What RPG books/manuals do you really regret buying?

[trancejeremy]

My most recent regret is the "Book of Immortals" from Mongoose. I didn't quite pay full price, but close (like $27). It doesn't suck, exactly , it's just not what I was looking for (I was looking for something like the Immortals rules from basic D&D). I tried to sell it on ebay, and couldn't. (I set the minimum bid at $9 with $2 shipping, which apparently is more than anyone wanted to pay).

Just looking at it irks the heck out of me, so I am seriously considering setting it on fire or something. (well, not really. But it does angry up my blood).

 

[Azgulor]

The World of Darkness Books I bought (Vampire, Werewolf, Dark Ages Vampire - all pre-nWoD). I mined them for ideas, but the system and pretentiousness was a turn-off.

The Scarred Lands books I bought with the exception of the Divine and the Defeated. The early releases of the series just screamed "COOL" to me and I really loved the whole gods vs. titans take on the cosmology. I waited in anticipation for the Ghelspad hardcover and then started poring through the books to create my campaign....

...and discovered the holes, warts, and flaws of the setting that seemed to grow with each subsequent release.

Now I'm not saying the books I bought weren't good. Many of them were. I just grew tired of reading and thinking, so much wasted potential as different authors tweaked the backstory/history to account for their changes, or rewrote the things that made Scarn cool in order to conform more to traditional D&D. Great concepts, often poor execution. (High Elves, Termana, Psionics-for-Slarecians-only -- No wait, we changed our minds, etc. Considering I'll never run a game in Scarn, that's a lot of money I dumped into the setting.

Forgotten Realms. I shifted to the setting when I was too young to realize that publisher support isn't always a good thing - too many cooks in the kitchen making a big pile of yeah-it's-got-the-kitchen-sink crap. Stirring in uber-NPCs whose power would nerf your PCs ability to significantly impact the setting created a worse "what's left?" feeling than DragonLance or Middle-Earth did for my groups (again this was when I was too stupid to chuck the crap, but in looking back, I don't want to have to perform surgery on a published setting with a meat cleaver...) If only I could get the money back and have spend it on cooler product lines...

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Without a doubt, the Book of Exalted Deeds. The Book of Vile Darkness at least had its uses for villain-building, but I stopped reading the BoED about 1/4 of the way through. The Epic Level Handbook might be useful for converting characters from past editions, but there's no way my campaigns will ever reach epic levels.

I'd also include the Complete Wizard's Handbook from 2e. Compared to the Thieves and Fighters handbooks, this one was really lacking.

 

[twofalls]

Wow. I don't know if I'm just more forgiving than many of you who are posting in this thread or if I just have really bad taste. If it's the latter then somehow I've managed to get 13 other gamers in my two game groups to join my bad taste club for over 8 years.

Creature Collection did had a few issues I agree, such as the art and lack of CRs (which I really don't use anyhow), but it has some very orginal and neat ideas. The Alley Reaper, Abadian Battle Dog, and the Carnival of Shadows just to name stuff I've used recently to my players delight (unless they are excellent liars).

Whats wrong with the 3.0 character splatbooks? I have three players who have built excellent characters using feats and Prestige Classes from them.

I don't have any regrets, I love RPG books, and even if I don't ever use a volume, once I read the book it becomes the fertilizer my mind uses to cook up ejoyable evenings with my friends.

 

[Samothdm]

I don't have any regrets, I love RPG books, and even if I don't ever use a volume, once I read the book it becomes the fertilizer my mind uses to cook up ejoyable evenings with my friends.

Well said.

I've made that point before in other threads, but as usual, took about 10 times the space to say it so most people probably got bored and didn't read it.

 

[DMH]

Low Tech, High Tech, Ultra Tech. Simple.

I am not enthralled with UT and UT2, but LT is one of my most favorite rpg books. HT is just to focused on killing things for my tastes.

Hopefully the 4th ed Tech book is going to correct this (IIRC it has all 5 tech books- inc Biotech).

 

[John Morrow]

A total waste. It runs for sh*t on my machine-- and my machine is no slouch.

How much memory do you have and what OS? The Demo seemed to run OK on my four year old Mac iBook with 640mb of memory. Of course if you want a real memory hog, try PCGen (I have to shut just about everything else down on my system to run it). Is Java's memory management really that bad or is the problem with how the standard container classes use memory or just the way this software is programmed? Anyone have a clue?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If nothing else, I love the map.

Same here. The inn shows up in every one of my campaigns, with world-appropriate owners and staff.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Without a doubt, the Book of Exalted Deeds. The Book of Vile Darkness at least had its uses for villain-building, but I stopped reading the BoED about 1/4 of the way through.

I wasn't all that impressed with it either, but I put it away and went back to it months later and found it to be much more interesting than I initially thought. Still, it seems much more limited in utility than I would have liked.

The Epic Level Handbook I don't quite regret buying. The entire setting section of the book could have been dropped so as to shorten the book and reduce its price. The monster section is fantastic. I was disappointed that more wasn't done with the entire concept of epic level characters. It seemed more that the design intent was to retain balance at the expense of fun.

 

[Nightfall]

My only regret?

Player's Guide to Faerun. (not that I bought it. Just that it came out and completely fubarred Orcus and the other Archfiends.)

I have few if any RPG book regrets but I am understanding towards people that felt SL had been wrenched around a great deal.