High-quality systemless books [+]

[haakon1]

Not to go too far off piste into Greyhawk, but I run my campaigns in Greyhawk using the gold box set plus 3e Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, plus a lot of modifications from actual play and adding non-Greyhawk materials.

And I am “system neutral” in where I source materials for my campaigns..

 

[Voadam]

The Old World* (of Warhammer Fantasy Battles) and the like.

I own this, have read it cover to cover, thoroughly enjoyed it, and used it as well for some bits in my eclectic homebrew. Much better overview of the setting than I even got from my friends evocative 1e WFRPG book and playing in our multi year campaign.

Amazing full color Warhammer art, fantastic writing and factional descriptions that are evocative but concise at a few pages each. Completely statless. Just missing stuff for the fantasy Italians, Arabs, and Cathay.

 

[Voadam]

A couple more:

The Scarred Lands Gazetteer Ghelspad and the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer are both 64 page setting gazetteers modeled off of the Greyhawk Folio of giving a setting overview, brief nation by nation breakdown in the main continent focus of the setting with just a touch of stat details (god domains mostly). The Scarred Lands one is pay what you want for the PDF, the Paizo one is now $15. Both give good fairly digestible breakdowns on the setting and a ton of nations and both are well written and have interesting themed places. Both also have bigger campaign setting hardcovers and regional single nation sourcebooks that can provide different levels of details on stuff. The writing is much more written for the RPG adventurer level angle compared to the wargame armed forces breakdown that the Greyhawk Folio considers very important. I am a fan of both settings and these products for them.

 

[Nightfly]

How have we made it this far without anyone mentioning The Monster Overhaul? It might not exactly be systemless, since it's for D&D, and especially early editions of D&D. But it's the best monster book ever written, and it's massively useful for any fantasy adventure game, even those (like 5e) where the math is different. It's just chock full of adventure hooks, interesting ideas about monsters and their ecology and behavior, and dozens of amazing random tables.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

How have we made it this far without anyone mentioning The Monster Overhaul? It might not exactly be systemless, since it's for D&D, and especially early editions of D&D.

You just answered your own question. If we start talking up books written with systems in mind this thread's going to be flooded with them in short order.

 

[Jd Smith1]

How have we made it this far without anyone mentioning The Monster Overhaul? It might not exactly be systemless, since it's for D&D, and especially early editions of D&D. But it's the best monster book ever written, and it's massively useful for any fantasy adventure game, even those (like 5e) where the math is different. It's just chock full of adventure hooks, interesting ideas about monsters and their ecology and behavior, and dozens of amazing random tables.

That is an odd book. A lot of random tables, but better than most generic splatbooks.

 

[Nightfly]

You just answered your own question. If we start talking up books written with systems in mind this thread's going to be flooded with them in short order.

Point taken, but I think Monster Overhaul counts as systemless. It works with AD&D, Basic, and any of the dozens of clones thereof. It works with 3e, 5e, Shadowdark, and DCC. I suspect it would be useful for Dungeon World and Pathfinder, although I can't vouch for either. Even if you're playing a system that's utterly incompatible with the numbers -- like 4th Edition -- it's still full of amazing hooks and ideas. Can't praise it enough.