What do you find most useful to your gaming?

[Dragongirl]

Vote.

 

[Griswold]

People to play the games with

My group has been in flux lately with players moving on


that aside, probably campaign material.

Gris.

 

[Tuerny]

I am all about anything that I can easily use in the creation of my homebrew worlds.
Generic, but interesting monster books, campaign setting construction kits (like Oriental Adventures), and solid metabooks like AEG's Magic and WotC's BoVD and Stronghold Builder's Guidebook make me drool..

 

[Psion]

Um, all of the above but the first two. I only occasionally run published adventures, and campaign worlds I sort of pick at, but generally stick with my own stuff. The remaining stuff, PrC, monster, and other mehcanical books in about equal measure. Other flavor books -- like what? Don't really add much so long as the aforementioned mechanical books have enough flavor of my own. Flavor books tend to clash with my own ideas, so I usually don't like them.

 

[Agback]

History and anthropology books, especially social history, and history of social institutions. I had a great time with Desmond Seward's "The Monks of War" (which drove two campaigns, one set in the 1120s and one in the 1290s), also with Linda M Paterson's "The World of the Troubadours" and with the Gies' "Life in a Mediaeval Village" and "Life in a Mediaeval City".

Those things are just packed with (a) adventure ideas and (b) things to use a to add an air of artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing plot and setting.

Regards.

 

[rounser]

Definitely modules....modules pretty much are setting material and flavour as well, if you let them define the world (and not the other way around).

You can run an entire campaign off of modules alone. The same cannot be said for crunch, class books or setting material.

 

[Sir Edgar]

Again, I have to agree with Rounser. Reading his posts, it seems to me like we think alike on a lot of issues.

Anyhow, yes, modules (now called "adventures") not only provide a ready-made setting but give DM's examples on how an adventure can/should be run.

But from a player's perspective I can see how crunchy stuff can be more interesting than fluffy stuff.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Campaign worlds. These give me all those cool adventure ideas that I can steal for my campaign. I avoid books with too many "crunchy bits" because they only tend to complicate gameplay.

Ironically, published adventure modules tend to take more effort to fit into my campaign than adventures I develop completely on my own...

 

[Dragongirl]

Other flavor books -- like what?

Well, added it to the poll to try to be complete. But it could be a stand alone book on say....life in 15th century Transylvania.

 

[Theuderic]

I just use the core books. I use my imagination to get the rest. If time isn't available, I wing it ( keeping strict fairness in my games beside....).