Top Twenty Print Products

[Wombat]

Okay, I have 1, 3, 6 (as gift -- never wanted it), 8, and 16.

#1 is #1 -- I have found The Book of the Righteous fantastic, not only for its own pantheon, but also for the thought material that I could carry through to other pantheons, campaigns, and classes. No regrets at all with this one. Buy it!

#1 I have already mentioned my problems with. I guess it is a good game, but it certainly is not the game for me.

#6 -- I hate the planar aspects of D&D. I ignore them whenever possible. Planes are places where PCs do not go. On top of that, I found it to be the single dullest book I have read for D&D in general. This fell into "Gee, thanks for supporting my hobby, I guess..."

#8 is fun. I like dwarves and this gives a good, solid representation for "archtypical" dwarves. No, not the single greatest book I own, but a decent one that has given me thoughts for my campaigns.

#16, Nyambe. Okay, there are a lot of rules flaws that bother me about the book, but I can pretty much ignore that aspect. The sheer number of thoughts this book has engendered for my campaigns has been staggering. Great monsters, interesting magic, and a pseudo-African aspect to go with the pseudo-European and pseudo-Asian that have already been used. I like this one a lot.

 

[Psion]

I was just about to mention, but what joe brings up highlights it: these are just the "best of the most reviewed products." Smaller publishers with less known titles may be rated highly, but miss the mark by not garnering enough reviews.

But I think that you need some sort of barrier. We could (and talked about) implementing a complicated scheme where any vote counts but the confidence is a score goes up as an item receives more votes, like IMDB does. The problem here is that we have nowhere near the body of reviewers that IMDB does, and as a result, we can't realistically expect to use that system. As it is, the 5 vote limits are enough for most purposes to establish a level of "confidence."

If you don't beleive me, look at the reviewer list sometime, and see how many reviewers have just one or two products rated at a 5.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

I own 13 of these, and most are very good books.

Book of the Righteous deserves top regards. IMO, it was a CRIME that it did not get voted a ( Gold ) ENnie. Shame on us...

As noted above, Dynasties & Demagogues deserves a place among the best books as well. Other books I think are great that are not represented here are:

Draconomicon - great for what it is
Crime & Punishment ( Atlas )
SW- Coruscant and the Core Worlds
Monster Handbook - Fantasy Flight
Mutants & Masterminds Freedom City ( and "Crooks" too )

 

[Turjan]

I think the list is biased in another way. As a tendency I'd say that earlier products got both, more reviews and better marks as compared to actual quality. I'm not sure whether, e.g., "Madness in Freeport" would have shown up in this list if it had been published later on.

I have 11 products of that list (1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20), and I'm generally content with them, although one or the other would only get a 3 by me .

Newer top products may never reach this goal, as less and less people hand in reviews. Good reviews take their time, and they take even more time for someone speaking a different language, like me.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

The thing that jumps out at me, looking at the list, is that I have only two of the 20 items, yet I have a lot of very good gaming material.

I suppose that points to a couple things:

1) Top 20 rankings don't really tell us much. A lot of good material is not included because of the (perfectly reasonable) 5-review-minimum rule.

2) Just because a product is on a Top 20 list, that doesn't mean it's of value to a specific customer. Most of the items listed are very specific in scope. In fact, 9 or 10 are tied to specific settings/game systems.

This by no means should be taken as a criticism of EnWorld's reviews, just noting that the system, like all systems, is imperfect. I wish I had a suggestion on how to improve things, but my mind's blank.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

Position/Product Publisher Score Reviews
2. 2000AD: Sláine RPG Mongoose Publishing 5.00 6

Excellent! Worth every penny. See B5 as well.

3. Midnight Fantasy Flight Games 5.00 5

Very good, not as good as a few below it

6. Manual of the Planes Wizards of the Coast 4.85 13

GREAT book, can't wait for the companion this year ('04)

10. Call of Cthulhu d20 Wizards of the Coast 4.75 8

excellent.

12. The Monsternomicon Vol. I Privateer Press 4.71 7

Fave. Book. Evar.

13. Starfarers Handbook Fantasy Flight Games 4.70 10

LOVE this setting.

16. Nyambe: African Adventures Atlas Games 4.60 5

Should be rated higher.

Fairly good list, I would have added...but I know this is just statistics we're looking at.

 

[Crothian]

WEll, if someone feels that a certain product is good, review it. That's the only way that this becomes any better is to have more people review things. This is a reflection of EN World since the reviews come from the people of EN World. Some books are general, some are specific. I don't think that should matter. All people can do is review the book for what it is and not puunish it for what it isn't.

 

[Psion]

Other books I think are great that are not represented here are:

Draconomicon - great for what it is
Crime & Punishment ( Atlas )
SW- Coruscant and the Core Worlds
Monster Handbook - Fantasy Flight
Mutants & Masterminds Freedom City ( and "Crooks" too )

Monsters Handbook already has 3 "5" ratings and Freedom City is weighing in at 4.5 with 4 reviews. A few more reviews and they could be up there. Go write one!

 

[CRGreathouse]

I think Book of the Righteous is vastly overrated. I haven't really been able to use much (or, come to think of it, any) of the content in my games, and its treatment of alignment left a bad taste in my mouth. I thought the creation story was fair, but no different from other creation stories I'd seen; I liked the portrayal of evil cults of nonevil gods, but not much else.

 

[alsih2o]

i own a big fat one of these products.

it is good, but i only own one!