Pre 4e books: your best and worst

[invokethehojo]

Reading all this new stuff has got me thinking about D&D a lot lately. With all the mention of older editions I got to thinking about how I started playing and what it was like. My first edition was 2e and it's hard for me to remember a lot of stuff, but I remember our game changed (for the better) when "weapons and tactics" came out. This was the first mention of critical hits and other features that made our game much more interesting. On the other had I remember when the unearthed arcane came out for 3.5 and how it almost ruined our game. My whole group loved the book, so much so that we tried almost everything in it, and it totally messed up our campaigns. We ended up spending more time trying new stuff and figuring out ways to explain it then we did having fun. A great book, just not for us.

So I thought some other people might want to muse about their favorite... and least favorite books.

 

[malcolm_n]

My favorite book would have to be "Lost Empires of Faerun." The Magelord class was a major factor in how my character (Username) became who he is.

As to my least favorite; I was kinda disappointed by the complete scoundrel when it first came out. It felt like WotC tried to hard to make a new book even more about rogues. Now that I've used skill tricks and a few of the PrC's in it, i'm more willing to accept it, but it's still on the bottom of my list for most things.

 

[jasin]

Off the top of my head: OA, FRCS and Bo9S.

Oriental Adventures could be said to have gotten me into 3E. I had recently seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, so when I saw the blade dancer, I was in love. When I was the iaijutsu master several pages later, I was in a love triangle. Later, as I learned more about Legend of the Five Rings, I was again impressed at how well the OA conversion captured the ideas from L5R.

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting could be said to have gotten my group into 3E. One of the more 3E-skeptical players was (and still is) a FR fan so he got the book for the fluff, but it ultimately provided led to me running our first 3E game, set in FR, which lasted on and off for some 6-7 years. I'm don't care much for the setting, but the level of detail, the artwork, the hooks all mean I cannot but be impressed by the book.

Bo9S is as close to the fulfillment of OA's promises of wuxia as 3E ever came. And even leaving my personal bias aside, I think it's an excellent piece of work. There are some flaws, but considering how much of a departure from traditional D&D systems it is, I've found it surprisingly playable, and great fun.

 

[Lizard]

Wow, covering ALL of D&D?

Hmmm.

Favorite 1e book...well, beyond the PHB, which has to be the most important single book of my life, I'd say MOTP. The scope, spectacle, and wonder of it, with para-elemental planes and all that, was amazing. I rarely use the cosmology exactly, but I love the sheer idea depth.

Least favorite 1e book...the Greyhawk hardcover. We hates setting books, my preciousss, we hates them forevers!

Favorite 2e book...which was the last one published? 'Cause that'd be my favorite...

Favorite 3e book...hmmmm. Damn, that's tough. I'm leaning towards Magic Item Compendium, Unearthed Arcana, or maybe Expanded Psionics Handbook.

Least Favorite 3e book...Probably Monster Manual IV, with the Epic Level Handbook a close second.

 

[Kirnon_Bhale]

Favourite: Five Nations (Eberron) Mainly a fluff book but it gave me so many great ideas that it was by far the most worth it book. Books that are crunch heavy often seem to me to have huge amounts of wasted space with rubbish/never used crunch.

Worst: The religions of Eberron For all my talking about how I love fluff and find crunch heavy books don't always live upto my hopes. I was supremely unimpressed by this book. I really enjoy eberron but I find that the one aspect I HATE is the wishy washy nature of the Gods in the setting, as a result I found this poor book even worse as it merely reinforced the wishy washyness regarding the deitys. Never used even one aspect of it.

 

[drjones]

1st Ed Unearthed Arcana.

My First dnd character was the 5th level fighter henchwoman in 12th level campaign so I had basically nothing to do. When I read about specialization it blew my mind!

 

[Atlatl Jones]

My favorite book would have to be "Lost Empires of Faerun." The Magelord class was a major factor in how my character (Username) became who he is.

You have a character named Username? How... postmodern.

 

[Cyronax]

So I thought some other people might want to muse about their favorite... and least favorite books.

I started with 2e, but I also owned a few 1st edition.

Anyway,

My favorite (owned) 1e: the Temple of Elemental Evil. I bought it at a used book store in the mid-90s and it felt like I was opening a relic. Never gamed through it, but it inspired a lot of future fun.

Least favorite (owned) 1e: Greyhawk Adventures (hardback). I'm a huge fan of Greyhawk, but I thought that that particular hardcover (along with the rest in that line) kind of blew.


2e: My favorite? The original Dark Sun boxed set. It generated lots of creativity. I was also reading the Dune series about the same time .... so you could see where that went.

Least favorite 2e: All of the late 90s Forgotten Realms sourcebooks. I bought a lot of them, but looking back, I just see them as worthless re-hashes of bad fantasy. So hackneyed. That phase of the setting is one of the reasons I began to hate on FR.


3e: favorite ......... Red Hand of Doom or Oriental Adventures. Both led to their own great campaigns in different ways.

3e: most hated .... most of the splat books 2005 and after (ie Complete Scoundrel, B09S, PHBII). I felt that the system jumped the shark ...... everything post-2005 felt like a step up the power curve, which made the base PHB classes suck. I also began to hate PrCs in a big way, since all the official WotC classes seemed so broken. Why were PrC's a req for 3.X? That is a big game killer.

4e: I don't like the fact that there are already 5+ splat books planned for the year following 4e's release.

C.I.D.

 

[malraux]

Favorite 2e book...which was the last one published? 'Cause that'd be my favorite...

Die Vecna Die?

 

[mach1.9pants]

Favourite book would be Bo9S: it turned my game around, I lost a lot of my simulationist worries and just enjoyed the game...and it made martial character good!
I would also add the original FR box, probably the most used non-core item of my 150+ library.

Worst is harder....probably the arms and equipment guide (a re-hash of stuff in other books) and the 3E dungeoneers survival guide (about 20 pages of info stretched into a thin shabby hardback book..grrrr I really resent having spent money on that!)