What RPG books/manuals do you really regret buying?

[Torm]

I've USED both Deities and Demigods and Faiths and Pantheons for stats in games I have run. What can I say - in some games I run, I'm a bit of a Monte Haul DM, and it takes stuff like that to make proper challenges once the PCs get up a bit in levels.

 

[hero4hire]

Aberrant..All seemed really cool until we actually <i>played</i>.

The system couldn't handle it!

 

[reanjr]

Why the hat for the Book of Exalted Deeds? That's one of my favorites... haven't used it much yet, but it has loads of fodder for my next Planescape campaign... same goes for Savage Species...

For me it was the vows. Vows to give something up or lead a particular path in life are not done in order to get l337 p0WrZ. They're done because you feel it's right to sacrifice or to lead a devout life. Whenever my players ask if they can take the vow of poverty (almost all of them want to play a monk, go figure), I tell them sure, you can take a vow of poverty. That would be really interesting. Oh, you mean Exalted poverty? No.

 

[S'mon]

I actually thought Creature Collection has a lot of interesting ideas in it - the CRs are crap, but CRs in WoTC's MM are nearly as erratic anyway, so doesn't bug me. I don't use CC much except when running published scenarios that include CC monsters (Gaxmoor, Barakus) but I find many of the creatures quite interesting & may use them in future. Of course much of the art is abysmal, and the Scarred Lands references detract from its usefulness. CC2 is similar, more focused on aberrations so less useful, art marginally better, again S&S's editing of the submitted creatures seems to actively subtract value from them but some good stuff remains usable.

 

[S'mon]

While I, like some others in this thread, enjoy reading a RPG book and may have it collecting dust on the shelf for a few years without reagarding it as a bad buy, I have done a few purchases that afterwads made me think: "Why?"

1. The thin Greyhawk booklet that WotC put on the market when D&D 3.0 was new.

Oh yeah, me too on that. & a player stole my map.

I have 3.0 PsiHB, haven't used it but at least it's there if I need psionics I guess.

Bastion of Broken Souls - I knew this would be iffy but I wanted to see what a high level 3e scenario looked like. It sucked even more than I thought it would.

By & large though the great bulk of stuff I've bought, I haven't regretted.

 

[S'mon]

D&DG - stats for avatars that actually differed from god stats would be a nice start... the CR 20 Avatars in that free Norse Pantheon download you can get onlne is far better. With advice from Upper Krust I'm working on deity stats in line with 1e L&L - eg Odin is 40th level, most gods are in the 20th-40th range, with maybe +4 to +8 CR for deity powers.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Well the DUNE book released at the same time as Third Edition.

The Dune book was actually released? I thought it never saw print. Anyone have pics or a link?

 

[Thanee]

3.0 Psionics Handbook.

Worst RPG book I own (as many bad things can be said about the XPH, it was a huge step forward at least ^^).

Bye
Thanee

 

[haiiro]

In the overall scheme of things, very few -- but there have been some...

Diablo d20 stuff
Diomin
Dragonlords of Melnibone
Dungeons (AEG)
Everquest PHB
Evil (AEG)
Hero Builder's Guidebook

Diomin is the single worst gaming product I've ever owned...and I used to own Rifts and World of Synnibar. In fact, in a few more years I think I'll be nostalgic for Diomin's awfulness, and wish I hadn't sold it.

 

[Staffan]

The Dune book was actually released? I thought it never saw print. Anyone have pics or a link?

A limited edition of Dune using Last Unicorn's house system (or at least not d20) was released at GenCon 2000 or 1999 (I *think* it was 2000). WOTC then said "Next year, we'll be releasing a d20 verion of this." Before that happened, LUG's license expired, and given the headaches LUG apparently had had with the Herbert estate, and said estate wanting more money on account of the license being worth more with the SciFi channel miniseries coming up, WOTC said "screw this" and didn't renew the license. But those Dune books that were released at GenCon are apparently worth quite a lot.