Lucky Haul

My FLGS began to clear out its inventory yesterday by placing on its bargain shelf some 80 rpg books that were either overstocked or items that weren't moving, each was tagged at $5. I used the opportunity to pick up some books that I'll not likely ever use in play, but I've been curious to read for some time.

Baylon 5 Core rulebook
Trinity D20 Core
Starship Troopers D20 core
Rokugan
Hyerconscious
Gurps Myth 3rd ed
Gurps Marital Arts 3rd ed
Blood & Shadows: The Dark Elves of Tellene
Friend & Foe: The Gnomes and Kobalds of Tellene
Stealth & Style
Trouble at Durbenford (hardback megamodule)
Book of Dragons (MGP)
The Tome of Drow Lore
Tome of Horrors II
Tome of Horrors III
Ultimate NPCs
and 4 other GURPS books tossed in free...

So I'd like to know if any of you have ever read/played/experienced any of these products and what you thought. Its a lot of reading material and my game group has just purchased Ptolus for me so my reading time is limited (great product btw). I know there are reviews on all (or at least most) of this stuff here but I am just looking for shorts on them and what ppl thought.

Thanks for any input.

A lot of those are pretty good books. Hyperconscious and Ultimate NPCs are always in my "close at hand" shelf... several others, like the Tomes, Book of Dragons are also excellent.

We seriously need an emoticon for :dropsjaw:

Only one of those I've seen is the Rokugan book. One of my players really liked it, decided to pick up the LoT5R ruleset and then ran an excellent mini campaign. He loved the background, but not the D20 rules version.

And damn, that's a nice haul!

*sighs*

Why can't my FLGS have sales like this.

Good haul!

Here are my thoughts on these books:

Baylon 5 Core rulebook--Which edition? The latest D20 one is pretty good, but any of the three or so versions of JMS's space opera is a good resource.

Trinity D20 Core--Sadly, a game that came, went, and died. If you like White Wolf's flavor and conspiracy mixed with horror and science fiction, this is for you. Also, since it's D20, you can port much of it to many other modern/sf/horror games.

Starship Troopers D20 core--I don't have this one, but if my local game shops had it for sale, I'd be curious as to how well it reflects the military action/science fiction genre that Robert A. Heinlein helped create and that has been adapted into satirical movies and a computer-animated children's television show...

Rokugan--Not bad for fans of Asian fantasy. Again, is it the D20 version? I myself prefer the AD&D2 Oriental Adventures and D20 Legends of the Samurai for their more generic and historically-based approaches, but the card game and other Rokugan support are good.

Gurps Myth 3rd ed -- Good for fans of the fantasy videogame, and has some good advice on role-playing by post or e-mail. Note, however, that the core Generic Universal RolePlaying System engine has been revised with GURPS 4e by Steve Jackson Games.

Gurps Marital Arts 3rd ed -- One of my favorites, which describes numerous real-world styles in straighforward gaming terms. With some work, it can be used for any system.

Blood & Shadows: The Dark Elves of Tellene, Friend & Foe: The Gnomes and Kobalds of Tellene -- I like the D&D3 "Kalamar" take on somewhat lower-powered magic and well-described interracial and cultural interactions, in comparison with other settings.

Stealth & Style -- A bit specific, but again, Kalamar has some of the best D&D3 flavor, IMHO.

Book of Dragons (MGP) -- Although nearly every D20 publisher has a supplement about dragons, especially before the D&D3.5 Draconomicon came out, each one offers a few nuggets that could help keep these powerful monsters fresh for your player group.

The Tome of Drow Lore -- Not my favorite Drow book, but useful nonetheless. Even I've overused them as villains, and they've become too popular for Player Characters...

Tome of Horrors II, Tome of Horrors III -- The first one is still the best, but these give great "Scarred Lands"-flavor beasties.

Ultimate NPCs -- A nice trove of NPCs, but not the best organized.

and 4 other GURPS books tossed in free... -- For which edition? GURPS 3e had the best support, but 4e does streamline the rules somewhat. I'm a big fan of the generic genre sourcebooks (Supers, Space, Steampunk, Swashbucklers, Horror, Time Travel), as well as some of the licensed settings (Uplift, Traveller, Castle Falkenstein). Happy gaming!

It's "martial", unless GURPS is getting into areas I never dreamed they might.

Thanks!

Thank you for taking the time to offer up your opinions on the books, it sounds like I was able to get a selection of good ones. Over the years my ability to purchase books has outstripped my availible time to read and use them, until just recently where that has reversed itself, so it was a great thing for me to be able to pick up so many titles so affordably.

I agree with edemaitre that Kalamar is one of the best published game worlds out there and it was very well supported before the company went under. The only book that I am missing from my kalamar collection now that I concider a must have is the Orc book. I figured there was no way I could go wrong purchasing those books.

I have a very large 150+ book collection of 3rd edition GURPS books as well as 6 of the 4th edition hardbacks, GURPS is my favorite game system for small groups. It's too rules heavy to be manageable in large groups such as the 9 player game I am running now. The four extra books were Supers, Ogre, Robots, and Mecha all of which I already owned. I'm giving them to players of mine who have been generous with me in the past by adding books to my library.

The Babylon 5 and Starship Troopers books are both beautifully published full color D20 games. Starship troopers is completely focused on the military, with several alien menaces to fight and lots of tech toys and vehicles (power armor) to play with. Its based on the players handbook but I'd probably port it over to D20 modern. The Babylon book is the 2004 printing which I believe is the second for that game.

I do like the White Wolf games though I've not ever run one. I have a fairly largish collection of early edition vampire material as well as Hunter, Werewolf, and Wraith items. I love reading thier game data but its another one of those game that I've collected but not had time to play. The D20 Trinity I just picked up will likely collect dust along with the rest of them. It's funny, I don't ever rid myself of a game book or suppliment. I have 6 bookcases in my game room stuffed with probably over 800 rpg books I have been purchasing since 1978, and the majority of that material has been purchased since 2000. Meaning that I have a LOT of unread material. When is it enough?

The last thing I really needed was the two monster books, I have so many of them that I wont ever use 10% of the critters I have now. However I love Tome of Horrors I, so I will look through II and III and see what they offer.

Drow might be overused, but dang I love them! I purchased a book a while ago called Sheoloth City of Drow and was really dissapointed by it, so I hope The Tome of Drow Lore is a step up. I've not overused the Drow in my games, but I plan on using them in the future.

I'm not a huge fan of Oriental Adventures, but there are times in my past when I have been drawn to it. I have all the first and second edition materials including the Kara-Tur boxed game setting. I purchased 3.0 Oriental Adventures a few months ago and discovered that Rokugan was its default setting which is why I picked it up... $5 bucks was just far to good a deal to ignore for a brand new copy.

I'm not a Montephile, but I do admire his work and I use his Arcana Unearthed book as the default ruleset for my current D&D game in Ptolus (I am using the WLD as the dungeon setting below the city). Hyperconcious looked interesting and the Mindscape combat system looks very cool, I dislike the clunky system as presented in the core books.

The NPC book looks useful, I had at one point the ambitious idea of going through all my 370+ dragon magazines and cataloging all the npc 3.0+ stat blocks for ready to use NPC's as I just hate writing them up myself. This is far easier than that.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Kenzer went under? Kalamar is no longer being supported? Guess I better tell them so they can all go home and quit thinking they are getting paid for the work they are doing!

Tome of Horrors Scarred Lands flavored? I think someone still has the opinion that Necromancer/Tome of Horrors were connected to Scarred Lands. They aren't and never were. They are simply an alternative source of monsters, and a lot of darn good ones too.
The claim to fame for Tome of Horrors 1 is that they redid some 2E/1E monsters that WOTC supposedly was not going to redo, then WOTC did anyways.

The only connection the Tome of Horrors and Scarred Lands has is that they were both published through White Wolf.

Anyways, that is a lucky haul. Good for you!

Good haul.

I've only got two of them, Hyperconsciousness and Martial Arts.

Hyper: Has a bunch of cool feats, I used a couple in characters I've made.

MA: some simple breakdowns of different RW styles and some fantasy ones, enough to provide some good flavor in describing/conceptualizing your D&D monks.

I would love to get the tomes and Rokugan as well as a bunch of others at those prices. I didn't think Starship troopers was d20. Huh.