Gary Gygax's World Builder. Well, right off the bat, those are two fairly weighty things to be. First, the book is by Gary Gygax, and that in itself brings a lot of history (some might say baggage) to any book. Love him or hate him, no one should be under any illusions - this is definitely a Gary Gygax book. To me, that's a good thing, but opinions vary.
Second, the book is called "World Builder". There is perhaps no more ambitious project that a DM can undertake than world building, so a book that purports to assist in that is a book labouring under some heavy expectations. The title is actually something I have trouble with, but more on that later.
Before elaborating on the parts of the book, let me answer right off the basic question here. Should you buy this book? My (admittedly weasel-laden) answer is Yes, IF it is what you are looking for. The IF is important. I really like this book, but I understand why some others do not. It fulfills a very specific niche in the world of game resources, and if you buy it expecting something else you may not be happy. I got a review copy of the book, but I would happily pay full price for the infomation it contains.
OVERVIEW
The book looks great. Its nicely bound and has a very colourful cover with a clever (given the content of the book) puzzle-like appearance. It runs 176 pages and is pretty much packed with information. The book has a lot of drawings of items but little in the way of "art". This is just fine with me, but some may note the absence.
There is an interesting one page discussion of money and coinage and relative values between fantasy games and reality. Given the generally unrealistic economies of most RPGs, I found this page interesting. Many readers will likely just breeze past it, but if you are building a world I think it behooves you to think a little about topics like how much coinage there is in circulation and what exactly you mean by a gold piece.
Before looking at each of the three books within World Builder, let us be clear about what the book is and isn't. It isn't a guide to making worlds. Despite the title (hence my earlier quibble with it), you will not find anything in this book which will instruct you in the art of world building. Unlike TSR's venerable Worldbuilders Guidebook, this book does not take you through the worldbuilding process. I hasten to add that it does NOT claim to do so either. This is what I mean by saying that you should understand what this book is about before you buy it.
What the book is, on the other hand, is a frankly invaluable trove of information about fantasy settings that can add detail and depth to any worldbuilding venture. I have played and DMed games for over 20 years, including various home-brewed settings, and I found that I learned a lot from the book from even my first casual read-through. Was it rocket science? Did I experience an epiphany that will propel me to new heights as a DM? No. But I did stop often while flipping through the book to say to myself "Hey, that would make a great feature in my next adventure." The book is a great tool for adding detail to a room, a setting, a character, or an item, or even for just stimulating your imagination.
With that out of the way, lets look at the contents...
Book One is called Stock-in-Trade and it deals with what I collectively think of as "stuff. (Note to self - no Pulitzer for exposition for you today). The first section deals with armour and contains good descriptions and illustrations of 17 types of armour, 30-plus pieces of armour, 15 shields, and 26 helms. D20 stats are included for the armour, shields, and helms, though I didn't see any info on how wearing individual pieces of armour might affect AC (given the relatively abstract D20 AC system, this doesn't surprise me).
Next are the weapons and this section contains excellent diagrams and descriptions of many variations on weapons. This is great fodder for those who like to flesh out their character's possessions beyond "guy with an axe". Now you can be "guy with an Assyrian bronze axe" and have a picture to demonstrate just how cool your character looks. D20 stats are provided for all the various weapons making it easy to integrate them into your game. The lists include early firearms as well as some interesting exotic weapons (butterfly knife caught my attention as a very cool hideout weapon). It is worth noting that the weapons are mostly based in history rather than outright fantasy so you won't find any elven longbows or dwarven waraxes. It would be simple, however, to pick an obscure historical weapon and give it racial or cultural significance within a campaign. For example, you could say that the Knuckledragger tribe of barbarians are known for using the Haladie, a double-bladed fighting knife.
Oh, one more word on weapons. Polearms. It's a Gygax book. Of course it has polearms.
The rest of the section includes lists, descriptions, and many drawings of everything from clothing to food to tools to containers. There is plenty of practical information in here, such as the table of fur types including rarity, where available, and common uses. Now, some might quibble with the length of some of the lists - does anyone really need a list of 90 musical instruments? Maybe, maybe not. Your mileage may vary.
Book Two contains information on Geographics. This includes things like weather (10 types of rain with visibility distances for example) as well as useful but hard to get info on how much weight different thicknesses of ice will bear. Different types of wind storms and their impact are also useful info.
Terrain descriptions follow and I found some interesting tidbits in there. (what the heck is a dale anyway? Now I know.) The section on the productivity of land is helpful to those intent upon "realism" in the creation of cultivated land.
The section goes on and on, with info on types of stone, lists of gemstones, birthstones, lucky stones etc. A table contains D20 game info on different metals and gems and suggested ways of using specific gems in D20 spell casting. A similar table is included for LA uses for the same materials.
There is information on plant types, herbs, flowers, the folklore powers of herbs, and a short list of certain types of animals (breeds of dogs for example). This is not a list of monsters - no stats are provided - but rather a way to differentiate between common animals. "The beggar has a bull mastiff puppy" being more descriptive than "a dog".
Again, the usefulness of this information depends upon the DM. I found it to be great fodder for inspiration (I thought of several adventure concepts just based on unusual terrain descriptions for example).
Book Three is all about Dwellings. It deals with building materials, metals, tensile strengths, melting points for metals, the strength of ropes and so forth. Much of this is information that would be a real pain to find elsewhere. D20 game info on bonuses for different metals, as well as values per ounce of more obscure metals is also available.
Extensive notes on costs of construction, types of fortifications and so forth may be helpful to those players inclined to descend into the minutiae of building a stronghold. A long list of different types of buildings provides some fodder for making your cities more interesting than temples, weapons shops, and YATs (yet another tavern). A similar list of room furnishings takes to level of detail inside individual buildings.
The section on populace deals with government types, royal offices, noble titles, occupations, and more. A series of appendices contain random charts to allow you to roll up things like human physical characteristics, weapons found, new spell effects and much more.
This review threatens to be longer than some books, so I'll stop babbling about the various lists. Suffice to say the book has lists, descriptions, pictures, and more on so many different topics I can't hope to do it justice.
My conclusion is that this is an excellent resource. I will use it a lot in campaign and adventure creation. Its not for everyone though, so I would recommend having a look at it in your local game store and deciding if the level of information it provides is beyond what you will use in your own creations. No one actually NEEDS this book, but then, no one actually needs 234 TV channels. World Builder is definitely a specialty channel, but one that will very much satisfy its audience.
