What do you find most useful to your gaming?

[nopantsyet]

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..

Yeah...what he said.

I like campaign materials (I have at least three of them) because it's good inspiration. Any writer who writes less than he reads is an idiot. Reading setting and flavor materials helps keep it on the brain which yields inspiration.

Crunchy books are also good. I've got a number of those. Class books are pretty low on my list. I have the WotC splatbooks so that I know what my players are asking for when they want to take xxxx feat.

And I can't live without monster books. Historically speaking, I'm not a monster creator. Although for the campaign I'm running right now, I have created a few--my first monsters ever!

 

[Lucifer]

Monster books, of course.

 

[ced1106]

Certainly adventures. I kind of like writing my own adventures but in 3ed there is so much detail that needs to be juggled in order to make a "correct" adventure. If I make it myself chances are I will miss important stuff like the proper number of feats an 8HD monsterous humanoid should have and if it qualifies for the ambidexterity feat or the effects of a certain spell I've failed to consider.

So what other reasons are adventures so popular?

When I was growing up on AD&D, gamers pretty much snubbed modules. I'm curious what made them more respectable.

Myself, I have a large collection of adventures, but play only a handful of them.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

That's most peoples' experience as well, I think. Standard procedure is to let the world define the types of adventures which are possible (and, more importantly, aren't possible) within it's bounds.

If you don't mind some pre-campaign reading of multiple Dungeon magazine adventures and building your world to meet their needs for props, it's possible to reverse the situation, and have your worldbuilding become thrall to the needs of your adventures, rather than your choice of adventures become thrall to the needs of your worldbuilding.

Heh. I am currently running a campaign set in the Warhammer world, and the current villains are the Shan, beings detailed in "Delta Green: Countdown". So far, I didn't even need to convert any game stats for these critters - and yet, the adventures practically write themselves.

Don't give me game stats. Give me memorable monsters and villains! I can improvise game stats any day of the week...

 

[Cassiel666]

I get the most use out of philosophy books, in general, with a heavy emphasis in metaphysics. I find that the best way to create fantasy is to be acquainted with the necessary conditions for its possibility.

Keeping that in mind, history books are good too; the primary ones anyway, like Livy and Caesar and Herodotos.

As far as gaming goes, the system is really of secondary importance. I don't think any of the worlds created from the D&D framework have been exceptionally good; the worlds that the D&D framework was created from, on the other hand...

 

[S'mon]

So what other reasons are adventures so popular?

When I was growing up on AD&D, gamers pretty much snubbed modules. I'm curious what made them more respectable.

Because 1990s AD&D 2e modules were rubbish, and current (WotC & 3rd party) ones mostly aren't?

Personally I love my 1980s AD&D modules, especially the 3rd-party ones (before TSR went lawyer-crazy), and I still use them, along with a few current ones. But I don't use '90s stuff, by and large. Even WoTC 2e stuff isn't very good, mostly (eg 'Slavers' was a HUGE disappointment).

 

[Henry]

Other Crunchy Books...

For example, books that introduce novel campaign ideas or twists, or fully fleshed out areas that could be included into a campaign where it's not currently, thereby enriching the flavor a bit.

An excellent example of the kind of product I like is in Dragon Magazine's new feature, "Campaign Components." Knighthoods, Swashbuckling - these are the kinds of things I could use in my campaign if I currently don't have them. For instance, even for those no running a Japanese-flavored or Medieval European Campaign, The Campaign Components article on Knighthood gives numerous examples of other "knighthoods" throughout the ancient world, which fit campaigns with other flavors.

Swashbuckling could easily work in a campaign side-by-side with knighthoods, using the ideas from these features - in a city, you don't need clumsily armored individuals in the narrow streetways, with weapons that take too much room to swing and maneuver - you need lightly-armored and quick-moving rogues who can answer the fast-moving environs of the back-alleys and the streets.

Give me crunchy bits to fill in the rules-blanks - I can supply the story myself, using my players for inspiration. Thanks to my players, in the twelve years my campaign world has lived, I have had two demigods introduced, one greater god, one imprisoned god was subsequently freed and later slain permanently, one whole new city founded, and an entire war was stopped. My players are my sourcebook; my challenge is to come up with things that introduce new wrinkles for them or challenge them.