I've got the core rules. What to buy next?

[Pants]

If you need a setting, choose one that appeals to you. If I were a beginning DM and absolutely *had* to use a premade campaign setting, I would probably choose Greyhawk because it does not use any new rules, and leaves the DM a lot of latitude to shape the world as s/he sees fit.

Kinda hard when the most useful and informative GH stuff is out of print.

 

[resistor]

I love buying campaign settings. Even if I don't intend to play in them, I love owning and reading them. I find that they have the best mix of all kinds of information, and even if I don't want to play in a specific one, it ALWAYS influences my thinking when making my own worlds.

Of all the settings I own, Eberron is the one that most made me want to play it by the book as soon as I bought it. While with most of them I'm content to play heavily tweaked or to adapt parts of them into my existing campaign, Eberron really compells me to play it as is. It's pretty great!

But then, the only setting I really don't like is Forgotten Realms. I find it absolutely flavorless, generic, and impossible to start an adventure in. Unlike the Eberron CS, I look through the FRCS and don't see places to put adventures for beginning parties. Nor do I see parts of the campaign that are original enough to influence my other games. No, if there's one campaign I'd have to recommend against, it's FR.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

First some flame-guard: these are merely my opinions, based on my experiences, having DM-ed two 3.x campaigns now.

If you're just starting out as a DM, I would strongly advise you to stay AWAY from all the new "Complete Splatbooks", "Books of Exalted Vileness", "Races of Stuff", and so forth.

You just don't need all that additional crap ...er ... feats, prestige classes, racial variants, templates, etc. at this stage.

Stripped of the unnecessary negativity, I agree. Much as I, personally, enjoy books chock-full of new rules options like feats, spells, and prestige classes, they're really not necessary to a new game, and can overwhelm an inexperienced player.

Pre-packaged adventures - and I belatedly second the recommendation of Dungeon Magazine, but in my defence I bought my first issue early this week - are a good resource for a new DM. You don't even need a campaign setting for most of them, since they'll tend to include some assumptions you can work off for the time being. For example, "Mad God's Key" in Dungeon #114 has enough information about the City of Greyhawk to run the adventure, and uses only gods mentioned in the core rules.

On the other hand, a campaign setting really can serve as a treasure-trove of adventure ideas all by itself, and gives you a firmer foundation on which to erect your own ideas.

 

[Gez]

I've got the DnD 3.5 core rulebooks - PHB, DMG, MM. After that what are the best or most useful products for DnD?

I was thinking of getting Eberron, maybe Beyond Countless Doorways cause I'm into extraplanar stuff (don't like the Planescape setting though).

If you're into extraplanar stuff, the Manual of the Planes is a good buy. Do not consider is as a guide about the Great Wheel, it's really a toolbox for creating your own cosmology and understanding how planes and magic interacts (which spells relies on which planes, like teleportation and the astral, and how you use them when you leave the prime). It's a good buy for Eberron (most planes in Eberron can be likened to one, or sometime two at once, in the great wheel, so you can use the example material easily), and it's a good buy for Beyond Countless Doorways (BCD gives you lots of example planes and a few advices and rules to build others, but that's a companion to the MotP).

Eberron is a good buy if the setting appeals to you. Some love it, some hate it, others are mostly indifferent (like me). It's always good to have a detailed campaign setting as a starting place, even if you merely use it to help you build your homebrew and you end up never playing in the setting.

Other than that, and depending on the type of game you want to play, you can take a monster book or two (Tome of Horrors is a good buy, although it's not up to date with 3.5, because it contains lots of classic monsters and helps you diversify the ranks of outsiders, feys, and dungeon-delving creatures, from WotC the most interesting monster book for now is the Fiend Folio, which is rather 3.3, but the MM3, if you can get it, will be perfectly 3.5); or you can take the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

If you think of buying the Complete Thingie and Races of Stuff collection, wait a bit before. Gather informations on the web about the new classes and races they introduce, and ask yourself if you would want to use them, and how they could fit in the setting. Look at the excerpt on wizards.com, and read a few reviews to get a feeling of the content. I know I won't use any of the Complete Thingies to date, so I won't buy them.

Finally, a last thing you may want to invest in (if you're rich), is the WotC miniatures. They provide a nice visual help, since, with a bit of luck, you'll get monster minis that actually look like the monsters you use; and they provide a nice tactical game to play while waiting for all the players to arrive (I don't know in your group, but in mine, some people are always late).

 

[Akrasia]

Stripped of the unnecessary negativity ....

One person's "unnecessary negativity" is another person's "descriptive accuracy."

 

[Akrasia]

Kinda hard when the most useful and informative GH stuff is out of print.

Well, I was recommending GH precisely because it is "barebones" in nature, and you don't need loads of supplements, etc. It is a good base to start a DnD campaign, without all the variant rules, classes, races, and bonus feats that other settings seem to regard as absolutely necessary.

I see copies of the GH Gazeteer everywhere, so it can't be that hard to get.

 

[Buttercup]

I want to get an idea of which products are generally perceived to be the best/most useful - campaign settings, modules, monster books, everything.

I haven't read through the whole thread yet, so I may be duplicating the advice of others.

It depends what you like. For instance, many people like Forgotten Realms, and the books are certainly well done. But if FR isn't to your taste, I'm not sure how much use they would be to you. Having said that, I'll be happy to give you my personal best list.

Campaign Settings
Kingdoms of Kalamar (a coherent, cohesive world with lots of interesting detail)
Midnight (as someone said elsewhere, it's LotR noir)
Freeport (pirate-y goodness!)
Iron Kingdoms (not all of this has been released yet)

Modules
Hmm. Most of the modules I own are 3.0, not 3.5. However, if you don't mind the tiny bit of conversion that requires, any of the Kalamar modules are good, most notably the Coin trilogy. Also, I like Grey Citadel from Necromancer. Heck, I like pretty much all the Necromancer modules. Finally, the two World of Whitethorn modules, Hamlet of Thumble and Village of Oester are stellar.

Monster Books
Monsternomicon
Tome of Horrors

Sourcebooks
The ones I get the most use out of are:
Toolbox
Magical Medieval Society
Stone to Steel
Book of Eldritch Might 2 (now all three volumes are compiled for 3.5)
Cityworks

Other than that, I use the maps and floor plans I find in the Art & Cartography forum here, specifically those by Phineas Crow, and the ones I get from the WotC site. If I need other art, and I can't find it here, I do a Google image search. The rest of my inspiration comes from reading history and anthropology books, or from the various threads that get posted around here. Watch for alsih20's History in Your Game threads each Monday. Oh! And read the story hour forum.

 

[Buttercup]

You can buy campaign stuff - like Forgotten Realms, Kalamar, Eberron etc. - or you can homebrew your own. Take a favourite book or series - such as Vance's Lyonesse Series, Feist's Magician, George R.R. Martin's Fire and Ice etc. - and use elements of these to create your own little fantasy world.
Populate the place with interesting NPC's and you can save a lot of expense.

And even if you don't care about the money, it's simply more fun to build your own! Truly, 75% of the fun of being the DM is preparing the world and the adventures for the players.

 

[Buttercup]

If you're just starting out as a DM, I would strongly advise you to stay AWAY from all the new "Complete Splatbooks", "Books of Exalted Vileness", "Races of Stuff", and so forth.

This is so true. All you need, really, are the three core books and your imagination.

 

[Von Ether]

This is so true. All you need, really, are the three core books and your imagination.

Actually, I was running a campaign with just the PHB for a while when 3.0 just came out. Funny how interesting games can be with human antagonists who are just as competent as you.