Really nice, if you don't mind low-magic.

[Matthew]

Ok, sorry for the lack of clarification; all I have is the 3.5 core, and I'm running a homebrew campaign right now. Thanks for all the suggestions so far though, guys.

Hmmn. Well, a lot depends on how you want to develop your game. With reference only to D&D, I would suggest Unearthed Arcana, Complete Warrior and Complete Adventurer, but there are a great many other possibilities that depend on what you want to improve. The various Environment Books, for instance, are going to be useful if you have adventures taking place in those climes.

[TheOOB]

Beings I'm such a shadowrun fanboy, I'd have to suggest trying out Shadowrun 4e, it's fairly easy to play, comes with a great campaign setting, and is amazingly versitile.

[Bouldering Jove]

Though I hear the new WoD doesn't have Hunter.

Core nWoD basically is Hunter, isn't it?

[Khantalas]

Core nWoD basically is Hunter, isn't it?

Does it have Supernatural powers for humans, though?

[Bouldering Jove]

Does it have Supernatural powers for humans, though?

The core book doesn't provide any, except arguably the Unseen Sense merit. On the other hand, the WoD: Second Sight book does; it provides for characters with "Supernatural Advantage" of varying types, basically low-level psychic or magical powers.

But doesn't hunting the supernatural as someone with supernatural abilities kind of defeat the purpose?

[Khantalas]

Nope. Because Hunters are just way too awesome to think about that.

Besides, your powers allow you to survive long enough to run away from monsters. Not much else.

[The Valiant Turtle]

The best recommendation I can give is to find a bookstore with a good selection and browse through everything until you find something you can't live without.

Tome of Battle and Tome of Magic are both popular books. The settings books (Sandstorm, Frostfell, Stormwrack) are excellent if you like the setting. I've played in a pure Sandstorm campaign and it was a blast. If you are concerned about making Fighters a little bit better, then get Tome of Battle or PHBII, and maybe Complete Warrior.

Also consider looking into 3rd party .pdfs from DriveThruRPG that are still Fantasy related. You can get more bang for your buck that way, especially if you happen to have easy access to a good printer.

...Or get Exalted.

(sorry, couldn't resist, I love Exalted)