What would you want in a sourcebook?

[shadow]

What I want:
New Rules for Situations not in Core Rule Books (Mass Combat, Underwater Combat, Technology, ect.)
New Races
New Monsters
New Feats
New Prestige Classes

What I don't want:
Badly Written 'Flavor Fiction'. (See the beginning of most WhiteWolf books for an example)
New NPC's. Most of the ones that I've seen are too campain specific. Besides, creating NPC's is half the fun.
Historical/political information for a campaign world. I want to get information for a GAME, not have to read a dry history/political science textbook.
New Skills (Unless really needed since adding new skills tends to skew the game)

 

[BronzeDragon]

What really interests me now...ok, what I always get interested in, are Campaign Settings.

I just love them. They don't even have to come with any new rules. I just love to see fully developed geographies and histories for worlds I will never see in personal experience, but worlds i can think upon and let my imagination run wild.

 

[Nightfall]

Maybe it me...

But I'm STILL not clear as to WHY you are doing and HOW?

I mean are you doing this for pleasure, because some d20 company wanted you to, or you just want to strike out on your own? Whose in charge of distribution? Are you doing this in print or in electronic format? Finally, are you wanting to sell this to people OR is this a free thing?

 

[uv23]

What really interests me now...ok, what I always get interested in, are Campaign Settings.

I just love them. They don't even have to come with any new rules. I just love to see fully developed geographies and histories for worlds I will never see in personal experience, but worlds i can think upon and let my imagination run wild.

I agree 100%. I own several campaign setting core books and adventures and I will probably never actually use them for gaming purposes! I just like "experiencing" these new worlds, their histories, stories, details etc.

 

[LostSoul]

New magic systems that can totally replace, or stand side-by-side, the magic systems in the PHB.

A method of scaling DMG assumptions of wealth and magic use to higher- and lower-magic worlds.

 

[rounser]

But back to the topic at hand: Folks have suggested new adventures. Please. This hobby has been active for roughtly 30 years. There is more than enough free stuff out there to level a party from 1-20. We don't need more adventures.

I disagree. A lot. 3E has been around for two years; converting old modules from older editions can take a lot longer than you'd think, and the internet has a very limited range of quality adventures.

Adventures are the lifeblood of any campaign worth a damn, IMO, and they've been thoroughly outnumbered historically by books on setting fluff and rules splattery. You can have too many rules, too many settings....but adventures to select from? Dungeon magazine is the most popular seller of each month it's released for a reason. I also suspect that Dragon gets released more often because it's easier to write fluff than decent adventures.

Adventures sell worse than anything else, apparently. I suspect that this is either because of quality reasons (good adventures are rare and hard to write), or because people create their own adventures, or have their priorities back to front and spend more time on setting and rules than the adventures themselves.

So my advice, for what it is worth, is to use the old axiom of "write what you know". Like horses? Write about a culture that has people who were born in the saddle. Like scuba diving? Write about being underwater. Like carousing? Write about a tavern. Take a topic you know a great deal about and write the seminal RPG book on it. That's my advice.

I think that this sort of stuff is obtainable from an encyclopedia. Uncrunchy gaming material on horses, underwater environments and taverns are in my opinion optional fluff - conversely, I think that adventures are the meat of the game and essential.

 

[LostSoul]

I think that this sort of stuff is obtainable from an encyclopedia. Horses, underwater environments and taverns are in my opinion optional fluff - conversely, I think that adventures are the meat of the game and essential.

What if you write adventures about what you know?

 

[rounser]

What if you write adventures about what you know?

They'll probably be all the better for it.

 

[DonAdam]

We need more traps. Maybe its just b/c I've got a gnomish trapsmith in the party . I'd love to see more magical traps, especially traps combined with combat. I've got T&T and S&S, but I need more.

Look at popular fantasy books and movies too. If you think to yourself, "I wish my character could do that," then you've got an idea for something.

And, most importantly, ACCURATE RULES. There's no excuse for blatant rules errors anymore. A typo is one thing, but some of these things are just obscene. For instance, if you look at Chaos Magic by Mongoose, they have all of 2 sample spells listed. Both have incorrect casting DC's, by their own system. Inexcusable.

What I really really really want though is a book of about 10000 NPC's, with rules done accurately.

 

[Malin Genie]

I am of the firm belief that all woodsmen should be dual-wielding, spellcasting racists.

ROTFL

As to sourcebooks - I second the idea of new magic systems.