To be honest, I
prefer WotC's crunch-heavy books. I've got basically no interest in using someone else's fluff (although it sure as hell can be fun to read). That said, there are a hell of a lot of great suggestions, here.
Charwoman Gene said:
Cultures
A sourcebook detailing a series of non-bordering countries in the default setting, each of which would be rich in world detail and mood, and easily rippable to home games.
Damn, you beat me to that one. I'd really like to see a book explaining that races other than humans can have different cultures (without having to get into the whole "subrace" bit). It might even be especially cool if the cultures offered were (to whatever degree is possible) race-independent: "In your campaign, the Red Scar Nomads might be hobgoblins as we present them here, but here's what might change if you used them as halflings, instead..."
(Damn, now I'm actually thinking about a nation of desert-dwelling hobgoblins the work kind of like D&D tusken raiders, with a little bit of fremen thrown in. They could wear full-body outfits of alchemical, moisture-retaining bandages and masks, manufacture weird and powerful drugs, and ride around on big, shaggy, non-sentient, quadrupedal devolved bugbears.)
Shawn Kehoe said:
Heroes of Intrigue / Mystery Mysteries become really hard to run in D&D once the party gets decent divination magic. This book explores how to maintain the pacing of a mystery story, both by preventing early reveals and getting the game on-track if the PCs miss vital clues. Let that Nard fella worry about the Prestige Classes and feats.
Magic and You: Explores the logical ramifications of magic on the various aspects of society: trade, serfs, nobility, etc. If the local noble has pre-paid for a resurrection spell, what is the alternative to assassination? What kinds of laws governing would be commonly adopted in hamlets, cities etc? Since each campaign is different, this book would be general in nature, offering guidelines and suggestions.
Yeah, both of these are basically vital, in my opinion, particularly the latter one. It could present three or four basic magic level paradigms (say, low magic, "D&D standard" magic, beyond-Eberron high magic, and possibly some variant scenario where it's just divine magic or psionics or something), and sketch out just how basic things like survival, medicine, commerce, entertainment, justice, warfare, and education would be affected. Also, it'd be worth bringing up the results of magical inequalities: Just because one society in a campaign setting is "high magic", don't mean their neighbors are.
pawsplay said:
Allegiances - The book of alignments. Describes alignments with concrete examples, flexible interpretations, discussion of the Paladin code, alternate rules along the lines of BoED/BoVD, non-alignment D&D, and some meat on creatures of the Outer Planes with less emphasis on the "Blood War" and such.
I'd buy that for the non-alignment section alone. Also, it'd be great to have some alternate alignment systems offered. I'd love to see a D&D version of the various character-advancement-for-following-character's-personality-quirks-and-goals mechanic that's gaining popularity today.
pawsplay said:
Complete Noble - Fiefdoms, rulership, taxes, and aristoractic heroism.
This is pretty necessary, yeah. I think it'd be more like "Heroes of Nobility" or "Heroes of Power", though. It's closer to being a genre/situation book than a class book.
Yair said:
Nightmare & Dream: A setting-neutral book providing DMs with an evil organization invading reality from the plane of dreams. The book details the dreamlands, how the Shadow (?) corrupted them, and mechanics to allow the DM to insert the threat into his world. Ties are made with similar organizations in existing settings [especially those Eberron dudes, forgot their name], bringing the "reveal" that these are fronts and entry-ways for the greater Shadow threat. The goal is to create a piece of setting that can be shared across settings and so reduce fragmentation, and hopefully to create enemies as evocative as the Mind Flayers and their likes.
You stole that right out of my brain. I really dig the idea of a Lovecraft-tyle "Dreamlands" mini-setting that can be added to an existing world. Just, for the love of God, no "when you die in the Dream, you die for real" stuff, or physical gateways into the dreamworld. D&D's Astral Plane has already been rendered meaningless by stuff like that.
Olgar Shiverstone said:
Bark, Squak, and Growl -- a complete guide to pets, familiars, animal companions, and beasts of burden. This is probably 50% crunch, so I'll share credit with Greg again.
This sounds damned worthwhile. Given the number of D&D core classes that get some kind of pet as a class feature, we need a few feats or alternate rules to make them less of a freaking burden. Also, we need new animals and animal-equivalents to use in these roles (including things like constructs, outsiders, and even undead). And this would be useful for more than just full-time pets: Remeber that all those summoning spells could get a lot of mileage out of this book, too.
humble minion said:
Mightier than the Sword - a book entirely devoted to non-combat adventures and activities. Improved systems for social skills and knowledges, rules for libraries and research, ways and means to run mystery/investigation/political plots. Resources on building political support, running intrigue, recruiting followers/henchmen/employees, governing a city/town/kingdom, promoting a religion, operating a spy ring or a thieve's guild, handling magic used in a non-combat situation for civic improvements and the like (wall of stone, continual flame, etc). Do it all without any mention of an attack roll - Cityscape covered city-based *combat* perfectly well.
I would really dig that.
BiggusGeekus said:
The Positive Material Plane - why? Because of the constant healing. This would be a challenge. The meta-concept is to migrate core D&D from a per-day game to a per-encounter game. Because this book is going to take place on or near an endless fountain of life, people get their spells back faster, are always slowly regenerating hit points, and spells like raise dead are easier to cast. You can still die at 0 or -10 or whatever, but while alive there is less "downtime". The setting in this case would serve to support the game mechanics. This would also act as a bridge product between the PnP RPG crowd and the MMORPG crowd. But the flavor text would be absolutely crucial because you have to show the PnP guys that you aren't selling out to the computer gamers. To be honest, I think a book like this would either be a hit or a bomb.
Oh, now that is a deeply bizarre idea. I can't imagine it'd ever happen, but I do think it could actually work, and I'd really love to see the art for such a setting. The civilizations that would develop in such a work (and, for that matter, the environments themselves) should be extremely interesting.
Furthermore, I've got to echo the calls for
Heroes of Intrigue (which, in my mind, could cover mysteries, general non-combat challenges and adventure ideas, and
also some PCs-as-political-or-aristocratic-powers material), and monster books on constructs, fey, and savage humanoids. A constructs book would be especially great, and I'm shocked more people haven't asked for it. The possibilities for new construct-making rules, intelligent constructs, magical cyborgs, etc. are absolutely huge (lots of useful stuff for Eberron fans, especially).
Also, I think it's downright criminal that we still haven't seen a book devoted to the Far Realms, in spite of the increasing frequency of references to that concept. Such a book would be a goldmine of both crunch and fluff possibilities, detailing not just the environs of the Far Realms themselves, but the impact they have on the Prime Material in terms of invasions, cults, leakages of weird mutagens, etc.
Another thing I've been dying for is a dedicated alchemy book. We could really use an Alchemist base class, and a large catalog of new craftable alchemical items. It'd also be nice to get some new, more in-depth alchemy rules, possibly involving the procurement of specific ingrediants rather than just flat GP expenditures. It'd also be nice to throw in some special materials and alchemical treatments for mundane items. I'd like to see some rules for alchemical potion-making, too; while the Brew Potion feat is the domain of spellcasters, it's definitely the sort of thing most people picture alchemists doing. Furthermore, the book could include information on exotic substances (monster parts, rare minerals and plants, etc.) that can be used in alchemy, as spell components, in magic item creation, and so on (note that a lot of MMORPG players are used to the idea of having to collect specific materials in order to craft items or cast certain spells).
I might even go so far as to say we could really use a book just on crafting in general, which would detail things like artisans' guilds and setting up a shop to run in between adventures (hey, the Fighter's gotta do
something while the Wizard is off scribing all his new spells), as well as offering more in-depth crafting rules. In addition to the possibilities of specific raw materials that I mentioned above, there's definitely a lot more that could be done for a "masterwork" item than a simple +1 bonus. The Black Company campaign setting did some nice work in this regard, but it's definitely something that can be taken farther. I think one thing that the success of MMORPGs has shown is that
people dig crafting, even the kids who are more interested in whacking skeletons than roleplaying.
The last suggestion I've got is a series of single-book campaign settings, each one under the direction of a single imaginative, appealing, and extremely distinctive artist. I'm talking about folks like
Brom,
Mike Mignola,
Keith Thompson,
Wayne Douglas Barlowe,
Guy Davis,
Alex Sheikman,
Wayne Reynolds, or any of a hundred young geniuses from
deviantART and
ConceptArt.org. A single, focused, blazingly awesome artistic vision and a storm of weird, visually-exciting ideas, harnessed by WotC staff writing and editing. We're all creative people, and WotC has given us loads of raw material to work with. Who needs a setting with "support"? I think there's a lot of possibility in just giving people a
spark.
