What RPG books/manuals do you really regret buying?

[haiiro]

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.

Correct on all counts (and it was 2000). This is a gorgeous book, and given how good LUG's treatment of Star Trek was, I assume it's also a pretty good game.

 

[LondonReign]

Planar Handbook--what a disappointing piece of dung. As a Planescape buff, this thing was utter crap. As a D&D player, this was utter crap. Actually, based on previous discussions of this book on ENworld, I can't believe this hasn't gotten more mentions. Have I mentioned it is an utter piece of crap?

Epic Handbook: will never, ever use it. A few scatered decent ideas, but after further consideration I will never run a level 20+ campaign.

 

[LondonReign]

<Manual of the Planes- never really had a chance to use it, as I used my own cosmology, and nobody wanted to do planescape.>

This is NOT Planescape. Not even close.

 

[Turjan]

<Manual of the Planes- never really had a chance to use it, as I used my own cosmology, and nobody wanted to do planescape.>

This is NOT Planescape. Not even close.

Well, does it say Planescape anywhere in the title? It sounds more like 'Manual of the Planes' to me. And it's exactly that .

 

[LondonReign]

The poster said his players didn't want to do Planescape. I was pointing out that Planar HB is *NOT* Planescape. Perhaps we are saying the same thing?

 

[Turjan]

The poster said his players didn't want to do Planescape. I was pointing out that Planar HB is *NOT* Planescape. Perhaps we are saying the same thing?

Oops, sorry! I didn't recognize it as quote when I read it. You are right, we mean the same thing .

 

[Razz0putin]

this looks like such a good thread I'm going to save it for later

 

[S'mon]

MoTP has enough thinking-outside-the-box ideas in it that for me it's quite useful, although my own campaign is Moorcockian type planar setup not really Great Wheel. The presige classes' crunch didn't look very good but the fluff gave me some interesting ideas - generally I'm a sucker for fluff.

 

[Morte]

Only mild regrets, not real horror:

3.0 DMG: It just wasn't that much use for NWN. I hoped it would help with balancing opponents/gear/loot/XP as I went up through the levels into unfamiliar territory, but it didn't really. NWN is too different.

Blue Planet Essential Collection: Somewhere in these 800 pages of waffle, there's a useful 256 page sourcebook trying to get out. Whilst it was a bargain (five quid for four hardbacks on eBay), it's just not worth the time.

Centauri Knights: I was looking for tightly-focussed hard SF but it turned out to be basically fantasy gameplay (nanotech used via the BESM magic system). Sort of like Shadowrun in disguise. I think it's actually an excellent game/setting, but it's not to my taste.

 

[tetsujin28]

I really regretted buying Aftermath, hated the rules.

One of my all-time faves. I've played it a lot.

As for Chaosium ever doing d20 again: Ain't. Gonna. Happen. The guys who still work there have an unholy hat on for d20. To them, the fact that Dragonlords didn't sell just gave them an excuse to say, "See! I told you no-one wanted d20 versions of our products!"