Grognardling: Only Ten Hard Copies

Monday, July 30, 2012

Only Ten Hard Copies

Recently, Brendan asked, "If you could only keep 10 of your printed RPG books, what would you pick?"

In no particular order (well, besides generally alternating between TSR-era titles and OSR titles):

The Arduin Trilogy: The first three Grimoires bound in one volume. Includes awesome critical hit and critical fumble tables, random tables that make character generation more fun (in both my and my players' opinion, at least), gonzo monsters (Kill Kittens!) and more classes, magic and optional rules than, well, you really need. Which is awesome.
Tome of Adventure Design: Matt Finch's giant book of tables. It includes everything from diseases to villainous motivations to randomized dungeon mapping to monster and trap generation to, well, so much more.
Ready Ref Sheets: Published by Judges Guild, this is a collection of tables. It includes city encounters, poison rules, an alignment charting system that's spelled out in a much more practical way than in the DMG, a random ruins generator, a well-thought-out, if complex justice system and a material component list for 48 potions, among other awesome things.
The Dungeon Alphabet: 26 letters in the alphabet, 26 themes for tables. This is a great book for inspiration and for flipping through when you've hit a block in preparing an adventure.
City Book 1: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker: Published by Flying Buffalo, this is a system neutral collection of businesses, the NPCs who run them and adventure hooks related to them for use with any city. I once ran a city adventure completely by the seat of my pants with this, Haldane and Matt Finch's City Encounters. For game prep, I just made sure I was really familiar with these three documents; my players loved it, and so did I.
The Wilderness Alphabet: Basically the Dungeon Alphabet for the outdoors. My favorite tables are the domains of the gods and the population factor tables that provide the quickest and easiest way to find out what businesses operate in town that I know of.
1E DMG: Only twenty-some pages into it, I've already gotten inspiration for Dragon PCs (against Gary's advice, I know) and decided to incorporate the Ranger follower tables, the Age rules and at least some of the disease rules into my game.
ACKS: The tightest version of D&D I know of, built to be tinkered with and with extensive end-game rules. If I ever had to choose just one iteration of The Game to play, straight from the book, for the rest of my life, it would probably be ACKS.
The Great Pendragon Campaign: Over 400 pages and 100 adventures, plus inspiration for more adventures and a great system for running battles, even for games other than Pendragon.
The Majestic Wilderlands: A rules supplement with great classes, multiple simple magic systems, magic items and simple combat rules additions. Enough history and geography to be well-versed in the Wilderlands is included as well.

3 comments:

ClawCarverJuly 30, 2012 at 6:41 AM
Sir, I salute your brevity, your economy, your concision! I've just been posting on the same topic and found myself rambling so much that I've had to divide my response in two.

We only have one book (the DMG) in common, although you have a couple of things that would be among my runners-up. And thanks for reminding me that I really need to get myself a copy of the Tome of Adventure Design some time.
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Words of Wisdom from the OSR

When we encountered a trap or a puzzle, we had to work them out for ourselves; we couldn't just "make a Spot check at DC 15" to find what we needed. The longer I am involved in old school gaming, the more convinced I am that that is the crux of the difference between older games and newer ones…[R]olling dice should never be a substitute for individual cleverness and creative thinking. -James Malezewski

OD&D is not and never has been about who is most powerful; it is about teamwork and having fun by overcoming obstacles together. -David Bowman

The point isn't to make role-playing some sort of masochistic experience where it's all suffering and death and pain and failure. The point is, if all these things are real and present dangers, then success means more. -James Edward Raggi IV

OSR cliche: "We don't explore characters, we explore dungeons". Not exactly. I think the idea is more: what thing do you use as rocket fuel until the campaign gets into orbit and goes where it wants to go? I use a dungeon to get there. Freak monsters and puzzle traps are the selling point--but once the campaign gets into orbit it goes where it goes. Different gamers may all end up in the same kind of campaigns but they were sold on getting into that rocket ship for the same reason. -Zak Smith

Referees/DMs/Labyrinth Lords (or whatever you want to call them) are indeed the final arbiter of the rules and have the final word on what happens inside their world; however, each and every one of us who run an RPG have made the choice to cede that control to our players by the very nature of playing the game. If we wanted total control, we would write short stories, novellas and novels, not play RPGs. The dice are the mechanism by which we cede that control – they are the means by which player choices are validated every time they choose to do something dangerous. -FrDave

Enforcing the written rules is a small part of being a good DM. In my experience the players will respect that you want to keep the game moving as long as they are convinced that you are not an adversarial DM. I can smile while giving my players all sorts of bad news. And they don't blink when I run roughshod over their notions of how D&D works. How can I get away with this? Because they trust that I'm there to have a good time with them, not against them. Show that you will call things down the middle, but will give them every chance when you're in a grey area. Let them use and abuse the tricks on their character sheets and the crazy plans they come up with. Then when you kill them they'll understand that it wasn't anything personal. -Jeff Rients