Your single favourite RPG book?

[TwoSix]

Dark Matter Campaign Setting for Alternity. Just a masterpiece of a book.

 

[Doug McCrae]

13th Age is my current favourite because it's what I'm reading right now and it has a lot of interesting ideas. It's a different approach to D&D.

 

[Piratecat]

Probably the original Planescape boxed set. That sucker completely transformed the way I run games.

If not that, any of the three 1e books would be a tie, but I think the DMG would win.

 

[jasper]

Grimtooth book of traps.

 

[Paul Masao Wisham]

Ad&d 1st ed. DM’s Guide

 

[Paul Masao Wisham]

Ad&d 1st ed. DM’s Guide

No#2 call of Cthulhu 3rd ed. Rule book
#3 Stormbringer 1st.

Hon. Mention :007 Rule book 1st(?)
Champions rule book 2nd(?)

 

[Arilyn]

I can't pick just one.

1. 13th Age Bestiary. So much fun to read and packed with ideas

2. Ars Magica 2e. Love the atmosphere and stories woven through the text.

3. The One Ring books. Beautifully written with great art. Feels like Tolkien wrote a rpg.

4. Forgotten Realms Boxed Set for 2e. Loved the maps, the npcs, the plastic overlay. Didn't use it for DnD, but got adopted for other systems a lot! Also loved the Waterdeep boxed set. We spread the maps all over the kitchen floor, and just explored for a whole afternoon.

 

[Mercule]

1E AD&D DMG. I don't know that anyone can match Gygax's style for making ideas pop into my head.

For second tier or sleeper contenders, I'm going with Aria: Worlds, Fate Core, or the original Eberron Campaign Setting.

Aria: Worlds tried something that I'd never considered, before: creating and playing a civilization through the ages with the focus on the narrative and roleplay possibilities, not strategic or war game. I never got a table of political science geeks together to actually play it, but a couple of us put it through some paces. If nothing else, it's probably the single best source book I've seen to try to flesh out "narrative settings" (i.e. cities, provinces, nations, tribes, or whatever cohesive group you want to describe), even if you're not going to "play" them as characters.

Fate Core really flipped a switch, for me, on how you could tie descriptive elements of the characters and setting into the mechanics. I picked up the book on a lark and haven't been able to get it out of my head, since. Unfortunately, I have one player who will do Fate for anything besides fantasy and another (young/new) player who just wants to get her arms around D&D before trying anything else. Fortunately, you can use the campaign generation/session 0 tools regardless of the system used for task resolution, so I'm making some slow progress and probably get some of the benefits of actually using Fate.

Eberron Campaign Setting probably isn't anything inherently remarkable, as a book. I have to include it, though, because I normally avoid published settings like the plague, especially for fantasy and doubly for D&D. I just prefer (strongly) to create my own setting. I also hate mixing magic as tech or having Magi-tech. But, I really love the Eberron setting. I can't put my finger on it, but it blew past two pretty solid "rules" that had held for over 20 years. Heck, after listening to the Manifest Zone (podcast) episode on the Daelkyr, I was ready to break another "rule" which is the Far Realms and D&D mix like chocolate and ketchup.

 

[Celebrim]

Fate Core really fllipped a switch, for me, on how you could tie descriptive elements of the characters and setting into the mechanics. I picked up the book on a lark and haven't been able to get it out of my head, since. Unfortunately, I have one player who will do Fate for anything besides fantasy and another (young/new) player who just wants to get her arms around D&D before trying anything else. Fortunately, you can use the campaign generation/session 0 tools regardless of the system used for task resolution, so I'm making some slow progress and probably get some of the benefits of actually using Fate.

There is tons of really beautiful stuff in Fate Core about how to think about and prepare for play, but unfortunately I feel it's tied to a less than amazing resolution system, and really pedestrian writing in a lot of places.

Eberron Campaign Setting probably isn't anything inherently remarkable, as a book...But, I really love the Eberron setting.

I have a hard time deciding if Eberron or Golarion is the best published D&D setting of all time. It's sadly not actually a crowded field despite the number of published settings. I'd tend to lean toward Eberron though even if it isn't completely my cup of tea. I have a great fondness for settings that are coherent both with respect to the rules and the normal process of play. Eberron is coherent in that way and original in a way that nothing else has touched besides homebrews. There are probably 20 people on EnWorld with better settings than Forgotten Realms, but I don't think anyone can objectively claim to be better than Eberron - just different.

 

[Mercule]

There is tons of really beautiful stuff in Fate Core about how to think about and prepare for play, but unfortunately I feel it's tied to a less than amazing resolution system, and really pedestrian writing in a lot of places.

Yeah. The thread about Genesys has me kind of wanting a hybrid of the two systems, with the aspect-driven, rules-light nature of Fate, but a variation on the Narrative Dice from Genesys.

Maybe invokes/compels would add boosts and setbacks while one option for stunts would be to upgrade from a skill to a proficiency die -- throw a Fate Point to upgrade, too. Very from the hip, but something like that could be cool.