Bottom 5 D&D and D20 items

[jmucchiello]

no, you wouldn't want to make entire adventures out of moving Lucinda's (the barmaid) bed from the downstairs to the upstairs. done sparingly, however, i think it would work. after all, maybe something the PC's are after was hidden in Lucinda's house.

Actually I would want to do this. This is the kind of thing 10th level characters would argue about whether or not the sorcerer can teleport the bed and the fighter with the gaunlets of ogre power asks if he carry the bed on his own. As a DM, I'd enjoy the scene just for the party trying to get it to done.

Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games

 

[JohnNephew]

We even had a name for it - "Uncommon Commoners".

Just to give folks the heads-up, sometime early next year we'll be releasing "Uncommon Character," a big book o' NPCs (and I'll bet a number of this board's readers actually submitted to it; it's been in development for well more than a year). I haven't seen the final manuscript (Christina Stiles and Spike Jones have been editing it, freelance), so I don't know if it tends more toward the dragon bartender or the hemorrhoidal bartender.

-John Nephew
President, Atlas Games

 

[Dextra]

/me casts Resurrect Thread

i would die for a book of hundreds of npc's, only lightly sprinkled with Adventurer-types. I'm just looking for a book with 10 bartenders, hundreds of patrons, politicians, citizens and the like. each with a few vital combat stats and a one or two paragraph write up. the problem with books like enemies and allies is that they automatically assume you need the kitchen sink with that NPC, and you may not. i'd rather have a book that has more NPC's less fleshed out than one with relatively few NPC's that are fully fleshed out.

Howsabout over 80 archetypes with four statblock NPCs for each?

http://www.dreadgazebo.com/dnd/everyone.html

No need to die, just head on over to RPGNow October 15th, 2002.

 

[chatdemon]

Well, I don't know about the 'worst', but here's my 5 least useful...

First, my 5 least useful books so far are:

Dragon Lords of Melnibone (Chaosium) - Ok, first off, I'm not a big Moorcock fan, but I hear good things about all things Elric all the time, and the book looked good on the store shelf, so I bought it. So far, I've used absolutely nothing from it, not even a token feat, spell, item or monster. Just nothing there I found useful or interesting. It didn't read very well either, and didn't inspire me to go read Moorcock.

Nightmares & Dreams I (Mystic Eye) - Same basic thing here. Not one of the monsters has made an appearance in my game. I've not been able to get my mind around the whole nightmare world/real world concept either, but that's probably just personal taste.

Nightmares & Dreams II (Mystic Eye) - Note: After my opinion of the first book, I didn't buy this one. I won it in one of the ENWorld D&D3E celebrity chat trivia contests). Same thing basically, nothing here that seemed cool or unique enough to drop into my game.

Psionics Handbook (Wizards of the Coast) I'm not sure what exactly I was hoping they would do to psionics in 3e to make them cool, but this book wasn't it. It's sat quietly on my shelf untouched for well over 6 months, noone in my group wants anything to do with it.

Dungeons & Dragons Gazetteer (Wizards of the Coast) This book is absolutely, 100% useless. Even as an LGG lite it fails to capture any of the feel or style of the Greyhawk setting, and IMO is the reason there has been little or no interest in the Greyhawk line outside of Living Greyhawk. IMO, they should have dumped this book, taken Living off the cover of the LGG, and called that the 3e Greyhawk sourcebook. The mistaken assumption some people had that that book would be useless if they didn't play LG killed any real chance the setting had at competing with the more well promoted settings like FR, Scarred Lands, Kalamar, etc.

Now, I must comment on the bad rap the Hero Builder's Guide got. Again, it's just that Wizards marketted it wrong. As a source of ideas and inspiration for newbies, it did well. As a collection of random charts to do a 'quick fleshing out' of an NPC, it did well. As the definitive guide to developing a PC, it bombed. Given what it was actually intended for though, it does well, and I think the criticism it gets is unfounded. Blame the marketting department, not R&D.

 

[Utrecht]

Here is another vote for common commomers. I

One of the things that has always bothered me about my campaigns and the campaigns that I play in is the seeming 2 layers of people in the worlds.

You have the PCs and the major NPC who are sort of taped on top of the unwashed masses who make the world what it is.

In fact, more and more my parties have stated to glom onto any sort of NPC that has any sort fo flavor - and a book like this would give me something to start the mind-a-working.

Further, there are a lot of jobs out there that I just don't know about. For examply, the Inn's stableboy takes care of the horses - but is this really 2 different jobs, 3? unknown. Or lets look at the blacksmith shop - Every blacksmith shop seems to be a 1 person shop - maby 2 if there is an apprentice. Is this the case?

 

[S'mon]

Worst things I've bought

Worst: 'Ragnarok: Tales of the Norse Gods' (Avalanche): worthless, contains almost nothing of any interest. Nice cover though.

2nd worst: The 'D&D Gazetteer': again, totally inadequate, flavourless, contains almost no useful info.

3rd worst: Star Wars d20: bad enough I sold it online for £9.

I have the Slayer's Guides to Hobgoblins & Gnolls & they're ok but nothing to write home about.

Manual of the Planes: Didn't think much of this. Bland.
Psionics Handbook: Haven't read it all, but similar impression.
These two are enough to dissuade me from buying more WotC hardbacks without very good reason.

Creature Collection 2: pretty useless on its own, but once I got CC1 it's a lot more useful. I mostly prefer the CC1 monsters though. The art in both varies from great to appalling.

Good stuff: The PHB (natch), the DMG is pretty fine too.
d20 Call of Cthulu is great.
'Greenland Saga' from Avalanche looks like it'll be a lot of fun to run.
'The Quintessential Fighter': after many hours of work (by me) editing out the crap, it's now a very nice book I enjoy using as a toolkit.

Intermediate:
Slaine d20: great art, not enough info (NPC stats etc are entirely absent, no scenarios either).
Black Flag: Pirates of the Caribbean - nice cover, lots of interesting info, unlikely ever to be used. Also, no scenarios or detailed NPCs.
The Monster Manual: Skip's work is a letdown after Tweet's brillliance in the PHB. CRs seem almost random. Too many classic monsters are missing, and weird silly things present. No encounter tables.
Lost City of Gaxmoor: nice '1e' atmosphere, fits well in my campaign, & nice glossy city map. But editing is appalling, the floorplans have no keys AT ALL - requires a lot of work for the GM. More of a campaign pack than a scenario, really. Good once you work out how to approach it - I settled on PCs as commando team running hit & run missions into the ruins. As a standard 'dungeon crawl' it doesn't logically work - the angry hordes will squelch any party that tries to camp out in the city for any length of time.