D&D 4E The Best of 4e's Fluff

[Remathilis]

If, by chance, you were going to get a bunch of 4e books cheap but had little desire of actually playing 4e (and instead wanted to mine it for ideas for a 5e game) what books would you get?

Again, just looking for ideas and fluff, since the crunch is being ignored anyway...

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

If, by chance, you were going to get a bunch of 4e books cheap but had little desire of actually playing 4e (and instead wanted to mine it for ideas for a 5e game) what books would you get?

Again, just looking for ideas and fluff, since the crunch is being ignored anyway...

Worlds and Monsters was pretty cool, and I like a lot of the planar stuff. Manual the Planes is nice, if you can get it cheap, but I was massively disappointed in the size of it when I bought it. There was also a stand alone dwarven city packet that I was really impressed with, but I can't remember its name.

 

[zoroaster100]

I think you are thinking of Hammerfast. That was a pretty good location product with a good amount of information for sandbox style adventuring as well as info to run a campaign in and around the city.

 

[Klaus]

If, by chance, you were going to get a bunch of 4e books cheap but had little desire of actually playing 4e (and instead wanted to mine it for ideas for a 5e game) what books would you get?

Again, just looking for ideas and fluff, since the crunch is being ignored anyway...

Both Monsters Vaults have amazing fluff. You can sample the style of the fluff in the Monster Manual Updates articles over at WotC's site (the worg rates as one of my favorites).

Hammerfast was good, with minimum rules material.

Not to toot my own horn too much, but Heroes of the Feywild is filled to bursting with fluff focused on Faerie and its inhabitants. Plus the background generator in the end is pretty much mechanics-free.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Primal Power was also really good for all the fluff about the primal spirits and the people/groups that dealt with them. If you wanted to use the primal spirits in your game, it was a really good book with a lot of useful information.

 

[Will Doyle]

I thought the 4E Underdark book was just crammed with great adventure ideas. The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea is great for understanding the 4E view of the planes: there's some really evocative stuff in there. For a dark city campaign, check out Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond. It's full of adventure hooks, which I think far too many setting books seem to lack (the Neverwinter book is also great in this respect). I'll also put in another vote for the creature fluff in the Monster Vault (possibly the best MM in my opinion). Threats to the Nentir Vale is also good.

 

[CM]

Seconding Neverwinter Campaign Guide. More adventure hooks per square inch than any book I've ever seen. Pretty easy to adapt it to a different world if you're not into FR, too.

 

[Wrathamon]

If, by chance, you were going to get a bunch of 4e books cheap but had little desire of actually playing 4e (and instead wanted to mine it for ideas for a 5e game) what books would you get?

Again, just looking for ideas and fluff, since the crunch is being ignored anyway...

Most of the books after Essentials had great fluff in it. I agree with everyone here on the books. I think the pre-essentials player centric books were boring reads ... the power books and player handbooks.

Neverwinter Campaing and Into the Unknown: Dungeoneer Survival Guide where great reads, as was, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale and the Feywild book! Was so looking forward to a Heroes of the astral sea

The DMGs (wish they had DMG III) had a great section in the back with a location for heroic and paragon tier.

The Darksun book had some cool stuff but I think 2e darksun material had more fluff.

 

[pemerton]

A lot of the good stuff has been mentioned.

I'd start with Worlds and Monsters; then The Plane Above; then Underdark, MoP, Open Grave or Feywild depending on inclination. Neverwinter would be good too if you're looking for a campaign setting. Depending on how cheap is "cheap", even the unjustly maligned Monster Manual has lots of new and interesting story information for some of the creatures in it (goblins are a particular stand out in my eyes, but lots of entries have little nuggets of information, like the Spider entry telling us that before her fall Lolth was a weaver and a god of fate).

 

[Shemeska]

even the unjustly maligned Monster Manual has lots of new and interesting story information for some of the creatures in it (goblins are a particular stand out in my eyes, but lots of entries have little nuggets of information, like the Spider entry telling us that before her fall Lolth was a weaver and a god of fate).

Fwiw, Lolth being a fallen goddess of fate and the weaver motif have been a detailed part of her lore since 2e, it isn't new to 4e.

While I'm not a big fan of the edition's embedded fluff insomuch as it overwrote prior material, the approach used in the two Monster Vault books for presenting and integrating monster fluff was very well done. It's up there with the 2e AD&D monster books and the Pathfinder AP bestiary entries for my favorite ways to handle and present fluff for monster entries.

4e's Demonomicon does a nice job (particularly the portions that Brian James wrote) in respectfully presenting and paying homage to 2e and 3e fiendish lore as best as possible within the constraints of the 4e cosmology.