How much effort to make a book work for you?

[Crothian]

Okay, we all have our own individual campaigns. No two are alike and for the most part d20 books do a good job of being general enough to fit into most, average campaigns. However, I'm sure all of us have picked up books either of low quality, or something about really made it tough to fit in your camapign. So, how much effort or reworking are you willing to do to make a book usible for you?

 

[jgbrowning]

well

I guess it depends.

I favor books that are campaign light. i dont like to have monsters/PrC's/Npcs etc that fit a particular style of gaming. Scarred lands is an example of this to me... a lot of their stuff is very good but i dont use it since i do think they have done an excellent job of making a coherant theme/style. Unfortunatly it is a style that's not terribly compatable to the game style i prefer to run. I know i can just change stuff about thier products to reflect my style, but i have a mental block about that. they've done such a good job branding their material that i have a very difficult time "unbranding" it in my mind in order to give it a different feel.

Some of the mongoos products have found there way onto my shelves and they require fewer changes for me. mostly because i think they are more generic. i dont view generic as a curse word, like some others do.. i like generic because it requires the least amount of work for me.

personally i prefer the older style of play (ala 1st ed.) and convert it to 3e mechanics and slow down the exp progression. I've had a lot of problems maintaining any semblance of realism (ie a real world) with the super speedy progression of 3e. anyway off topic a bit.

to answer the question directly (one has to wonder why i didnt to begin with ) I'd say not a lot, a few hours maybe. Honestly, i spend much of my time on creating interesting plots for my players and i prefer to spend as little time as possible to convert material.

joe b

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I rarely purchase RPG books that are purely game mechanics. And with all the others, there is always something I can steal for my campaign

(cue maniacal laughter)

 

[Drawmack]

I play low magic with grim -n- gritty battle rules so most of the books out there really don't fit my gaming style at all. I find books that focus on mundane, rather then arcane, topics more usefull. I use a few setting books (Bluffside & Freeport) and books of traps and thigs (Traps & Trechery I & II, Netbook of Traps, Netbook of riddles, Traps and Challenges) and books of NPC Archetypes (Enemies and Allies) mostly. I also use the three core rulebooks although I don't use the MM too much as most of my adventures focus on the PCs taking on people instead of monsters.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I use quite a bit of material from "across the board", as it were.

However, I wouldn't shoe-horn in anything that didn't fit. For instance, quite a bit of the Eldritch books I like, but running a low-magic setting, not everything's going to fit if I just "drop it in". I plan to use most of the material, but it will be spread out so as not to add a new level of magic immediately. Certain Feats become "forgotten lore", and can only be learned about in the most ancient of tomes, while others are guarded knowledge, and the secrets of them are in the possession of but a few. All have been reviewed for ease to obtain and, when it seemed proper for the campaign, tweeked or re-prereq'd for setting-balance. The spells, rather than granted freely, are distributed to specific Prestige Classes, adding as much flavor as power.

On the opposite end of this is The Sovereign Stone. Great concept, fairly well written, but unfortunately not much about it will "fit" the game I'm running, and aside from the Bestiary, little in the setting has inspired anything for my game. Glad to own it, but it will likely collect dust until I decide to run a game with more in common with it.

The middle ground is where most books fall in. A fair example of this is Elementalism by Mongoose. It works as a concept, but much of it assumes a magic-rich world. Thus, many of the concepts are easily enough used, but instead of being "purchasable" via Experience Points and money, it becomes the ability of a Prestige Class designed specifically for it.

Along side that is Epic; While there are few things in it that I have rejected by reason of flavor, nearly half the book lies behind a line I've "drawn in the sand" refered to as "The True Name Mechanic", which designates a difference between "High Level" and "Epic Status" games.

So, honestly, I don't really "try" to use material; It either fits or it doesn't, and it usually fits in a way that it wasn't originally written for. About the only thing I don't ever bother with would be Prestige Classes, which I ignore to the point of almost never reading them (although I have gleamed an ability or two from a rare few to use in different ways or for a different Prestige Class).

 

[S'mon]

I don't mind the tweaking-for-errors sort of work needed to make some products work, if their 'flavour' fits my world - Lost City of Gaxmoor or Quintessential Fighter are examples of this. I have a lot more trouble with stuff like the Creature Collections, where the ideas are good but the atmosphere is very different from my campaign setting. Editing out style & atmosphere is much harder than changing a CR or BAB, in my experience. That said, I do like the Slitheren!

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Game balance is #1 for me

If the feats, magic items, or spells are balanced, I don't have a problem using it or putting it into the game. The problem is that a lot of the splatbooks, supplements, and what not have a nuclear escalation effect (i.e., the later the book is published, the more unbalanced it is). The only exception to this are the Books of Eldritch Might by Monte Cook.

So in my campaign, anything from Monte Cook is pretty much allowed, and I use it without any effort. Anything by Mongoose (the Quintessential series, especially) is not, and the Wizard Splatbooks feats/spells are allowed on a case by case basis.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

You guys seem to be talking only about d20 game rules. So how about stealing setting and adventure ideas? You don't even need to restrict yourself to d20 Publishers for that one...

I, for example, have used stuff from "Delta Green: Countdown" in both a Forgotten Realms as well as my current GURPS Warhammer campaign...

 

[mmadsen]

I've noticed that many "good" adventure modules offer up so much background information that they make more work for the DM. All the twists and turns in the background may or may not fit his world, and trying to find which bits of color are vital to the story and which he can change out becomes quite a task.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

You guys seem to be talking only about d20 game rules. So how about stealing setting and adventure ideas? You don't even need to restrict yourself to d20 Publishers for that one...

I, for example, have used stuff from "Delta Green: Countdown" in both a Forgotten Realms as well as my current GURPS Warhammer campaign...

Well, I generally use Shaman based on The Primal Codex's version of them, but one of the nations in my campaign practice a tradition the is based on (and converted from) the Ars Magica Shaman accessory. Always makes things interesting in-game when Shaman start doing things Shaman aren't supposed to do.