What is your favorite RPG book of all time?

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Big fan of books that inspire adventure. So... Nobilis rulebook. 2nd edition. It oozes creativity in just the right way.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Big Blue was Champions:View attachment 350472
the non-Champions HSR4 core was this:
View attachment 350471
And about half the thickness.

The Little Yellow Book was good too, and my copy of it outsurvived my BBB (because the binding of the latter was kind of dodgy). Its possible I still have my physical copy somewhere.

Edit: And of course you're technically correct in the distinction, but pretty much everything in the LYB was in the BBB too.

 

[Eric V]

ONE favourite? Yikes.

I will say that, for all the problems/contradictions/craziness it had...I really liked the swing they took with the 3e Epic-Level Handbook.

 

[Professor Murder]

Gotta get your chainmail bikini from somewhere!

 

[Lanefan]

Another vote here for the 1e DMG.

Often imitated, never surpassed...not even close.

 

[TheSword]

I will say the original 1e WFRP.

It was a full system, with everything you needed to play. So different in feel and tone to D&D. It had some beautiful location maps that I still use today. And the brilliant starting adventure The Oldenhaller Contract, which is the standard by which I measure starter adventures… updated for every edition since.

Other honorouble mentions go to the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting; 2e The Night Below; 3e Lords of Madness; 5e Curse of Strahd; Dark Heresy: Disciples of the Dark Gods; and the entire WFRP 4e Enemy Within Adventure.

 

[Celebrim]

It can be a core rule book, an adventure, a setting guide, a splat book, or even a tie in novel or comic book. What book directly related to TTRPGs is your favorite of all time.

You can use whatever definition of favorite you want, and of course your criteria are your own, but let us know the details!

I am going to pick Aaron Allston's Strike Force. That book was not just fun to read and about/a supplement for a game I love (Champions) it literally opened my mind about what a RPG campaign could be. I love that book so much I refused to buy the update because I didn't want to mar my memories or experience with a bunch of after-the-fact essays and such. (One day I will probably pick it up, tho.)

My favorite RPG book of all time is the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.

The book that I would have been most proud to have written myself is Green Ronin's "The Book of the Righteous" by Aaron Loeb.

There are a lot of things that deserve honorable mention and would win diverse best of awards if this was a hall of fame awards show, including the early works by Tracy Hickman like I3 Pyramid, I6 Ravenloft, and DL1 Dragons of Flame. And of course, the novels that came out of that "Chronicles of the Dragonlance" as the best RPG tie in of all time. Green Ronin's "Shaman's Handbook" by Steve Kenson is one of the most perfect rules expansions ever written and like many of Green Ronin's works in the 3e era, is an example of the sort of thing WotC should have been publishing rather than what they did publish. "Hot Pursuit: The Definitive D20 Guide to Chases" by Cory Reid may have been the most revolutionary texts I've ever encountered in changing how I saw the art of running a good RPG and crafting a good RPG ruleset. Mongoose's Traveller 2e core rulebook, the "Two Headed Serpent" campaign for Pulp Cthulhu, pretty much every CoC edition core rule book ever published for being the same compatible game system but slightly better than the one before it. The Star Wars D6 core books (1e & 2e) for capturing the feel of another IP so well that they actually became the first setting bible of the IP. The original White Wolf VtM core rulebook for being the most fever dream of a rules set since 1e AD&D with evocative microfiction and novel ideas about what it meant to be an RPG, it could have ranked a lot higher if the game it created wasn't a hot mess. 5e D&D's "Beyond the Witchlight" campaign for actually being really good novel content in an IP that otherwise seems to have gone 25 years without a truly original idea. The original Ravenloft setting boxed set. The original Planescape setting boxed set, and of course the best thing that came out of that the cRPG "Planescape: Torment". The Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. Gamers 2: Dorkness rising. Knights of the Dinner Table. Order of the Stick web comic. Seth Seth Skorkowsky's podcasts about how to run CoC.

 

[Bluenose]

Well, they are bound into a single volume now, but I think at least one of those boxed sets would qualify as a single product. I'd pick Pavis over Big Rubble for The Cradle scenario.

The Pavis and Big Rubble boxed sets are both good, but I'd personally pick Trollpak over either. But if there was only one Runequest product I could pick it'd be Shadows on the Borderlands, which I don't think has been matched as a collection of adventures.


And this is a really hard question to answer and my answer might be different next week and almost certainly would be next year, but I'm going to go with DGP's excellent World Builders' Handbook for MegaTraveller. Quite outdated by modern scientific understanding now, but worlds aren't just about hard physical data and the rest is just as good as it was 40 years ago.

 

[ichabod]

1e Deities & Demigods. Yeah, the 1e DMG is up there, but this is the one that really captivated my attention when I was a kid.

 

[Cadence]

1e Deities & Demigods. Yeah, the 1e DMG is up there, but this is the one that really captivated my attention when I was a kid.

I finally got my own copy (with Cthulhu and Elric) just a few years ago