Blandest d20 Product?

[reanjr]

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, for sure.

Magical Medieval Society was pretty bland, though informative. I could not stay awake for more than a chapter at a time.

Arms and Equipment Guide (2e version was interesting...)

All WotC Monster books to date (MMI, MMII, FF, and MoF)

Deities and Demigods (though this might be due to a subconscious comparison to On Hollowed Ground, which this books is so far outclassed by that it hasn't even heard an old legend about its predecessor)

 

[Sir Elton]

Is not.

Mystery Man has revealed that this thread is Subjective. What's bland to you may not be bland to him, or another person.

 

[Cavalorn]

#6 - Slaine. A work with some good flavor completely overwhelmed by a sick preoccupation with blood sacrifice. Too bad, the adventures would probably have been fun to run; but I just couldn't have the players in a race for victims. Really sets the hobby back.

The blood sacrifice in Slaine is completely derived from the source material. It has nothing to do with any 'sick preoccupation' on the creator's part. I'm guessing you've never read any of the comics that the game was based on.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Gonna put in another vote for the Hero Builder's Guidebook. It's more of an "Idiot's Guide to Roleplaying Backgrounds" than anything.

Obviously you have never played any RTG games (Cyberpunk 2020, Mekton) which have lifepath generators similar to the inent of the stuff in the Hero Builder's Guidebook.

My group of old school veterans had some fun with the lifepath stuff in HBG for a while; it was entertaining because you could have fun working otu what you rolled in creative ways that may not have come to mind with simply writing your own background; but the bottom line is that it provided some entertainment. The book was largely designed for new players, though, so I'd hardly pan it just for being about the basics. I still have a copy, and unlike most all of my old 3.0 books, still keep it around for the next time I have a green player in the group, or some old grognards who wan't to randomize their characters' lives.

Most horrifyingly blah book for me: the entire Fast Forward Entertainment lineup, pure dreck from the get go; any gems are sadly hidden in the great wave of useless, boring, poorly-written nonsense. Runner up is the entire Mongoose product line until about a year and a half ago, when they suddenly started getting better. All those Slayer's Guides never made me not want to slay so much. The Ships of the Sea series, good god. The Gladiator and Crusaders books, yawn.

 

[pfisteria]

Lately, I'm afraid I find just about all RPG books equally bland.

 

[Halivar]

Hero-Builders Guide was very useful for me. I only use the part for character path generation. I find that it helps stir my creative juices (or maybe it's just water on the brain, who knows?) when I'm building a new character.

Book of Exalted Deeds is +|-|3 r0x0|2z, d00dz! Aside from the silly poisons, I love the feats and use them regularly, and I find most of the prestige classes intriguing and potentially useful. I don't use most o the stuff in the back, but the spell list was pretty cool, too.

Most dull? After buying Unearthed Arcana (the most used non-core book I have so far), I had gotten the silly notion in my head that WotC could do no wrong. A new golden era of D&D had dawned, and I was prepared to buy everything they put out. My next purchase was the Planar Handbook. I spent $30 on a book I'll probably never open again.

Thankfully, WotC redeemed themselves with my purchase of the Expanded Psionics Handbook (Yay! Psionics don't suck anymore!).

My vote: Planar Handbook

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hero Builder's Guide, oh yes indeedy!

Gary Gygax's World Builder - for all those folks who missed the tables I never used out of the 1st edition DMG...

The Auld Grump, who disagrees with some other folk's choices, so feel free to disagree with mine...

*EDIT* And, while I love the book the section on the creation of Mechanika in the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide is complicated enough to be more than a bit dull... now if only I didn't like it...

*EDIT2* Keybounce... bah!

 

[Fimmtiu]

I vote for pretty much all the books that WOTC kept cranking out once they'd run dry of ideas. The Complete Whatevers... expensive hardcover reprints of their softcover books. Arms and Equipment Guide, the 160-page shopping list. And I'd have to mention the Planar Handbook, just because it's drier than a phone book compared to the juicy Planescape material that preceded it.

I was just reading over the ELH the other night, actually, and was surprised by how bad it was. Still, I don't think I'd call it "bland"... misguided and hideously maimed, but not boring.

Most of the (admittedly few) third-party books I've read have been quite unbland. I thought Gamma World d20, for instance, was an amazing book. It did a good job of getting the setting across without setting up a "canon", and the community rules were particularly innovative and well-suited to the world. The Magical Medieval Society book had a lot of dry bits, but the city-building section and the economic system were noteworthy enough to keep it off my "blandest" list. Sword & Sorcery's Advanced Player's Guide, on the other hand, was as stale as a week-old Wonder Bread crust. God, what a disorganized pile of ill-thought-out rule-manglings.

 

[rounser]

IMO, the FRCS was the all-time high water mark of D&D publishing, and it's all been downhill from there... :\