recommend some pdf's!!

[Brad Hindman]

sidewinder recoiled: spectacular wild west game, won some ennies, they have the main book in pdf (now published and printed by a larger company), and 2 smaller location books. very very very good stuff.

Thanks for the compliment! That larger company is Green Ronin.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

If you like wierd Cthulhu-y stuff, Chaositech is the way to go. It's not on RPGNow, so you'll have to get it from White Wolf's online store.

 

[philreed]

Herbs/herbalism/plants: Products that have lists of different plants and herbs and things you can create would be very helpful.

Short adventures/ideas/maps: Products with short adventure hooks, especially ones with cool maps and unique locations.

Plants and herbs:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3003


Short adventures:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1892

 

[Man-thing]

That was definitely part of my motivation.
Herbs/herbalism/plants: Products that have lists of different plants and herbs and things you can create would be very helpful.

Short adventures/ideas/maps: Products with short adventure hooks, especially ones with cool maps and unique locations.

Okay from Ronin Arts:

A dozen plants and herbs
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=352&products_id=3003&

A dozen troubling rumours
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=352&products_id=2807&

A dozen disturbing rumours
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=352&products_id=3087&

Athenaeum Arcane: Ghostly Rumours
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=352&products_id=3489&

[The rumours are plot hooks]

Goodman Games has a line of classic feeling dungeon crawls:

DCC #11: The Dragonfiend Pact
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3317&

(most have sneaky twists that players do not expect, and have a wide variety of locations)

 

[DMH]

Short adventures/ideas/maps: Products with short adventure hooks, especially ones with cool maps and unique locations.

Postmortem Studios has a series of 100 Hooks (Fantasy, Horror and Sci-fi). I have the latter two and have to say they are top notch.

It may not be appropriate to say this, but stay away from Top Fashion Games. I was stupid and bought a bunch of the book series since they are cheap. Not one is very inventive (a 500 page book of orc recipes by someone- two sentance paragraphs with no substance either).

 

[Samothdm]

I'll highlight some of my favorites.

The Quintessential Aristocrat: This takes the NPC class from the DMG and makes it useful. There are great ideas and I love this for important NPCs.

Thanks for the plug, Crothian!

I have a pretty big PDF collection myself but none of them seem to quite match what you're looking for (weird technology, Cthulhu creatures, or herbs/herbalism).

For short adventures with maps and such, try the free WotC adventures on their website. (I think maybe the maps are gone now, though, since they published them in print form).

The Unlikely Heroes set (at RPGNow) would probably be pretty useful for low-magic games.

And, just to pimp my own book, the vast majority of The Quintessential Aristocrat could be used in a low or no-magic setting, but it can easily be tweaked for higher magic settings as well.

 

[Andre]

Here are the ones I've used the most:

Book of Templates and Book of Templates Deluxe Edition. Excellent ideas to motivate a GM and get your players' attention.

GM Mastery: NPC Essentials. Excellent reference on designing interesting npc's. For the lazy (like me) there are plenty of charts for quirks and such that can be used in seconds.

City Guide and City Guide - Coffer of Coins. Each has several fleshed out shops that can be dropped into a town. Lots of flavor and interesting npc's.

Initiative Cards. Print one for each character and creature, simply flip through them during combat. Makes keeping track of initiative easy.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I won't pimp my own PDFs -- that's what my sig is for!

But one of the things in 'em is a Behemoth3 Recommends section. Some of the PDFs mentioned in it have been:

Book of Templates Deluxe by Silverthorne. Everyone likes it for a reason!

Campaign Options: Mazes by Emerald Press. If you weren't excited about running a maze adventure, you will be after reading this.

Complete Spell Cards by The Other Game Company. Super useful for high-level spellcasters.

 

[DaveStebbins]

For Cthuluoid goodness buy the Possessors from Ronin Arts.

For a short adventure? Death in Freeport Revised!

I can also second the recommendations of NPC Essentials, anything by Expeditious Retreat Press, BoTD, TGM Initiative Cards, The Other Game Company's Complete Spell Cards and Scott Metzger's d20 Summon Monster stat lists.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Most of the big recommendations I would give have already been given, but...Maiden of the High Seas and Castle Works Ultimate both are gridded for use with miniatures.

The Auld Grump, who agrees - Steam & Steel is awesome.