Bottom 5 D&D and D20 items
- Thread starter Mortaneus
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ColonelHardisson
What? Me Worry?
Numion said:
A small comfort for those who've got the original..
Or do they automatically give you the new version if you've bought the old?
Sure, just like WotC gave copies of the revised d20 Star Wars to those who bought the original, not even two years before...grrrr...
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I'm sorry that Morrus, Eric & co. don't really like negative posts.
Unfortunately I think that there are some products that are bad enough to fall under the heading of "deceptive advertising".
Two of my biggest offenders:
Dragon Lords of Melnibone -- Ugh. This book in just wretched. Its pretty clearly a cut and paste job from other non-D20 books. References to an unexplained stat called power (used in Chaosium's Elric! game) make it pretty clear the goal was to print something -anything- and get it out as quickly as possible. The writing is poor and riddled with typos and errors. Monsters make the Creature Collection look like like picture perfect exicution of the D20 rules.
Its not just a terrilbe book from an publisher who should have known better but a pretty shameless attempt to make money off one of the classic writers who helped define fantasy (Michael Moorcock).
(this is going to probably irriate people but)
Kingdoms of Kalamar
I really wanted to like this book. I was hunting around for a new setting with a gritter, deeper feel and asked one of my players to get it when he was back home. Ugh.
Despite the juicy contract Kenzer has with WotC this fellow's also pretty clearly a cut and paste job. While I understand that Kenzer started off producing generic products for fantasy play they should have taken their time to produce a better book. I understand they have a loyal fan base but I can't figure out how anyone could have gotten into it from this book. The original Kenzer world apparently had only humans, (perfectly well and good) however Kenzer apparently wanted their D&D world to include them. However the races are never addressed. The book is written largely as if non-human races don't exist but the intro insists they do. They forgot to include domains for their dieties. There -is- a comphrehensive listing of NPCs... though this actually means that there is a name followed by a level with no description of the person.
Lots of textbook style writing with an occasional box with --often incorrect for no discernable reason-- rules.
So buyer beware.
I basically have to agree with two names that have come up a lot on this thread: the Hero Builders Guild & Enemies and Allies.
I'd actually forgotten I owned these two until one of my PCs dug them out of the black hole in my hall closet. I remember saying to myself "maybe they aren't that bad...". Ugh.
I'm glad some people found the HBG useful I really wanted to... I'll keep it around in case I want to help out a starting player but its a lot of money for some sterotypes.
Enemies and Allies is my least favorite sort of "problem book": the kind you need to do a lot of re-writing before its useful. The NPCs are un-inspired and two dimensional. Someone above implied that this was good for begining DMs but I'm not sure how.
Unfortunately I think that there are some products that are bad enough to fall under the heading of "deceptive advertising".
Two of my biggest offenders:
Dragon Lords of Melnibone -- Ugh. This book in just wretched. Its pretty clearly a cut and paste job from other non-D20 books. References to an unexplained stat called power (used in Chaosium's Elric! game) make it pretty clear the goal was to print something -anything- and get it out as quickly as possible. The writing is poor and riddled with typos and errors. Monsters make the Creature Collection look like like picture perfect exicution of the D20 rules.
Its not just a terrilbe book from an publisher who should have known better but a pretty shameless attempt to make money off one of the classic writers who helped define fantasy (Michael Moorcock).
(this is going to probably irriate people but)
Kingdoms of Kalamar
I really wanted to like this book. I was hunting around for a new setting with a gritter, deeper feel and asked one of my players to get it when he was back home. Ugh.
Despite the juicy contract Kenzer has with WotC this fellow's also pretty clearly a cut and paste job. While I understand that Kenzer started off producing generic products for fantasy play they should have taken their time to produce a better book. I understand they have a loyal fan base but I can't figure out how anyone could have gotten into it from this book. The original Kenzer world apparently had only humans, (perfectly well and good) however Kenzer apparently wanted their D&D world to include them. However the races are never addressed. The book is written largely as if non-human races don't exist but the intro insists they do. They forgot to include domains for their dieties. There -is- a comphrehensive listing of NPCs... though this actually means that there is a name followed by a level with no description of the person.
Lots of textbook style writing with an occasional box with --often incorrect for no discernable reason-- rules.
So buyer beware.
I basically have to agree with two names that have come up a lot on this thread: the Hero Builders Guild & Enemies and Allies.
I'd actually forgotten I owned these two until one of my PCs dug them out of the black hole in my hall closet. I remember saying to myself "maybe they aren't that bad...". Ugh.
I'm glad some people found the HBG useful I really wanted to... I'll keep it around in case I want to help out a starting player but its a lot of money for some sterotypes.
Enemies and Allies is my least favorite sort of "problem book": the kind you need to do a lot of re-writing before its useful. The NPCs are un-inspired and two dimensional. Someone above implied that this was good for begining DMs but I'm not sure how.
SteelDraco
First Post
As far as products I regret purchasing... let's see here. Let me say up front that I don't have most of these handy, as I only packed up things that I actually use to my dorm room. Thus, anything I actually thought was bad/useless is now sitting in a milk carton in my closet at home, collecting dust. Therefore, I'm working from memory. That said...
I was disappointed with Evil, mostly due to the poor mechanics contained therein. They didn't mesh well with the rest of the 3e system. I don't have the book on hand to give more detailed criticism, but I do recall that I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth after reading it.
The monster book from Bastion Press didn't strike me as terribly exciting. While there were some neat ideas, the cost was too high for what was delivered. Too much of it was things like "cat-people"; "dog-people", etc. IMO, a monster book should have a distinct flavor to it to make it worth purchasing, such as the Creature Collections from S&SS. Those are interesting just to read, let alone use in-game. Also, I'm still not entirely sure why Bastion insists on running everything full-color on glossy paper. Does that change anyone's buying habits?
As has been mentioned before in this thread, the supers game that was released just after the PHB was really bad. I'm still wondering how Foundation got published, and it destroyed any thoughts in my head about d20 being a good supers system for a long time. Recent stuff has renewed that idea, but still... *shudders*. Doubtless this has something to do with the fact that I was running a supers game at the time that the game was released, and was pumped about the genre. Reading this was like a swift kick in the, well, excitement. It's always worse to get hurt when you're excited. (I'll let you reverse-translate that, since Eric's grandmother might be about.)
I was extremely unimpressed with the Deadlands d20 book. First of all, Deadlands is a very cool system itself. Why convert it? It's like making Amber d20, for cryin' out loud. Sure, you could do it, but what's the point? Second, it demonstrated a very poor grasp of d20 rules. The classes weren't balanced against each other - the gunslinger could kill just about anything, thanks mostly to the very poor feat chapter. The huckster lost all its flavor, and couldn't compete with the other PCs due to the crippling nature of magic. The same is true of the Blessed, though to a lesser degree.
The problem with AEG's Deadlands d20 is exacerbated, however, by the AMAZING COOLNESS of their Rokugan stuff. The Rokugan main book is probably the best d20 product I have purchased to date, which covers quite a lot of ground. Every time I open the thing, I'm shocked by how good a job they did with it. And at the same time, I feel a twinge, knowing that Deadlands d20 could have been just as cool. It's like they just didn't care with Deadlands, which is a shame. It's such an amazingly cool setting, and I'm of the opinion that everyone should be exposed to it. That's right, everyone. You should walk down the street waving a copy of the Deadlands Player's Guide at people. It's your duty as a gamer.
I haven't actually been disappointed by anything from WotC, at least not in the long term. Sword and Fist had some pretty severe problems when it was released, but those have been fixed with errata. And honestly, the ideas were there. That's what counts, to me. I can (and usually do) fiddle with mechanics. That's not what I'm buying when I buy something like a splatbook. I'm buying cool ideas.
Song and Silence left me a bit dry on the idea department. The best chapter of that book (by far) was the feats; I've used most of them by now. I was mostly irritated by the lack of bard stuff, as I had just done quite a bit of work on a bardic prestige class or three, and wanted to see some new ideas about bards from WotC. More stuff about trap-dodging, pocket-picking vanilla rogues didn't interest me. The only section that was really bardic was, IMO, poorly handled. Special rules for bard song based on your instrument? Huh?
Well, that post turned out rather long. Perhaps I'm trying to avoid sleep, knowing that I have the first class of the new semester in the morning? Hm. Warcraft 3's an awfully good game, and I could do some more scripting for Neverwinter Nights tonight. I can already tell it's going to be a long, hard semester...
I was disappointed with Evil, mostly due to the poor mechanics contained therein. They didn't mesh well with the rest of the 3e system. I don't have the book on hand to give more detailed criticism, but I do recall that I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth after reading it.
The monster book from Bastion Press didn't strike me as terribly exciting. While there were some neat ideas, the cost was too high for what was delivered. Too much of it was things like "cat-people"; "dog-people", etc. IMO, a monster book should have a distinct flavor to it to make it worth purchasing, such as the Creature Collections from S&SS. Those are interesting just to read, let alone use in-game. Also, I'm still not entirely sure why Bastion insists on running everything full-color on glossy paper. Does that change anyone's buying habits?
As has been mentioned before in this thread, the supers game that was released just after the PHB was really bad. I'm still wondering how Foundation got published, and it destroyed any thoughts in my head about d20 being a good supers system for a long time. Recent stuff has renewed that idea, but still... *shudders*. Doubtless this has something to do with the fact that I was running a supers game at the time that the game was released, and was pumped about the genre. Reading this was like a swift kick in the, well, excitement. It's always worse to get hurt when you're excited. (I'll let you reverse-translate that, since Eric's grandmother might be about.)
I was extremely unimpressed with the Deadlands d20 book. First of all, Deadlands is a very cool system itself. Why convert it? It's like making Amber d20, for cryin' out loud. Sure, you could do it, but what's the point? Second, it demonstrated a very poor grasp of d20 rules. The classes weren't balanced against each other - the gunslinger could kill just about anything, thanks mostly to the very poor feat chapter. The huckster lost all its flavor, and couldn't compete with the other PCs due to the crippling nature of magic. The same is true of the Blessed, though to a lesser degree.
The problem with AEG's Deadlands d20 is exacerbated, however, by the AMAZING COOLNESS of their Rokugan stuff. The Rokugan main book is probably the best d20 product I have purchased to date, which covers quite a lot of ground. Every time I open the thing, I'm shocked by how good a job they did with it. And at the same time, I feel a twinge, knowing that Deadlands d20 could have been just as cool. It's like they just didn't care with Deadlands, which is a shame. It's such an amazingly cool setting, and I'm of the opinion that everyone should be exposed to it. That's right, everyone. You should walk down the street waving a copy of the Deadlands Player's Guide at people. It's your duty as a gamer.
I haven't actually been disappointed by anything from WotC, at least not in the long term. Sword and Fist had some pretty severe problems when it was released, but those have been fixed with errata. And honestly, the ideas were there. That's what counts, to me. I can (and usually do) fiddle with mechanics. That's not what I'm buying when I buy something like a splatbook. I'm buying cool ideas.
Song and Silence left me a bit dry on the idea department. The best chapter of that book (by far) was the feats; I've used most of them by now. I was mostly irritated by the lack of bard stuff, as I had just done quite a bit of work on a bardic prestige class or three, and wanted to see some new ideas about bards from WotC. More stuff about trap-dodging, pocket-picking vanilla rogues didn't interest me. The only section that was really bardic was, IMO, poorly handled. Special rules for bard song based on your instrument? Huh?
Well, that post turned out rather long. Perhaps I'm trying to avoid sleep, knowing that I have the first class of the new semester in the morning? Hm. Warcraft 3's an awfully good game, and I could do some more scripting for Neverwinter Nights tonight. I can already tell it's going to be a long, hard semester...
Heretic Apostate
First Post
Furn_Darkside said:
Simone. Yummy.
Heretic Apostate
First Post
I think I'll get flamed for this.
I didn't like the Scarred Lands setting. I really wish I hadn't bought the stuff from there. Luckily, it was only the Relics & Rituals and Creature Collection, as well as that Ghelspad thing. (I never read the Mithril: City of the Golem thing that I bought, so I can't judge.)
Mind you, this is a matter of taste, not an absolute condemnation. I'm sure there are things that other people liked. It just didn't suit me.
Me, I preferred things like Kingdoms of Kalamar, Bluffside, Freeport. Stuff I can strip-mine for information. (Near-comatose almost-deities just ain't my style. If I want that, I'll take the Cold Rider from Birthright, or Dregoth from Dark Sun.)
I didn't like the Scarred Lands setting. I really wish I hadn't bought the stuff from there. Luckily, it was only the Relics & Rituals and Creature Collection, as well as that Ghelspad thing. (I never read the Mithril: City of the Golem thing that I bought, so I can't judge.)
Mind you, this is a matter of taste, not an absolute condemnation. I'm sure there are things that other people liked. It just didn't suit me.
Me, I preferred things like Kingdoms of Kalamar, Bluffside, Freeport. Stuff I can strip-mine for information.
(Near-comatose almost-deities just ain't my style. If I want that, I'll take the Cold Rider from Birthright, or Dregoth from Dark Sun.)BURN HIM! BURN THE HERETIC! (heh. sorry. with a name like that...)Heretic Apostate said:
Heretic Apostate said:Me, I preferred things like Kingdoms of Kalamar, Bluffside, Freeport. Stuff I can strip-mine for information.
Seeing as how I did my best to savage KofK I'm curious what did you find in there that you liked?
Other than the Hobgoblin Kingdom (a totally monster dominated kingdom was a long time in coming for D&D, even DL's dragons rulled over humans) I read the book more-or-less cover to cover and except for the bits on individual wizards in each area I was pretty shocked at the lack of interesting material....
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Heretic Apostate
First Post
Grraf said:
Mostly the fluff text. When it came down to it, I collected RPGs for background material. I liked the diverse cultures. I'm sure there were equally diverse cultures in Sword & Sorcery, but the setting didn't appeal to me.
Anyway, it had always been my intention of cobbling together the "perfect" RPG system. I liked a little bit of stuff here, a little bit of stuff there, and so on and so forth. I think I finally narrowed it down to a heavily-modded 3E/d20, borrowing extensively from GURPS and Alternity. But what would I have done with it? It would have been copyright violations to release it. And I didn't have a gaming group to play with. (There are no gaming shops within 30 minutes of here. The comic shop guy who used to sell gaming stuff now only sells Warhammer and Pokemon, in addition to comics.) But, instead of working on the system, I always was buying just a few more items.
[Bear in mind, I had a HUGE collection. One-thousand one-hundred thirty-six items. (Including magazines, of course, though they weren't as big a part as I thought.) I probably spent $20,000 on that collection. I'll probably not get more than $4,000, after everything is auctioned off and the proceeds split.]
Okay, now that's off my chest, I'll have to add Last Days of Constantinople to my list of least-liked items. Just for the record, I am a HUGE Constantinople fan. So I bought this adventure for the information about Constantinople. And they killed off my favorite city. Argh.
Nightfall
Sage of the Scarred Lands
Heretic, don't worry I won't flame you for not liking the setting. I just take a little more offense to things like "Relics and Rituals was overpowered" or "Creature Collection had nothing good in it." Those are the kind of things I dislike. But I would suggest you try Hollowfaust, since it's probably one of those rare cities that few people think about, in my book. I will say you're entitled to like what ever setting you like, I just though the SLCS was a GREAT book and certainly gave a lot of fluff and ideas that weren't present before it came out, ranging from the Epoch of each of the Titans, to the little asides about the Moon, the Calendar and certainly the listing of the gods. But as you said, it was just your taste, and that's fine. I guess I just don't see the same things you do for KoK, which to me isn't a great setting but has it strong points in low magic and aristocratic system. Still not something I want for my game or suits my tastes. But that's like you said, to each his own.
Numion, tell you what I'll buy you copy so you don't have to pay for the new one.
Numion, tell you what I'll buy you copy so you don't have to pay for the new one.
Heretic Apostate
First Post
Nightfall: Not much point in me buying Hollowfaust. I don't have an RPG collection any more. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It's all on the auction block, more or less. I couldn't afford to keep buying supplements at the rate I was going, and I couldn't stop myself from buying. So I am selling off my collection. (Or, rather, ThomasBJJ is selling it off for me.) So far, 101 out of 1136 items have been sold. (Not doing TOO shabbily, since we're getting about $6.85 per item.... Haven't sold any of the REALLY rare stuff yet, aside from a few BattleTech Technical Readouts.)
I figure, in a few years when I have the money and am not so totally addicted, I might start collecting again. At that time, I should hopefully be able to pick-and-choose, rather than trying to buy everything. And, hopefully, by then WOTC will be putting out revised books without all the errata.
I figure, in a few years when I have the money and am not so totally addicted, I might start collecting again. At that time, I should hopefully be able to pick-and-choose, rather than trying to buy everything. And, hopefully, by then WOTC will be putting out revised books without all the errata.
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