Wow. Just began reading Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes -- WOTC is really putting out some awesome books.

[guachi]

Each supplement reads like a "Best of Dragon Magazine". Take a year's worth of articles, compile the best, put out a supplement. The supplements resemble Unearthed Arcana, which largely was a compilation of Dragon Magazine articles.

The thing is, this kind of catch-all supplement works great if there's one of them. The more supplements like this you have the messier it gets trying to figure out where to look for something.

The net result is that with the supplements the whole is less than the sum of the parts. There are individual bits that are fantastic. And if the price were low enough I'd probably spring for them.

I've actually taken to (digitally) compiling the various parts of the supplements into coherent groups and it's much more useful. I've gotten as far as putting all the classes and races each into their own section. Either a cut-and-paste job from one of those online versions or just type it by hand. It all gets recompiled in Word. Some extraneous stuff gets stripped out and there are no pictures but it's otherwise all there. The formatting and fonts WotC uses aren't hard to imitate so it still looks similar. The net result is that I feel that WotC could compile their supplements into coherent sections and end up with a really useful product.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I wasn't a fan of the lists of names, but they didn't really bother me. I was far less fond of reprinting material already published in other supplements. I don't know if it bothered me more or less that most of that material was slightly changed from its earlier appearances.

Overall, though, I agree that the books are really good.

 

[TheSword]

I also liked them, particularly the Real world equivalent names like the Celtic ones. In my birthright revival campaign I’m working on the elves have Celtic/welsh sounding names.

The problem with internet name generators is you have to wade through a lot of tosh to find good ones.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I also liked them, particularly the Real world equivalent names like the Celtic ones. In my birthright revival campaign I’m working on the elves have Celtic/welsh sounding names.

The problem with internet name generators is you have to wade through a lot of tosh to find good ones.

I prefer little or no electronics at our table. If a player needs some inspiration for naming their character at session 0 (or session 42 when rolling a new character after the untimely demise of their first) or I need assistance naming the unexpected 5th shopkeeper of the night, well, thank you Xanathar’s.

I’ve been digging all three supplements mentioned by the OP, too. Our table is now Core +3.

 

[Shemeska]

I'm surprised myself, but the number of people who enjoy lore AND crunch AND the D&D metasetting as a whole seems to be pretty large.

The planar lore in MToF is absolutely packed with retcons and retcons of omission.

The artwork is spectacular, and if you've never read any prior D&D material it's probably awesome, but if you're a fan of previous settings and prior lore, it's frustrating.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

To be honest the pages and pages of random names put me off from buying the last one so I am glad that some one was impressed with it.

15 pages of names that you can easily ignore means the book is awful, got it.

 

[Morrus]

15 pages of names that you can easily ignore means the book is awful, got it.

That’s not what he said. People are allowed to not like things you like. The sarcasm is not necessary. It’s OK when people like different things to you.

 

[Dualazi]

I have to say that I wasn't totally impressed with the various Hardback Adventures that WOTC has put out for 5e, but wow the last three rules supplements they have put out (MTofF, XGtoE, and VGtoM) are excellent! I really enjoy the way these volumes are much more than just player's guides, DM's guides or Monster Manuals. Brilliant!

Keep up the good work WOTC!

MarkK

I'd say their batting average is closer to 1/2 really. Volo's was really good, I personally found Xanathar's to be largely garbage, and so far Mordenkainen's is shaping up to be 50% amazing (new monsters) and 50% awful (needless/useless static lore).

Plus, the continual habit of including reprinted content drives the value of the books down further, especially if you were one of the people who bought the other products, and only serves to make the release schedule that much more lethargic.

The list of names is helpful for people who are playing rpgs for the first time and want everything in one place rather than go trawling the internet.

They’re obviously not aimed at people who post on Internet forums, so we’re not a great sample for adjudicating that section. It’s only a couple of pages for gods sake.

Virtually everyone is on the internet 24/7 these days, as smartphones continue to advance. Looking up names is trivial pretty much anywhere. Also, it was not “only a couple of pages”. It was almost 10% of the entire book, which was meant to be one of the largest supplementary rules expansion of the edition thus far. That's a pretty big oversight and it is rightly knocked for it.

 

[Mercule]

I prefer little or no electronics at our table.

Interesting. I've actually stopped buying the physical version of books and started going full DDB. I like having as small of a footprint as possible. I also use an initiative tracker. Of course, I'm a computer programmer who got my start writing a character builder for 1E on the Commodore 64 my folks got in middle school. So.... having computer aids for D&D goes back almost as far back as having D&D, for me.

I get the whole no electronics thing, though. My group is pretty good, but I've seen some where they practically needed a phone basket at the door.

 

[Mercule]

As far as the book goes, I've never cared for the Blood War, despite using a ton of fiends in my game (I have my own take on demons vs devils); am indifferent to gith; don't really care for some of the changes to elves I've heard about; and loathe drow. That means the majority of the book is actively useless to me.

I picked up the book simply because I swore I'd put my money where my mouth is and support anything WotC put out that wasn't archored to the Realms, including names. I knew what I was getting before I dropped the money. I'm not unhappy about doing so, and I'll eventually read the whole thing -- maybe even have my mind changed about the Blood War or gith. Otherwise, still not buying anything with Volo's name on it, set in the Realms, etc. I will also happily buy something tying to Eberron, Oerth, or Athas, even if I'm not going to get a ton out of the book, directly. The message is: I want to throw money at D&D, but only when it excludes the Realms or when they are one of many worlds, even if it's "first among equals".