Take the best (in your opinion and worst products from different editions). Then think why you made those choices

[GreyLord]

From another thread, I thought this would be an interesting thing to explore. There are other threads in the RPG forum but I don't think they are as specific as this, and deal with each edition individually in the same thread, so I thought I'd start one here with my CURRENT thoughts (meaning they could change).

OD&D - Hmm, can't really think of much here...I'd say the best was Greyhawk...but I don' think that I can comprehensively point to something that was the worst. Greyhawk simply changed the entire dynamic of the game...like a revolution all in one little book.

AD&D - People will have many varied opinions on this, but I'd say the best was the PHB...point blank. We actually used AD&D and OD&D as a mixed jumble for a while...and the PHB was probably the most useful of all the items we got seconded by the Monster Manual. I'd say my favorite (right now) is probably the Fiend Folio, and UA (though I know many hate it) was a close second to the PHB when it came out, but the PHB would probably be the best product that I would name for this edition.

On a side note, though I favor the PHB, UA, and MM, OA was actually pretty awesome and it wouldn't surprise me that some would place that as the best...as it was it's own game in it's own right in a manner of speaking.

2e - Best book hands down was the DMG. With options for making classes (sure, it could be abused, but at least it attempted to have a universal cost and ratio on the board in class creation, and someone's class could be cross referenced with those rules to see if they simply made up a powergaming munchkin class with no input, or if some sort of consideration had been taken in mind), races, and everything else that I found useful, this was perhaps one of the best D&D books ever made...IMO.

The Worst...now that gets REALLY hard for me to determine. There were SO many. I have to say...Player's Options: Skills and Powers was the worst. It had EVERYTHING that I hated in it. Basically, it was the epitomy of adding things I hated to D&D...so I'd say that would be the absolute worst product.

Holmes - Well, I only ever got one product for this...so really can't say one way or the other.

BX/BECMI - including these as the same item despite some differences between them. The best is very hard to say, probably the Red Box. It is probably the best introductory box to D&D and RPG's I've seen prior to the Pathfinder Beginner Box. It was really effective and really good at not only introducing D&D, but RPGs in general.

The worst probably would be the immortals box (sorry Frank...I know a LOT of love went into it...but hear me out first). Why? Simply put, because I never used it. It read great, had great ideas, but we never actually got to use it in play...therefore it is not the worst because it was bad, but simply because we never used anything in it.

3e/3.5 - AS with the BX/BECMI above...including them as the same edition. Best product I think was the UA. In theory, if you took the three class route, you could almost (that's an almost) play the game without a PHB. It added so many optional items that you could pick and choose from...it was awesome.

Worst product....hmmm...I'd say the Epic Level Handbook. We used the feats and little else. Overall, it did nothing to really expand the game for us, it really didn't do much for martial users and the epic level rules were broken (IN MY OPINION of course). We simply utilized other rules (#of atks kept going up, BAB kept going up at the same rate as it did previously, increased spell levels...etc). So in effect, it was a bad book in my opinion of which I used very little.

4e - This is really hard to say. I'd probably say the best book was the PHB...even though it got errata'd to heck and back. It at least had the base ideas and rules along with enough classes to play the game. Worst book, hands down the DMG. If you knew what you were doing, you don't even need the DMG to play. It has about two or three useful pages for us...and that's it. FOR ME...it was the most worthless book I ever got, and that's probably for ALL editions.

Pathfinder - yeah, I know...not D&D...but I felt like tossing it in here...others can post or not post including it. I think the most useful is apparent...the Core Rulebook. It has the rules and updates...what else can I say. OUTSIDE of that though, the Best book...hmmm....I'd have to say the Beginner box for the exact same reasons I stated the Red Box for BECMI. It is actually a better intro to RPGs in my opinion than even the Red Box was...and that's SAYING A LOT.

The worst product? Advanced Race Guide. I know there are many that find it invaluable...but as I usually have monsters be monsters, adding these types of options normally bring more headaches than not at my table. If they do want to play a monster...then comes in all the prejudice against that PC...and then the complaints come in of them being persecuted (burned at the stake for coming in town...etc.) simply because they wanted something different. For me...it just adds headaches...hence if I GM, it's outlawed at the table. Hence...maybe not the worst written by any means...but for the games I would GM...the worst book as it brings more trouble than it helps.

So, that's my list...what's yours?

edit: PS - forgot to put in my worst for AD&D. I'd mirror what others have noted, which was the WSG/DSG. I simply didn't really get much use out of them and really didn't use them all that much.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hard to say. From 1st ed.

AD&D WSG/DSG. Just not that interesting or useful to me or inspiring.

2nd Ed. Best Tome of Magic, Complete Fighters Handbook and COmbat and Tactics and Spells and Magic. The worst was probably Skills and Powers.
3rd ed. Best. PHB2 the first 4 complete books? Worst. Epic level handbook followed by Deities and Demigods. The useless twins.
4th ed. Did not like so I suppose the core 3 were the best and worst for me as that is all I bought and then I canceled DDI as well.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

Going to skip 1E as I never really played it. You'll probably notice a theme when it comes to my "best" products.

BECMI - Best was PC4: Night Howlers, rules for PC lycanthropes plus a mini setting for them to play in. Worst was...I don't think I have a worst for this version of the game. My nostalgia-tinted glasses remove all the flaws when I look at it.

AD&D 2nd Edition - Best was Council of Wyrms boxed set, rules for PC dragons plus a mini setting for them to play in. Worst was an adventure, The Silver Key. I needed a 1st level adventure for a quick pick up game and snagged this. Read through it and just couldn't imagine running it.

3.0 and 3.5 - Best was Savage Species, rules for PC...everything! The rules were in need of some tinkering, but the inspiration was enough for me. Worst was Enemies and Allies. I wanted it to be a book full of stat blocks for all the higher level humanoid critters mentioned in the Monster Manual, plus stats for human town guards and the like. What I got was a bunch of named NPCs, some of which were rather uninspiring.

4th Edition - Breaking from theme a bit here, best was Heroes of Shadow as I really liked the Shadowfell and the Shadow power source. Worst was...hmm, don't have a worst here either as I didn't really delve into a lot of the supplemental books.

 

[Lanefan]

While I can't break it down edition-by-edition like the OP did, here's my 5 most/least useful of the various D&D-based publications I've bought, in no real order...

Most useful:
- the 1e DMG. Subsequent DMGs have been very pale imitations at best.
- the Wizard and Priest Spell Compendiums (Compendia?) from 2e.
- the Ultimate Equipment Guide from Pathfinder, great that it includes mundane gear as well as magic items.
- the 1e adventure module Forgottem Temple of Tharizdun - still getting mileage out if it today!
- such Dragon magazines I ever bought between about issues 50 and 120; and Gygax magazine today.

Least useful:
- 2e's various Complete [insert class/race/culture name here] books - all very disappointing.
- 1e's Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and Wilderness Survival Guide - high expectations completely unmet.
- any issue of Dungeon magazine I ever bought - by the time the adventures became any good they were being written for editions I didn't DM.
- any Dragonlance adventure
- the few Pathfinder adventure modules I own, because they are so tied in to their own back-stories they cannot stand alone.

Lan-"I can make use of anything, but sometimes doing so takes more effort than it's worth"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

double post...

 

[Ahnehnois]

I can only speak with sufficient depth and scope about 3e.

Best: Unearthed Arcana. This is really what 3e was about. Open gaming, character customization, and campaign customization. Every couple of pages there's something that can completely change how your game plays, without obsoleting most of the existing rules. A couple of pages of flaws and traits go a long way towards recreating that 2e NWP feel. VP/WP completely transforms combat. Complex skill checks expand the scope of the d20 system. Variant class features became a meme that repeated throughout the 3.5 era, and went on to become archetypes in PF, recreating (and perhaps exceeding) the functionality of kits. Spell points. Racial levels. Weapon groups. Action points.
Certainly the best ratio of actual substantive ideas per page of any 3e book ever released. What makes it so great is that even if you think half of it is worthless for your game (I do), there's more than enough there to meaningfully expand the existing rules and create a new game experience. There's something for everyone. Those were the days.

Worst: Tome of Battle. It's not a set of new rules per se, nor of variants of existing rules. It's more a different game masquerading as a supplement with 3e on the cover. Moreover, it takes all the worst aspects of 3e: overly specific and discrete character abilities, arbitrary usage restrictions, gradual hit point ablation, inflated page counts, and so on, and steps away from its best aspects: the generic, open-ended nature of the d20 system, and the relative simplicity and naturalistic tone of the martial classes. It's a simultaneous slap in the face to players who like being able to make a character without wading through a list of special abilities, players who like to wade through spell lists and want their abilities to actually be special, and DMs who don't have time for this.
And on top of it, the flavor ranges from botched martial arts lore to idiotic compound words and gratuitous proper nouns. We could have had a hundred more 3e splatbooks or a wholesale without ever needing a "warblade" or "swordsage" or a "diamond mind" or a "Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike"*. Here's a hint: if you're trying to make rules that model real things, and you have to constantly make up words to do it, you're doing something wrong. Some books are worthless, this one is worse than worthless.

*I did not make this up. Someone actually wrote and published something that stupid.

 

[n00bdragon]

Didn't play enough 1e to evaluate the different splats

Best of 2e: The DMG is a really great book that's well organized and easy to read and reference. The Monster Manual was also great but mostly for the amazingly good art. They just don't do fantasy art like they used to.
Worst of 2e: Skills and Powers. Oh god why. This book is terrible. If someone at your table even suggests using this I'd say that's reason enough to ask them to leave.

Best of 3e: Tome of Battle was a great step in the right direction for game design. I love martial characters but I rarely play them in 3e because they are just so mechanically bad. This book (sort of) solves that. You're no wizard, but you're not exactly The Gimp either.
Worst of 3e: Book of Erotic Fantasy. No comment should be necessary.

Best of 4e: Monster Vault for general reference material. DMG 1 for sheer awesomeness for new players of any game system.
Worst of 4e: All of essentials minus the Monster Vault. Player's Handbook 3 runs a close second. All of them spit on the well apportioned player resources for no reason other than novelty and a bad attempt to draw in people offended by fighters with daily powers.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I never played anything before 2e. I will leave out PH1s, as you can't really play without them.

2e: Best was the Wanderer's Journal (the first Dark Sun book anyway), the entry to my favorite campaign setting. The worst was Complete Psionics, which sadly took me a really long time to realize. It edged out Complete Book of Elves.

3e: Best was Book of Nine Swords, which excelled by giving martial heroes something active to do in a fight. I especially liked the proto-warlord. Worst was 3.0 psionics, with its terrible balance, narrowly edging out Sword & Fist, with its complete inability to solve problems with the fighter class (all it did was give a bunch of prestige classes, and a ridiculously stereotyped samurai).

Pathfinder: As I never ran Pathfinder, my knowledge is limited. The playtest document for the newest book (Advanced Class Guide?) looks really good, but for existing products, the NPC Codex. I reserve bile for Ultimate Equipment, which gave us swift (or free?) action gun-reloading cords, plus the ability to cast Time Stop persistently (probably not, but the item was very poorly written, much like 3.0 polymorphing).

4e: My personal favorite is Threats to the Nentir Vale. It covers a wide range of levels, organizes opponents by faction, and each faction covers multiple combat roles. Many can be "stolen" for other settings, of course. My least favorite book is Heroes of Shadow. The assassin class doesn't need to exist, and the vampire... *shudder*

 

[Stormonu]

BX/BECMI
Best: Rules Cyclopedia. You can't go wrong with an entire D&D game system in a single book.
Worst: Night of the Vampire. Let's pit starting characters against a vampire they can't hope to defeat. It'll be fun.

1E
Best: Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and Wilderness Survival Guide. Unlike others, I like that it not only introduced a skill system to the game, but for 14-year-old me, got me thinking about adventures outside mere dusty old tombs and moldy dungeons.
Worst: Unearthed Arcana. It came disguised as option goodness but all it really did was bring woe to my games (especially Cavaliers & Drow PCs).

2E
Best: Monstrous Compendium. So much better than the 3-ring binder, and I don't think there's a monster manual that comes as close to as many creatures as it holds.
Worst: Forgotten Realms Adventures. Gee, we've just launched 2E, why don't we ruin the Realms with the first of a catastrophic upheaval? No, you can't play an assassin anymore, send your monks back to Shou Lung and buy the $30 campaign ... and you must use musket-wielding Gondsmen in your campaign. Thanks, TSR.

3E
Best: (Non-third party) Sandstorm, Stormwrack, Frostburn, Heroes of Horror. These books provided decent material to get you thinking about the environment as an encounter and mood.
Worst: I'm tempted to say Deities & Demigods as there was nothing usable in a game in the book. However, Bo9S takes the title for turning martial characters into everything they shouldn't have been by turning the Wazoo knob up to 11, making it the one 3E book I REFUSE to use in my campaigns.

4E (My collection is very limited)
Best: Arms & Equipment Guide. Lots of neat and interesting gear that breathed life into some of the rather drab PHB gear.
Worst: Keep on the Shadowfell. A poor showing for an introduction to a new edition, epitomizing how far the D&D team had fallen in adventure creation.

 

[pemerton]

B/X: Best is the Moldvay Basic rulebook, which gave me my first advice on scenario design. I don't really have a worst.

AD&D: Best is probably Oriental Adventures, which gave me my next big push in thinking about how to run games. A runner up for the World of GH boxed set: I've got a lot of play out of that. Worst is hard to call - I didn't get much play out of DSG or WSG, but they had interesting ideas around proficiencies which warmed me up for skill-based games like RM and RQ. The Dungeonland modules weren't much fun when I played them, and nor did I really enjoy Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure.

2nd ed AD&D: I got the most play out of the City of Greyhawk boxed set. Worst would be any of the seemingly billions of railroady adventures.

3E: Best was Monte Cook's Requiem for a God, followed by Bruce Cordell's Bastion of Broken Souls. With approriate adaptations, I got plenty of play out of both of these. Worst - or, at least, most dissapointing - was Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. A near-unuseable railroad.

4e: Best, overall, would be the Rules Compendium. Worst is probably the Essentials DM book, which is a hodgepodge of ovlerapping with the Compendium (which itself overlaps with the HotF* books) and bits and pieces from the earlier DMGs, but doesn't compile all the skill challenge ideas into a single presentation, doesn't update the monster and damage charts, etc.