What d20 Purchases to you Regret?

[Nighthawk]

The Witchfire Trilogy adventures: Excellent material there, enough so that I wanted to have a long-term campaign based on them. My playing group at the time decided to wait for the campaign material to be released and then game away, so to speak. Unfortunately, the wait turned out to be too long and we moved on to other campaigns. Regretfully, I might add, but with an understandable reason for doing so.

Mongoose Class Books: I just don't see the quality that others do. Obviously I am missing something, but there it is.

Savage Species: This is mostly based on my dislike of the current ECL system, mixed with my lack of understanding as to why the book was made the way it was.


The products I am most satisfied with: Monster Manual 3.5, Midnight (campaign setting book), Vigil Watch: Secrets of the Asaathi, and the Monsternomicon.

 

[Gundark]

.though I still hate the dog, lizard & cat people ...when I get my new homebrew up & running, I'll be using standard D&D races w/ AU.

Yeah....I hate it when games/books have races like this...it just seems so unimaginative

 

[Gundark]

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.

You know the original traveller was the same, I kid you not, those were the most confusing set of rules that I have ever seen!!!!

 

[Treebore]

You know the original traveller was the same, I kid you not, those were the most confusing set of rules that I have ever seen!!!!

It takes a bit of doing, but they can be understood, in any edition. Well, Megatraveller was pretty difficult until they put out the errata in one of the Digest issues.

Fortunately you do not NEED to figure out those particular rules, roughing/winging it will work just fine.

 

[Sir Trent]

I'd like to see...

I'd like to see someone organize some polls of all the 'regretted' books mentioned in this thread, and then have a run off to determine the most hated book of all time.

 

[Trickstergod]

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.

Well, keep in mind that some of those better-selling books also tend to have been printed earlier on, or were the first of their kind in some way. I believe that's part of the reason for their popularity. That, and one would think that books being printed by the larger companies - Wizards of the Coast, Sword and Sorcery Studios - would be of better quality than their competitors. That isn't true, but the professional look of their books is more likely to garner a blind-buy (not to mention the "official" D&D status of WotC books and the occasional misleading statement of Core rulebook or sourcebook on some d20 products).

I'm also not quite how so sure how big of a dent reviews have on buying books; it seems to me there's a substantial amount of people who pre-order or spend their money the moment a book hits the shelves. Which isn't particularly conducive to giving quality books their due and giving shoddy ones the boot.

 

[Neo]

Hmm well as a long time gamer and collector of RPG's.. I cant say I really regret having bought anything.. but thier have certainly been some books I was gravely disappointed in or have found no use in.

Most Disappointed with: EPIC level handbook

(I had high hope for the above, but all it turned out to be was a powergamers toilet reading.. instead of providing more options for what high level characters can do and become its just all about combat and battering harder creatures...yawn).

Gamma World Handbook
(Mechanically it isn't bad, and it looks nice enough... but the thing that annoys me is that it wasn't just updated it was effectively re-made.. and as a result it no longer has the "Gamma World" feel to it, its more Sci Fi and less Post Apocalypse now).

Dragonlords of Melnibone
(Well reminded Psion , yup this book I bought as I love Moorcocks Young Kingdoms, but this was too much of a poor attempt to straight convert and it didnt work at all...a real shame really.

Least Use From: Enemeies and Allies

(Probably just me but despite seeing the iconics statted which was nice the rest of this books NPC's etc.. are just a waste of time, no new rules, new PRC's, new items or spells... just generic NPC's of which I am more than capable of making my own).

Most Treasured Books: Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide (just beautiful),

Midnight (Fantastic Premise, and i love the art),

Mutants and Masterminds (revolutionised the Supers RPG imo),

Babylon 5 RPG and Fact Book (few too many show stills and no original art, but the book itself is great and based on my favourite show of all time),

Star Wars Revised (its Star Wars...nuff said),

Armageddon 2089 (A wonderful Mech based system for D20),

Quintessential Witch (nice new class with some great new rules),

Fang and Fury (Vampires done right).

Most Treasure E-Books: Everything Darwins World (I wrote some fo Metal Gods btw , this is just PA as it should be done.. and leaves the new attempt of Gamma World in the dust).

Most disappointing Non D20 Game: Pretty much every Supers RPG I ever bought... TSRs Marvel was okay but had so many balance issues it was unreal... but in general until M&M by Green Ronin the Supers genre for RPG's had been a dead duck.

Also pretty much every book from Palladium (although they have some fantastic setting ideas Robotech, RIFTS etc.., and have awesome art, thier system is just plain broken and they refuse to acknowledge it, I still however bought msot of thier books, which I probably shouldn't have done as i helped to leave them with the delusion that everything was fine).

Most Treasured Non D20 Games: All my Battletech/Mechwarrior material,

All my Earthdawn books (the worst publiscised RPG in history imo, which is a true shame as it was also one of the best).

 

[Psion]

Updated post thread necromancy

Any list I make is going to be incomplete, but these are a few that stick out:

Purchases I regret (I'll stick to things I actually have spent money on):

• Rings of Power - Shoddy retro-mechanics in a thin overpriced book of mostly fluff.
• Miniatures Handbook - Looked intriguing, but as support for the RPG, it really tanks.
• Stronghold Buider's Guide - Very dry, long, complicated shopping list.
• Strongholds & Dynasties - More fluff than utility, not to mention that the book is primarily illustrated by the plainest maps in the industry -- basically geometric shapes on graph paper.
• Dragonlords of Melnibone - Great background material cribbed from the BRP game material. Dissapointingly shallow adaptation to d20.
• Sorcery & Steam - Nice background material, but the rules material did not form a cohesive whole the way that it needed to.
• Those half-sheet sized adventures by AEG and FFG - I thought these were a great idea, and there are a few gems. Unfortunately, the quality, attention to detail, and idea content is very lite, and many plots in them are very repetitive.
• d20 Modern Weapons Locker Y'know, I don't mind gun books, and though MAG was great. But as this one goes, it was both a bit dry, and it just tread over the same ground UMF went over.
• Book of Exalted Deeds Power for roleplay disadvanages? I thought we learned better than this by now... and to see it from WotC themselves. (sigh). The moral definitions were tiresome and in some case, harmful to efforts to distinguish alignment as a useful tool. Too many of the mechanics mirror BoVD -- good and evil are supposed to be different. Of these teh worst is: "Good poisons & diseases" struck me as dumb, not to mention inconsistent with the (equally dumb) stance that "ability damage is evil." I find the arch-celestial stats about as useful as the stats in...
• Deities & Demigods (How did I miss this) I don't mind the idea of gods being confrontable and having stats. I really don't. But a whole deity monster manual trivializes the effort. TSR published a 2e series of books on FR deities that was so popular that even non-FR fans ran out to buy it because it focussed on the priests, but in 3e, it seems we forgot what we have learned and reverted to the deities as monsters model. Bleah!

Stuff I couldn't do without (other than the core books):

• Toolbox - Great material to get you going when you are running on the fly or the players do things unexpected.
• Relics & Rituals - Still one of the definitive books in my collection. The rituals system is simply fantastic and is a gem among d20 products (notice that it is one of few third party subsystems that other publishers are using the OGL to adapt to their own products.) A great selection of spells presented in a manner that lets you dump the SL baggage, but still get ideas from it.
• Creature Collection II - One of the most interesting collection of unique yet adaptable creatures out there.
• Legions of Hell - Still sets a standard among monster books. Update this to Book of Fiends as you wish
• Psionics Handbook - A staple, the best psionics system the game has ever had. I will add that I prefer to run it with Mindscapes.
• Plot & Poison - Lots of great, unique ideas for your dark elf villains, along with a flurry of ideas that you can use in any game.
• Book of Eldritch Might I & III - Two great magic supplements.

 

[Spike Y Jones]

Village of Briarton

Village of Briarton - Sigh, I bought this one twice, actually. But once would have been more than enough. It's okay, but almost none of the poeple in the village have any relationship to each other - they're like a group of random NPCs.

It's odd you should say this. I just drew up a chart of links between the various NPCs in the book, and of the 52 named NPCs, 49 of them have one or more links to other named NPCs explicitly mentioned in the text.

Of the remaining three, one is described as an outsider who married into the closeknit community and then found himself isolated when his wife died (so the lack of links made sense for him), another is a travelling salesman who only passes through the village for a few days every sixth week (so his lack of links makes sense; and while it's not made explicit he does have an implicit link to one of the other named NPCs if the GM should decide to explore it), and a third who probably should have more links (she's a shopkeeper, so definitely deals with plenty of the village population, but is apparently not good at making close relationships with any) but doesn't.

So, out of 52 named NPCs, 50 have relationships to each other, one doesn't and it's for a good reason, and one doesn't for no good reason. Doesn't sound like "almost none of the people in the village have any relationship to each other" to me.

Spike Y Jones, editor, The Village of Briarton

 

[Spike Y Jones]

Village of Briarton

Sorry for the repeats; they were posted while the forums were having their troubles yesterday and each time my computer told me that I hadn't managed to get through.

Spike Y Jones