What 1e/2e books are still useful to a 3rd edition DM?

[sullivan]

Deities and Demigods, old-school version cuz' a little T&A never hurt, and the big 'C's team never goes out of style. Seriously one of our players has this and still brings it to every session lest we have a need to reference in it. Of course the stat blocks are even more meaningless to us than ever (we never really ran god challanging PCs, we all had laid that aside by the age we meet at, myself having never ever played such a campaign). Even the classes of each god(dess) are losing some of their meaning as each passing splatbook series fills in niche archtypes.

But still it's a great pantheon of pantheons reference book. I think of it as sort of the equivalent to a Tobin's Spirit Guide (whew, talk about dating myself).

P.S. Hmm, on a tangent seems that there was a book by the name Tobin's Spirit Guide published. Spawning a thread to avoid a hijack....

 

[der_kluge]

I'd add the Book of Artifacts to that list. It's a must-have if you intend to use those artifacts. Several are very easy to build a campaign from.

And I'll give another vote for the World Builder's Guidebook. And Aurora's.

 

[nothing to see here]

Definitely my vote would go to the "World Builder's Guide Book"...not only is it still useable...I find it a better world building resource than almost anything that has come out SINCE 3e...

 

[Insight]

Another plug for the 1e DMG - great source of all kinds of inspiration. The 2e Campaign Sourcebook & Catacomb Guide also gets my vote for being the best guide on DMing better games. Excellent reading and pretty much edition-neutral.

Oh yeah. I forgot about the Campaign Sourcebook & Catacomb Guide. Alas, I no longer have that one, but it's a keeper if you have it!

And I'll give another vote for the World Builder's Guidebook. And Aurora's.

Never got a chance to use the World Builder's Guidebook, but I'd also heard it was good. Maybe I should check it out.

 

[Orius]

The Worldbuilder's Guidebook; it's a great resource for campaign building. It's pretty much rules independant, so there's really no reason it can't be used with any other group of rules.

The Encyclopedia Magica and the Spell Compendiums. There's a lot of stuff compiled in the these from over the years. The Wizard's Spell Compendium is probably the easiest to use, given that arcane spells haven't fundamentally changed in 3e. The Priest's Spell Compendium is a bit harder given that the old sphere system isn't used anymore, so the DM has to use a bit more judgement with it than the WSC.

The Encyclopedia Magica is probably the most difficult to use, because a DM will have to assign caster levels to items at the very least to make them workable in 3e. This is because all items of a type had a set level in 2e where items in 3e can differ. Setting up prerequisites and prices will require more work, but are only really needed if the PCs are going to try to make the items. Still, much like spells, magic items haven't fundamentally changed, although 3.xe has sort of codified things a bit. I've converted a bunch of old items, and they're really not that hard to do, in fact the only time I convert details about an item is when a saving throw or some other function that's been more radically changed is called into play, or where specific 3e mechanics makes the items easier to use.

The rules for item creation in the various Player's Option books make good guidelines for DMs that want to substitute power components for XPs.

 

[Orius]

I'm putting in a vote for the Complete Villains Handbook. Some of the material is pretty obvious to us old-timers, but it's still a useful resource, even if it just ends up reminding you of something you probably should have considered anyway.

Hmm, I forgot about that one. I'll back up with other have said; it's pretty much rules lite advice for creating villains. It was written for 2e, but the advice works just as well for 3e or older editions.

In fact, the blue DMG books on the whole are proably more useful than the PHB books. Two other good DMG books are Arms and Equipment and Monster Mythology. Don't know about the early ones like Creative Campaigning or the Catacomb Guide, since they were OOP when I started getting into the game (boo! hiss!). Of the later ones, the Complete Book of Necromancers is ok (but fairly rule dependant), and Of Ships and the Sea could be useful (I haven't used it much myself). Sages and Specialists, however is junk and should be avoided.

 

[Orius]

I'd add the Book of Artifacts to that list. It's a must-have if you intend to use those artifacts. Several are very easy to build a campaign from.

Although the Book of Artifacts is probably redundant if you have the Encyclopedia Magica, since the latter has all the artifacts (and more besides) as well as the tables for artifact powers.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Now I have another question:
What exactly is in these three books?
Just an example or two would help me decide which to buy.

Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide

Creative Campaigning

World Builder's Guidebook

 

[Altalazar]

I think about any book from the old editions can find some use. Sure, it isn't "balanced" for 3E and doesn't have the same sort of stats and such, but that's not what most of the old material was about - it wasn't just books of stat blocks - there was so much more there. You can get ideas, background, or just plain old fashioned inspiration.

Sitting down and reading some old, battered pages from the original DMG can lead to all sorts of interesting tangents in my mind.

For that matter, you can get inspiration from non-gaming books and materials as well - history books especially.

Crack open an old 1E book, curl up in your favorite cozy corner and read and see where it takes you. You just can't think of it like a 3.5E module or source book, that you can just plop into a campaign. It is so much more than that...

 

[VirgilCaine]

Sitting down and reading some old, battered pages from the original DMG can lead to all sorts of interesting tangents in my mind.

I have it. It does have some practical material in it. It has some very good examples of what would happen when PCs attack a certain targets.
And mine wasn't battered at all, it was brand new when I got it a few months ago.