Books that proved worth the money spent

[FalcWP]

Amusingly enough, the DMG is way up there on my list... since I never expected to be DMing when I picked it up. Ditto for MM1.

DMG II ended up being even more useful than I expected.

Oh. And the Eberron Campaign Setting. Picked it up 'cause it looked sort of interesting... now its my favorite setting.

 

[Jhaelen]

Another vote for the MIC: I get a lot more use out of it than I initially expected. It quickly replaced my homebrew method of generating random magic items.

I'd also like to mention Weapons of Legacy. Although the mechanics are best ignored, I have incorporated several slightly modified versions of the example items into my campaign with great success and created a new one from scratch.
One of them even became a major focus for the campaign for a couple of adventures.

All in all I got more use out of it than from all of the Complete series.

 

[jdrakeh]

In retrospect, I guess I should nominate the DMG II as it contains a ton of useful information for running socially productive games that DMs who think they know it all (and who don't) could greatly benefit from. Also, the mini-setting of Saltmarsh is a nice inclusion that I anticipate getting much use out of.

 

[Dan Bell]

I am a big fan of HarnWorld material. Having said that, I picked up CGI's non-Harn Lionheart Book and found it very useful for generic ideas and for running a historical game set in england.

 

[Ulric]

World Tree, from Padwolf Publishing. The best-developed world setting I've ever run across.

I just spent the last hour checking this out because of your post. I'd never heard of it.

Wow. Really unique.

Here's a detailed off-site review:

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_6285.html

I think I'll order it.