What d20 Purchases to you Regret?

[MichaelH]

I most regret purchasing the Traveller T20 Players book. IMO, it is too complicated to play, especially the vehicle/starship creation and space travel aspects. YMMV.

My friends recently gave me Gamma World PH and the Machines and Mutants GW sourcebook for my birthday. I have not been able to read them over yet, but I am looking forward to that. I also look forward to the Conan RPG coming out soon.

 

[demiurge1138]

Let's see... many of the stuff on this list I got as gifts, but I'll include anyways.

Song and Silence: Otherwise known as the Untouched Splatbook. I've never used anything from this. Ever.

Enemies and Allies: I'm still confused about why I ever owned this.

Dieties and Demigods: Is it an interesting read? Sometimes. Will I ever use anything in it besides a domain? No.

Creature Collection 1: I loved all of the nifty ideas in this book. I was less than thrilled by the mechanics. So I sold it. I'm now quite happy with Creature Collection Revised.

AEG's Evil: One good essay, a lot of uselessness.

Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary: A pretty book with a good layout, but I've never used it, nor do I forsee using it in my future.

Ravenloft: Denizens of Dread: Complete impulse buy. I shouldn't have. The only cool things in it are the vampires, but since I don't have the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, nor do I plan on ever getting it, I can't use all of the mechanics pertaining to them! Gah!

And I'd like to take this time to defend Monsters of Faerun. Sure, some of the CRs are wonky and it was far too expensive, but I like it. And it gets my sympathy vote for being the book of mine that's seen the most physical abuse.

Demiurge out.

 

[Acid_crash]

My purchases that I regret:

T20 Traveller, Greyhawk Gazateer, all my Scarred Lands books, Song and Silence, Gamma World d20, D&D 3.0 (PHB, MM, DMG), and Star Wars 1.0 (I did get rid of it, I still regret paying for it).

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

As it stands right now, I feel I could afford to keep a hold of my DnD 3rd corebooks, PsiHB, Nyambe, all the Green Ronin stuff, BOVD, Oriental Adventures, Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, Tome of Horrors, and my Everquest books, and ditch everything else.

 

[Darrin Drader]

So I read through 7 pages of this list hoping that my stuff wouldn't turn up on the hated list over and over and over and was pleasantly surprised since most people are either voicing positive things about the Book of Exalted Deeds and the Oathbound campaign setting books or at least not putting them on their most hated list. There were one or two who didn't like them, but I can live with that. Heck, even if it was mostly negative comments, I could live with that too since it might give me some feedback on how to improve in the future.

Concerning Scarred Lands, I own a bunch of it, I don't use much, but I actually like all the hardbacks. CCI and CCII have enough good ideas in them to justify the cost, in my opinion. R&R I & II also have some good stuff in there. Of course since I have yet to set a game in the Scarred Lands I have to seperate out a great deal of the flavor text and just go with the raw descriptions and mechanics that occasionally make it into a game, but there's some salvagable stuff there. As someone pointed out, there is also a great deal of broken stuff there too, but I have yet to see anyone make the perfect book.

I won't name the ones that I truly regret. Or, more to the point, I don't regret buying them but I do hold them up as examples of what do not constitute good books. I would name them but I fear I would insult the people who worked on them and people on these boards would accuse me of heresy. There are a couple of very popular books that I feel have a higher value in potential heat than gaming material. Having said that, I feel the same about one book I worked on, and I'm not saying which one it was, but I bet more than one person would be completely surprised by it, if they've heard of it at all. One of the irritating things is that there have been plenty of titles through the years that I've thought are crap, but then I've had the chance to meet the book's authors and end up liking them quite a bit, and then end up hating myself for not liking their work.

I will list the books I'm happy with and would gladly purchase again. I have a pretty favorable opinion of most of the WotC books, but I'll list what I consider the creme de la creme. I'm leaving the titles I helped work on off my list of favorites since I'm obviously biased towards them (except for that one!)

Necropolis (even though now I've bought it twice already since I own the original Mythus version).
Tome of Horrors
Darwin's World 2E
D&D 3.5 Core
Fiend Folio
Manual of the Planes
D20 Modern
D20 Modern Menace Manual
Every last Necromancer Games title
Every last B5 RPG title
Airships, Torn Asunder, Pale Designs (All Bastion Press)
The Green Ronin Fiends books
The 2 extremely well done Malhavoc adventures
Midnight

I'm sure I'm missing something that's on my cool list, but those are the ones that spring immediately to mind.

 

[Knightfall]

Hmm, what do I regret?

There are a few that I truly regret and just had to get rid of:

Creature Collection and Relics & Rituals. Creature Collection was one of the first d20 books I bought. I wasn't immediately disappointed, but soon it just began to weigh upon me like a stone. The mechanics weren't there and there was too much Scarred Lands 'embedded' into the book. Relics & Rituals was better but I found very little useful. Both were sold early on.

Arcana: Societies of Magic. I don't normally dislike Green Ronin products but this one I could have done without. I was hoping for something more along the lines of the old 2E College of Wizardry sourcebook (which I still own and won't give up... period).

Sword & Fist. Just a bad, error riddled book. (On a related note, I bought both Tome & Blood and Defenders of the Faith and am happy with both books.)

On the chopping block:

Oathbound: Nice book, but I haven't any use for it. [ Sorry Ashy. ]
Arsenal: Bought this to go with Dragonstar. I wish I hadn't. The weapons in it are just too 'out there' for me.
3.0 PHB, DMG, and MM: I've moved to v.3.5e... nuff said!

As for the current books I own that I'm on the fence about are:

Deities and Demigods: I was really excited when I bought this book and read through everything up to halfway through the D&D Pantheon. Then I sort of lost interest in it. I dunno, I think I was hoping for more 'background' religion material.
Miniatures Handbook: Ok. I'm only on the fence about the second half of the book. I bought the book second hand for only $20 CAN, which is damn good considering it would have cost me $40+ CAN brand new. I love the new base classes but have yet to become excited about the new prestige classes. Must wait and see.
Oriental Adventures: I need oriental rules but I hate all the Rokugan stuff, which is 'embedded' into the book. I will likely hang onto it for the basic rules mechanics such as base classes, feats, and monsters.
Monster's Handbook: One of the best FFG books I never seem to have time to use. The book is great but I just can't get excited about it.
Psionics Handbook: I really like the concept of psionics but I have trouble with this incarnation of the Psionics Handbook. The book feels incomplete to me. I'm really hoping the new Expanded Psionics Handbook is as good as quality as the new v.3.5 core rulebooks. The book needs to be THE BOOK for psionics - like a psionics PHB, DMG, and MM combined.

Stuff I can't do without:

New Core Books: The best incarnation of D&D I've seen since the Original 2nd Edition version.
Complete Warrior: Ok, this is best splatbook Wizard's has ever put out. It is what Sword & Fist should have been. Even if the rest of the series bites. I'll have lots of use for CW.
Manual of the Planes: I'd chew off my right arm before I give up this book.
Monster Manual II: Better than the original 3.0 MM, IMO.
Savage Species: I'd be lost without the tables in the back, and I absolutely dig the Anthropomorphic Animal Template. (I think it is this book, which has made me less interested in the Monster's Handbook from FFG.)
Sorcery & Steam: After buying this book, I brought it home and read it cover to cover. Now, I have a basis to truly begin to build my homebrewed Time of Ages high-fantasy/steampunk campaign setting.

Honorable Mentions
Book of Exhalted Deeds
Book of Vile Darkness
Epic Level Handbook
GG's Necropolis
Mythic Races
Seafarer's Handbook
Spells & Spellcraft

Books I own that make me giddy.

Book of Templates: Deluxe Edition: Ok, while I'm a little biased (see sig), this book is one of the best PDF products I've had the pleasure to read. And I read it, from beginning to end, before it was finalized. Even the non-finalized version had my mind racing with new ideas. Hats off to Ian and the rest of the design team!
Draconomicon: Book of Dragons: To me, this is my D&D purchase of 2003. This book is fantastic and I've only read bits and pieces of it so far. Happy Happy! Joy Joy!
A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe: Every gamer should buy a copy of this book. Trust me it is worth it. Can't go wrong with a ENnie award winner.

 

[Staffan]

So I read through 7 pages of this list hoping that my stuff wouldn't turn up on the hated list over and over and over and was pleasantly surprised since most people are either voicing positive things about the Book of Exalted Deeds and the Oathbound campaign setting books or at least not putting them on their most hated list.

I'm in the process of moving my campaign over to Oathbound, but I have one beef with the book: the intro adventure (or mini-campaign). I mean, it looks cool and all, but it commits one of the cardinal sins of expansions: relying on OTHER expansions. There are about a half-dozen monsters in there that are not described in either the core books or in the Oathbound book itself, and that's just not cool. If I'm going to need another book to make use of the book I bought, there should at least be something on the back of the book warning me. A better variant would be to do it the Forgotten Realms way: "If you don't have ___________ where this monster is found, use a ___________ from the MM instead."

Oh, and I'm not too fond of the illustrations of people that look like they have their muscles on the outside of their skin or clothes either.

 

[Darrin Drader]

And on the very next thread comes an unfavorable Oathbound mention... and from someone I've known for years. Knightfall1972, you will contemplate this on the tree of woe.



One thing I forgot to mention is that its amusing to me how the majority of books that have shown up in the unfavorable column have shown up on someone else's favorable column. The ones that are uniformly trashed seem to also be the ones that are known to have the highest sales. As someone once put it, the highest trees catch the most wind, or something like that.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I'm in the process of moving my campaign over to Oathbound, but I have one beef with the book: the intro adventure (or mini-campaign). I mean, it looks cool and all, but it commits one of the cardinal sins of expansions: relying on OTHER expansions. There are about a half-dozen monsters in there that are not described in either the core books or in the Oathbound book itself, and that's just not cool. If I'm going to need another book to make use of the book I bought, there should at least be something on the back of the book warning me.

Did I mention that I contributed actually very little to the core book?

Actually, one of the decisions that was made early on was that oathbound would feature monsters from Minions: Fearsome Foes. I think this worked out well for the core races since all the applicable information that was needed was included in the book. The monsters, maybe not so much so. On the other hand, the updated version of Minions is available online as a download for a very reasonable price. I think this is actually something we've moved away from somewhat. Oathbound Arena is probably my favorite oathbound book to date (I contributed about 30 pages to it), and not as many monsters showed up from other sources. I'm currently working on Wildwood and though I have referenced something that appears in an earlier book, I am trying to have my sections reference other sections of the book, the core books, or the core Oathbound book. That one item may be reprinted here as well and updated to 3.5.

Oh, and I'm not too fond of the illustrations of people that look like they have their muscles on the outside of their skin or clothes either.

Todd definitely has his own distinct style. He hasn't done any work on Oathbound since Plains of Penance, which is the second release.

 

[Staffan]

Did I mention that I contributed actually very little to the core book?

Oh, I'm just taking the opportunity to gripe a little. Last session ended with Israfel showing up as the party was trapped in a dungeon that was caving in, and offering to get them out of there. They agreed, she went all birdy and teleported them away. So, I was thinking I'd use the intro adventure but when I start reading through it I see in the first scene "A boarclops? What the HECK is a boarclops?" Kinda turned me off a bit.