What books do I need?


3.5/d20/OGL


I'm a 13 year-old DM wondering what books I should have in an "Essential D+D Library". Currently I have the PHB, DMG, MML, Fiend Folio, MML3, Expanded Psionics Handbook, Oriental Adventures, Libris Mortis, Complete Warrior, Forgotten Realms (Ed. 3 and AD+D), Shackled City, and Eberron.

Liberty's Edge

Unearthed Arcana, Arms and Equipment guide, the rest of the Complete series, and whatever else appeals to your style of gaming.

game on


Boy, have you come to the right place to ask questions!

I think the three core rulebooks have everything you need. The rest is just icing on the cake.

Actually, a subsription to Dungeon Magazine will help you more than any of those other books will ever do.

Ultradan

Liberty's Edge

and don't forget a subsciption to Dragon magazine


Ultradan wrote:

...I think the three core rulebooks have everything you need. The rest is just icing on the cake.

Actually, a subsription to Dungeon Magazine will help you more than any of those other books will ever do.

I'm with Ultradan, big-time :)

You need, in this order:

1) Core books PH, DMG, MM
2) Dungeon subscription
3) Complete blankety-blank books (more player options!)
4) other stuff

I can't agree more with (2). It'll throw more useable, interesting curve balls the way of your players than MM2 or any of those other books will.

BTW Savage Species is probably worth a look, depending on what your players like.

Regards, and Good Luck.

Jack


Spyder wrote:
and don't forget a subsciption to Dragon magazine

Or do forget it.

Teasing, but I don't care for Dragon anymore. I feel a lot of the content is new material for it's own sake -- or more to the point, for the sake of selling issues, sometimes without regard for quality.

Dungeon tends to introduce few new rules (meaning less poorly-thought out gratuitous garbage), but does the hard part for you -- putting it all together into useable scenarios and campaigns.

Dragon is way down on my list.

Yes, I have some biases. All IMHO :)

Jack


Mind you, all you really *need* is the core rulebooks and a healthy dose of imagination. Dungeon Mastering is like bartending - take one part imagination, two parts inspiration, a dash of whatinhell and agitate until well mixed. Here's what I consider to be my recipe guides:

1.) Cityworks, Fantasy Flight Games. My indispensible guide to all things urban.
2.) Toolbox, AEG. Charts, tables, and more charts and tables than you can shake a stick at. And several that you can't.
3.) Secrets, AEG. My recipe book of "whatinhells."
4.) Email subscriptions to Roleplaying Tips and Tome of Trouble. Every topic that may come to a DM's attention is covered in RPT. I spent the 10 bucks for the archive of the first 250 issues and it was well worth it. ToT is fantastic as well - this guy, Justin Gasal, has put out a mostly-weekly e-zine for the last FOUR years, with little tidbits like a couple of new spells, interesting items, traps, NPC name ideas - there is always something good here. Now if I can just convince him to put everything into a PDF book, that would be great. :-D
5.) Spell Compendium, WotC. My new "really darn useful" book, happily compiling multiple sources of spells.
6.) GM Mastery - NPC Essentials. Another new book (for me), written by Johnn Four of RPT, its rapidly becoming my favorite new NPC reference guide.

I can think of many other books I use on a regular basis, but these are the books (and sites) I keep coming back to.


Ultradan, Tattered and others beat me to it. You don't need anything except the core books...and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

As ever,
ACE


I agree with the rest, the 3 core rulebooks have everything that you need. Some of the things that I would suggest would be to...

1. Read up on history and other subjects that will be coming up in your world. After all, "Truth is stranger than fiction."

2. Read these and other forums for advice from players that have been there.

3. Make a notebook where you write everything that you have learned down in so you have one central location.

4. And above all, just have fun.

Sovereign Court

Once you feel ready to pull it off, I would suggest purchasing the Shackled City Adventure Path by Paizo. It's not the most inexpensive book, but its content and quality more than make up for it. $59.95 will give you everything you need other than the core books and will most probably keep you quite busy for more than a year. Especially for new DM's, running a new campaign is a bit of a challenge. If the book provides all the maps and encounters, this means you can spend your time making the adventure better for your players instead of "wasting" it coming up with stats for NPC's and drawing up maps. I use the term "wasting" quite loosely as I know lots of people love doing that stuff. Thinking back, I can only wish Shackled City had existed way back when I had first started. Things would've gone much more smoothly those first few years.


Also, I have reviewed the sites that Lilith has offered up and all that I can say is WOW!!! Thank you Lilith for showing us such spectacular sites for DM's. My hat is off to you!


Thanks! I've often come up with a really great adventure completely out of nowhere using those sites.

/start shameless plug

Also, you may want to check out the NPC Stat Block Bank. It's still relatively new, less than a month old, but it's starting to become a great resource. (Yes, it was coded by me. :-D ) Follow this this thread if you want to keep up the latest & greatest on new features, fixes and additions.

/end shameless plug

Sharoth wrote:
Also, I have reviewed the sites that Lilith has offered up and all that I can say is WOW!!! Thank you Lilith for showing us such spectacular sites for DM's. My hat is off to you!


Your tell us your a DM and only have like a fraction of the books out there. *Hangs head in shame*. Naw I'm just kidding. If you are a collector like me then you get all the books. But what you have currently is fine. Its not about the books its about having fun and making your own things for your games. Keep the DMing up and watch out for munchkins and power gamers.


Well since you already have the Complete Warrior you might well want to look into getting the other Complete books.

Monster Manual 2 is probably the least useful of the three Monster Manuals - but it is useful.

If your a fledgling DM then DMG II might have some interesting tips that you could use to make your game better. The material in the 1st 3rd of that book is particularly useful for new DMs. It could head off a lot of needless arguments if you get into a headspace were your not to adverserial with your players. In my opinion young DMs are often either too quick to give out too much (Monety Haul campaigns) or to adversarial with their players. I'd think that learning to balance this aspect of DMing is one of the areas that tends to see the most improvement with experience - the idea here is to get a bit of a leg up in that direction.

Finally lots of copies of Dungeon Magazine is a great way to fill out a library of adventures and it will help you in creating good adventures of your own. I started collecting Dungeon around the age of 13 and I must say that it was probably the most useful resource I had. Not every adventure was a hit but a lot of them were and some of them represent the most exciting adventures I have ever run. Just make sure to adjust the adventure to your own style and your own campaign. Also remember to fill them out with any good ideas you have - one of the weak points of Dungeon is limited size for adventures. Sometimes a good idea would be even better if there was more to it.

Liberty's Edge

As Ultradan, Tatterdmalion and some others are right when they say you need only the core books, a nice Campaign Setting (CS) would come in handy, so you have a place where to, well, place your adventures.
It's not needed, but after the Dungeon subscription is signed, you might consider buying the Forgotten Realms-CS, or the Eberron-CS, or ... ;)

Oh, and if you're just about to start with the new rules, I would not buy the Unearthed Arcana book, because I think (only my opinion) that as long as you're not really familiar with the core rules (and you'll need some gaming time, to fully understand some rules, I still figure things work differently than I thought after 3 years of playing 3E) the rules in the UA rulebook might just be a bit too much.


Ultradan wrote:

Boy, have you come to the right place to ask questions!

I think the three core rulebooks have everything you need. The rest is just icing on the cake.

Actually, a subsription to Dungeon Magazine will help you more than any of those other books will ever do.

Ultradan

Ditto


I would also second the notion that it's more important to master what's in the core rulebooks first (both for you and your players) than to add in all of the complex stuff in the supplements.

Being a DM can be time-consuming, but lots of fun. If you're not quite sure how to build your own campaign world yet, I'd definitely recommend using a published setting (Forgotten Realms and Eberron are most detailed, but Dragonlance and Greyhawk ("Living Greyhawk Gazetteer") also work fine. If you and your players have read a bunch of the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance novels, it might be easier to "imagine" those campaign settings.

My son (15 years old) started DMing at just about your age, using published adventures. It's a lot of work to come up with your own ideas and once you've seen other high-quality published adventures you get a better feel for what makes a good dungeon. So a subscription to Dungeon, or just buying an issue here and there from the comic store, can be a big help, especially at first. I learned how to make my own dungeons by running published modules, back when I was your age.

If you feel ready to tackle making your own campaign world, I have two suggestions. One is to read lots of books instead of playing video games--fantasy, sci fi, and historical fiction are very helpful--but nonfiction on history, archeology, and lots of other subjects can feed your imagination as well. My son just started work in earnest on his own campaign, so I got him "Gary Gygax's Nation Builder" (a d20 system book not published by WotC, but available on this website), which has lots of general info on how to build a fantasy world, complete with countries, political systems, trade, etc. I also got him Eberron's "City of Sharn" hardcover, as a model for building his own interesting city. He tells me he has found the "Nation Builder" especially helpful. The basics on world-building in the DMG are also a must read, and I suspect DMG II has some good tips as well (I haven't read it yet).

So, in short, the core books are most important, and beyond those I'd invest first in things that will give you usable adventures, which you can run as written or use as models for designing your own--issues of Dungeon or the Shackled City hardcover would be my first choice here. (Shackled City has the advantage of being a complete, self-contained series of adventures that details enough of the surrounding world to support the whole campaign. My son ran several of these adventures for me, and they worked great). Then I'd look for things that will help with bringing the world around the adventures to life--either a published setting or materials that will help you build your own campaign world.

Good luck! And remember that D&D is an expensive hobby, but once you're hooked you can sell your XBOX and reinvest the cash in a more interesting and rewarding activity!


As far as a baseline for the Forgotten Realms for running it as a campaign, you may want to pick up the Player's Guide to Faerun as well, since that updates everything that changed from 3.0 to 3.5.


Yeah, just to clear things up, I have a DUNGEON subscription (I've subscribed since issue 121, although paizo.com doesn't believe me). I also have the Shackled City Hardcover, and have run the first two adventures for my group. Thanks for all the advice!


Peruhain of Brithondy wrote:


If you feel ready to tackle making your own campaign world, I have two suggestions. One is to read lots of books instead of playing video games--fantasy, sci fi, and historical fiction are very helpful--but nonfiction on history, archeology, and lots of other subjects can feed your imagination as well.

So, in short,...

This is the best quote i've seen on these boards in the past two months. Thank you Peruhain. Reading Literature (with a capitol L) affords skills such as critical thinking, deductive reasoning, and historical points of reference like video games CAN teach (but more than likeley not). There are several core competencies that video games typically do not convey to the gamer that studying Literature dictates the reader grasping such as: point of perspective, modes of philosophy, enculturation, societal development, hitsotical context, etc. In short, these competencies encourage the individual to probe a wider range of approaches to the game of D&D that video gaming simply cannot plumb.

As ever,
ACE


MY "Essential D&D Library" would consist of the PHB, DMG and MM. Those are all you need to play; bu definition, the essentials. All the rest is extra goodness. You don't need a campaign setting. You don't need 4 other monster compendiums, you don't need all the complete books. You need the PHB, MM and, DMG.

As for what you allow in your game, that is a different story.


Heck, the books you have is all you really need. If I were you, I would first consider the PHB, DMG, and MM the only thing you need. Like others have said, the others are iceing on the cake. I have the complete series and I really only use them for a handful of classes and feats. It is always a good idea to check out what books you looked at getting and consider how many times you will use it. I know I should have looked a couple longer than I did >< .

Scarab Sages

Peruhain of Brithondy wrote:
One is to read lots of books instead of playing video games--fantasy, sci fi, and historical fiction are very helpful--but nonfiction on history, archeology, and lots of other subjects can feed your imagination as well.

Don't forget Mythology. Greek (Roman), Norse, and Egyptian are probably the most popular, but why stop their. Slavic, Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Amercian Indian, African, and Pacific Islan mythologies are all full of great stories and ideas. My personal recommendation is the Encyclopedia Mythica at the following address:

http://www.pantheon.org/mythica.html

That site not only has a lot of stuff, but it is very well organized. It has sections on mythology, folklore, heroes, a bestiary, and even some genealogical tables of various pantheons and mythological figures. Definitely worth checking out.

Good luck kid. Have fun and remember: "Let's be careful out there." (A special prize to the first person who can tell me what TV show regularly featured that quote).


Reading, yes, definitely. Read everything. Every book I've ever read has in some small portion shown itself in the games I've run or the games I've played in. Even books on "Ethics of Genetic Research and Engineering", "Mediterranean House Plans" and "Herbal Remedies." You never know when one little spark will be the inspiration for an adventure.


Hyperfreak...

I agree mostly what was said in these posts.
Here is my list for you, as it sounds as though you're on a limited budget...

1) PHB
2) DMG
3) MM
4) Dungeon magazine subscription.
5) Any books you feel you absolutely have to have.

Get these as money allows...
5) MM2
6) MM3
7) FF
8) National Geographic Subscription

Get people to get you these as gifts...
9) Complete xxxxxxxx series
10) Subscription to Realms of Fantasy
11) any other books you want to have, but are low on your list.

I suggest you prioritze by going to Borders, B&N, or Walden, and sitting down in one of their comfy chairs and browsing through (more than) a few books, checking them out for content, and prioritizing your personal list into something you can distribute to your friends and family.

If you plan on being a collector, and not just a player, I would suggest buying from ebay, as it will stretch your dollars.

And for god's sake, get duplicates of the first three core rulebooks - you will wear them out.

I almost forgot. I agree with what has been said on these boards about Dragon Magazine. It has some useful background info on the current Age of Worms arc, but is not strictly Necessary. (although I personally have been a subscriber since issue #80, or thereabouts....the memory fades.) I'm a collector. I will continue my subs until they stop printing them.


As a DM, I could scrape by on v3.5 editions of the three core rulebooks, and a subscription to Dungeon. Often I open a Dungeon magazine and am disappointed to find that my players are the wrong level to use any of the adventures, but just as often I find that an old issue has an adventure that fits in with what level they are now.

The monster books are nice too if you have the money because the players have probably read the Monster Manual already.


you are pretty much set; I would add the Unearth, races of stone and savage species.


You can have all the books in the world and not have everything you need. We (Thanis and I) have an entire bookshelf full of source books from first ed to current, adventures, Dungeon/Dragon Mags, Maps, mini's.

Yet still over the years Thanis' has filled a filing cabinet full of custom critters, campaign settings, maps and critters to fill his needs.

However I have seen people that have very few resources and make everything from scratch too.

I recently got my own copies of the PHB and DMG, those are very useful... (plus sharing one PHB during level up time was... interesting)

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