• The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!

What RPG books/manuals do you really regret buying?

tetsujin28

First Post
Victoriana: so wretched, it's only the second rpg I returned the next day. The first being...
Hunter: the Reckoning. Absolutely awful. Easily the worst game White Wolf ever made.
Exalted: Most of the line. You can play a great game with just the core book. The others just started creating an extremely (to me) boring world.

That's it, really. I've used the rest of my collection.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

jshelky

First Post
I have to say that anything published by Fast Forward proved to be a waste. The sheer amount of time spent double checking stats took the coolness right out of the product.
 

Turanil

First Post
Pramas said:
Yeah, that book had so much promise. As a big Elric fan, I offered to help Chaosium out on the mechanics side of things, but they did not take me up on that...
What?! Chris pramas of Green Ronin Publishing offers Chaosium to help them on a project and they reject the offer? My low opinion of Chaosium has lowered again.

Myself had great expectation for Dragonlords of Melnibone and was much disappointed by this book. Game mechanics are worthless, and info on the world are minimal. Better get the original game and convert it using Grim Tales or something like that. However, the bright people at Chaosium only sell these games in DRM not watermark when it comes to PDFs. I guess that they are all bored of their publishing company and want it to go to bankrupt quickly.
 

diaglo

Adventurer
pogre said:
Hero Builder's Guidebook - The only purchase I out and out regretted. Fortunately, it was early and heavily curbed my later d20 spending.


my review of which along with the Stronghold Builder's Guide and Book of Challenges was removed.
 

reanjr

First Post
Turjan said:
Savage Species. This one was nearly as fast obsolete as it was published.
Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. Even WotC did not deem it worth the use of a spell checker.

Ooh, those are good ones. I kind of blocked their purchase from my memory.
 

Narfellus

First Post
H. I always kinda liked Savage Species, although i admit i haven't used it much. OR Arms & Equip Guide. That was just awful. Bad bad bad. And Dragonlords was mailed back as well, but i think Amazon has screwed me plenty of times on refunds.
 

Tetsubo

First Post
lior_shapira said:
Oathbound. Looked promising but I didn't connect to it and the artwork annoys me to no end... it just sits there on the shelf, glaring at me.

A couple of the races are neat but the rest of the book wasn't. The artwork was very poor for the most part. I did like the squid-thing illo though. Luckily I only paid $15 for my copy.
 

Brian Compton

First Post
Things I regret come not so much from them being bad purchases, but because I have barely or never used them for anything worth the money spent. Back in the days when I had money (and no girlfriend/wife) I bought a lot. Leading to quite a few regrets...

1) RIFTS series by Palladium (I don't own all the books, but quite a few). I played this a few times in high school, liked it, but could never get anyone else to play. I still have them because I like the story, but would readily chuck them if I needed money.

2) 3.0 WotC Splatbooks. I think I've used one feat from Sword and Fist (Monkey Grip), haven't used any of them since. Especially since the Complete series came out.

3) DM-related books (Deities and Demigods, Manual of the Planes, Stronghold Builder's Guide, BoVD). I don't DM enough to make use of them. The one time I recently tried, I was going to use the Greek Pantheon, and so would have used the information on cleric domains and godly fluff, but the crunchy stuff would have never come into it. The other three I just liked and bought to be a completist. Again, would sell them in a heartbeat except for Deities.

4) Mongoose "Quintisential" series. I have a few of these, mostly inspired by my fondness for the old 2e class handbooks from TSR, but again have used one feat (Light Arcane Armor from the Wizard's book). Probably will sell most of these now that 3.5 renders them obsolete and my group would never use them.

5) The first 3.0 Kalamar Book (I think it was called Player's Guide). A little misleading, as I thought it was going to deal more with playing in the world rather than describing the world. Never bought another one of these, but now my group may be playing in this world soon so I'll either keep it or sell it to my DM for cheap.

6) Hackmaster PHB. Again, I liked it, but I bought it mostly because I'm a Knights of the Dinner Table fan and not because I thought I'd play it. Might sell this too. Still, all love to KenzerCo.

7) Savage Species- nice idea, but way too complicated to deal with in play. I think I sold it... it's been so long.

8) Psionics Handbook- I never liked 2e psionics, because it seemed more suited to people who like number crunching rather than playing. I tried out the 3e book, but a lot of it just didn't make any sense to me after multiple read-throughs. Sold it, never got the new book, never will. Nobody in my group uses it, anyway.

9) Fluid's E-Tools. By far the crappiest piece of software I've ever owned. Very slow, lots of errors, hard to use. Code Monkey did a very good job overhauling it, and I would recommend their version except that they're coming out with something new in the near future that will combine E-Tools with other material.

As for some others mentioned already, I like BoED. I used it to great effect recently playing a paladin in the World's Largest Dungeon, and would have used more of it if my character had survived longer. Unfortunately, his death came partially from the restrictions of being an exalted character, so I quickly dropped using it for any other characters in WLD. Also, my group likes the Player's Guide to Faerun. Our DM especially thinks it balanced out some of the feats (like Spellcasting Prodigy). But I understand, gustum non disputandum est (taste can't be disputed).
 
Last edited:

Tyler Do'Urden

Soap Maker
Why the hat for the Book of Exalted Deeds? That's one of my favorites... haven't used it much yet, but it has loads of fodder for my next Planescape campaign... same goes for Savage Species...
 


Voidrunner's Codex

Remove ads

Top