buying advice needed

[bret]

Since you are going to be flooded with D20 suggestions, I figured I would go for other areas.


The Feng Shui rulebook has some excellent GMing advice about playing without maps and encouraging people to use the setting.

GURPS world books tend to have a lot of good historic and mythic information. If there is a history or mythic period you want to emulate, check for a GURPS book covering it. Things like Low Tech (for what historically was possible at various periods), Egypt, Russia, Swashbucklers, or Places of Mystery can help generate ideas for the campaign environment.

The Men At Arms series of books (Osprey Military) show various armours and uniforms. Nice if you want pictures of various period warriors.

HarnWorld has some nice material in their Pilot's Almanac for a sea faring campaign. Their Castle's book isn't quite as generic, but could still be useful.

Some books on tactics, so you can improve NPC strategies, can be a great aid. This depends on how well versed you already are in these matters.


What subject matter are you the most interested in? That would help a lot of people give you better answers.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

You don't really need anything. Save your money and spend it on beer & party mates.

THat'd work... If I were 8 years older. I'm thinking about getting Forgotten Realms after reading my friend's little brother's Monsters of Faerunn book. The monsters were okay, but they mentioned some stuff in the in the realms part that I thought would be cool to look into. SUn elves, harpers, Red Wizards and Bane off the top of my head (of course these may not exist, it was a while ago that I returned the book). The problem with forgotten realms is that it would take me a while to save up that much money.
I'm also interested in the manual of planes because it sounds like it would be a useful item to have. The same goes for the Psionics handbook. Mostly I'm interested in the hard cover books but not so much in a book that only has new monsters to throw at my players.
As for a budget, I don't really have any money at the moment, but I plan on starting to save once I get some (which could be whenever when you're too young to get a job)