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The best D&D books (Regardless of Edition)

sckeener

First Post
Here are some of my other non-rpg books that I use for inspiration:
  • The History of the Indies of New Spain (Civilization of the American Indian Series) by Diego Duran
    I recommend it highly. Basically it is a 15th century's monks cultural anthropology snapshot of the aztecs. Pure awesome. The level of detail is amazing.
  • The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia by Daniel Harms
    I use it to randomly seed cthulhu ideas into my plot...kind of like what Paizo does ;)
  • The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson
    Great if you are running an egyptian game which I usually am some where.....
 

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deadsmurf

First Post
Books that will likely stay very useful as I continue playing 4th edition and further:
Eberron Campaign Setting - A Rich world, lots of details that will certainly be lost durring edition updates. The parts without rules are great reads.
Sharn City of Towers - The quintesential city book, any and every book detailing a single city will be compared to this in my mind. The rules were such a small part of it anyway, will be great for any edition.
Monster Manuals (any edition) - they're great if you need ideas flip through them. MM3 from 3.5 is a favourite.
DMG (4th Edition) - as others have previously stated.
 

Schmoe

Adventurer

You all are giving 'SploderWizard a tough time for picking the survival guides, but to this day the 1e Dungeoneer's Survival Guide is one of the books that inspires me the most. It was worth the price for the second half alone.

That, plus the 1e Manual of the Planes are two keepers.

Beyond that, books I'll hopefully never have to part with include:

Draconomicon (3e)
Fiend Folio (1e)
Ptolus (3rd party, 3e)
Player's Handbook 2 (3e)
Unearthed Arcana (3e)
 

Just to make clear, I was NOT asking for "Best books by TSR/WotC", I really meant "The best books to have with you for playing D&D, regardless of the edition you're playing." If that means the TV Guide, 2nd Week of June '84 Issue, then so be it.
84060901.jpg

Forget about Pierce and Steph, the article on Square Pegs has helped me many times at the gaming table. :)
 


Orius

Legend
I'm mostly familiar with the 2e stuff.

Complete Book of Villains had a lot of good advice for DMs. There's really no hard rules in it, so it can be used just as easily with 4e as it could with 2e. It could be used with 1e or the three little books for that matter.

World Builder's Guidebook. Great for fleshing out a campaign setting. Could still be useful today, and has great backwards compatibility with pre-2e stuff.

The compilations: Encyclopedia Magica and Spell Compendiums. Plenty of extra material any DM will find useful. Downside is that the stuff (in particular the magic items) needs conversions for 3e, and the spells would be even harder to work into 4e.

Thief's Handbook was pretty good too, with the thief guild creation section for DMs, and lot of useful NWPs for rogue characters (some of which got pulled into 3e core).

Other setting specific stuff is good. Faiths and Avatars is ok, haven't used it much though since I don't play in FR, but it still has good ideas for sleshing out homebrew pantheons. The spells aren't bad either, but they were all reprinted in the Priest's Spell Compendium. Planewalker's Handbook is an excellent player guide for Planescape.

Don't have a lot of 3e stuff.

Manual of the Planes was excellent, offered the old classic planar setup, with rules for DMs who wanted to do things differently, and an assortment of interesting optional planes. Also good as a reference for people wanting to update Planescape campaigns to 3e.

Oriental Adventures was also pretty good. Lots of different options for the DM to pick and choose from. The Rokugan focus can be easily ignored, and even then, there's some decent material to be had for the plucking (like the Taint rules.)
 
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Calico_Jack73

First Post
I love most of the 1e AD&D books but especially the original Fiend Folio. No other book gets me as nostalgic and in the mood to play as that book.

As far as usefulness goes I have to cast my vote for the Volo's Guide series. I have held onto all of mine since I got them when I played 2e and only now with the 4e change to the Forgotten Realms setting do they lose some of their relevance.
 
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Seredin

First Post
for me, Heroes of Horror is an incredibly useful and flavorful book. second to none in ideas for PCs and enemies which deal with that type of playstyle.
i realize im necro-ing this thread, but it's a goodun!
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
The cream of a very large crop:

1e DMG
Monster books: 1e MM, FF, MM2; 3e MM
1e Deities and Demigods/Legends and Lore
2e Spell compendia (both sets)
2e Encyclopedia Magica

With just these books I could game forever. All the rest is gravy.

Lan-"how on earth did I miss this thread the first time around?"-efan
 

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