Best RPG Books to Read

[Ryltar]

Faces of Evil: The Fiends, Uncaged: Faces of Sigil and the Hellbound: The Blood War Boxed Set.

All others are pale imitations of the real thing .

As for 3e+, good reads include Beyond Countless Doorways, the Midnight and Oathbound CS's, as well as the Dark Legacies guide.

 

[Banshee16]

Just about anything from the Planescape line....though my personal favourites include The Factions Manifesto, Dead Gods, Faces of Sigil, and In the Cage.

I've actually found some of the Eberron stuff, such as the campaign setting, fun to read.

Also, the Midnight books, and the Iron Kingdom books.

Forgotten Realms, which I've been collecting for the first time in 3E, for some reason has been putting me to sleep, though it has high production values.

I've been reading through Van Richten's Guide to the Shadow Fey as well, which has great fluff, and I found was a very fun read.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

Faces of Evil: The Fiends, Uncaged: Faces of Sigil and the Hellbound: The Blood War Boxed Set.

All others are pale imitations of the real thing .

As for 3e+, good reads include Beyond Countless Doorways, the Midnight and Oathbound CS's, as well as the Dark Legacies guide.

Faces of Evil: The Fiends...I forgot that one in my list. The Planescape stuff has just been great to read.

Banshee

 

[Sledge]

From Classic BattleTech FedCom Civil War.

 

[BastionPress_Creech]

I really like reading the Warcraft RPG line of books. They are quite flavorful.

 

[DaveMage]

Another vote for the Planescape books.

Also, I love reading G1-2-3 Against the Giants, and D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth.

 

[twofalls]

And yet another vote for Planescape. The Midnight books and the Fantasy Flight Legends and Lairs books are enjoyable, the entire Scarred Lands line is filled with wonderful text descriptions and character flavor, The Worlds Largest Dungeon is filled with fun ideas, Shadowrun books are fun to read, but the rules bloat has killed the game for me in terms of playing it. I love Gamma World, Darwins World, Alternity, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Darksun, and Paranoia... MERP is interesting as well as Warhammer and the Draconomicron. Oh good gods, I have thousands of books. I just enjoy reading game books...

 

[Loghar]

Any of the Dungeon Crawl Classics modules.

I can't help but love anything that tells you not to play poker if you can't keep a straight face after reading a room description.

 

[Odhanan]

Most of the RuneQuest background is a pure pleasure to read and read again, particularly the mythological stuff.

The Cthulhu campaign The Masks of Nyarlathotep is one of the best RPG campaigns ever, great as a read and an actual game.

Most of the Star Wars d20 books are great to read as well (particularly Geonosis, Coruscant, Ultimate Aliens Anthology). I love Cthulhu d20 as well: a beautiful book to look at.

For D&D 3+, I like to read the Greyhawk Gazetteer, Forgotten Realms CS, Arcana Evolved, Eberron stuff.

 

[Teflon Billy]

• Demon: The Fallen--Best Fluff I've ever come aross (and froma company that prides itself on it's fluff)
  
  
• Shadowrun: Corporate Shadowfiles--One of the best by the late, lamented Nigel D. Findley
  
  
• Ex Machina--The settings really get the mind going without becoming academic or preachy.
  
  
• X Crawl--Wonderful Alt.history of Earth, as viewed through the lens of stock D&D. Vastly underrated work.
  
  
• World of Synnibarr--best read while listening to This is Me in Grade Nine by the Barenaked Ladies