Best RPG Book you've never used

[kitoy]

GURPs Discworld - An absolutely wonderful book with beautiful drawings and a pretty interesting conversion of Terry Pratchett's books into an RPG. Unfortunately, I don't play GURPs, I mostly bought it because I'm an insane Discworld fanatic and will buy anything with the words Discworld or Terry Pratchett on them.

 

[pogre]

Ralph Bakshi's Wizards,
I have never managed to convince anyone to play.

Holy Cow - there's a blast from the past - somebody has got to tell K. Whitman!

 

[Sir Whiskers]

Non-DnD: A tie between Stargate SG-1 and Mutants and Masterminds.

DnD: Forgotten Realms Campaign Sourcebook

 

[Ace]

Buffy RPG (I'm scared of doing it wrong*) and Call of Cthulu d20. Games I bought & I'm not sure I want to run include Slaine d20 and Traveller d20.

*I don't think I've ever felt this way about any other game. I'm planning to start a Conan game soon and I have no worries about mucking it up. The Buffy RPG is a beautifully crafted work of art but it has a really heavy emphasis on the TV-show format. The Drama Points seem much more central to task resolution, almost oppressively so, but I can't get rid of them without probably turning it into Buffy-Cthulu (everyone dies).

-- Buffy is one of the easiest games to run you can imagine -- The DP system is just there to allow characters to be "cool" and avoid the "whiff" factor -- Don't be intimidated -- just watch some Buffy and go crazy --

Dramap Points are for heroic stuff -- Otherwise any moderatly difficult task (DC15 in 3e) requires a 9-- Your average compotent guy (with a 3 skill and stat) needs a 3-- IE he can do it 70% of the time. This maps to D&D skill of 9--

Everything else is setting the odds and go with the flow. Just remember two things #1 generous in replacing spent Drama Points as there is no Healing magic
#2 Hero points are too allow players to decide when they will suceed or to take on incredible odds-- its less about dice and GM control but about story and player control

No more on topic-- Best game book I didn't run-- GURPS Traveller -- very cool but I can't run anything that complex. That or Wheel of Time-- trey cool but a hard sell with my Samurai and L5R obsessed group

 

[Azul]

d20 Product

Probably the Wheel of Time RPG, since I've gotten at least some use from just about everything else I've ever bought (even if it was just a new domain, feat or monster). I use a lot of different source material but somehow I've never used the Wheel of Time stuff.

non-d20 Product

Blue Planet (1st edition, I think) RPG. Really cool setting but I just didn't like the mechanics and couldn't quite get a feel for how to run a game in that setting. Almost all my other RPGs got at least a playtesting session, except Mutant Chronicles (which looked fun when I saw it at GenCon but didn't really keep my interest). I still find Blue Planet to have cool ideas but yet it sits on my shelf collecting dust.

 

[Wormwood]

Buffy the RPG.

While Unisystem Cinematic/Lite is easily my favorite system ever, I loathe all things Buffy.

I ripped the system straight out of the book for use in my own homebrews---but I'll never, ever play Buffy.

 

[Henry]

I'm kind of jealous because it seems like a lot of people actually use the books they buy. I just kind of read them for fun.

If it weren't for the North Carolina Gamedays, I'd have never gotten a chance to run several game systems. As it is, my group is open for me using them as playtesters for whatever I run at Gamedays, so as a result we've tried at least three systems we would have never decided to use. As a result, my group became more open to other games besides D&D!

Moral: DM at local gamedays, they'll quickly cut down on that list of things you've always meant to play.

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Oriental Adventures. I bought it in my "gotta have them all" book-buying phase and have never used it. I find it beautiful and wonderful, and I would greatly desire to play a game with it, but there's really been no time/opportunity/desire to.

AEG's Dragons. Read it once about two years ago and really haven't touched it since. Interesting book with tons of flavor and many, many plot seeds, but none have ever come to fruition.

 

[NiTessine]

Spycraft. I should've checked whether the players want to play a spy game before buying it...

 

[Shadowdancer]

Xcrawl. I'll figure out a way to use it someday, I swear. Or rather, I've figured out ways to use it, now I just have to find a way to subtly nudge the players in that direction.