Books you hate

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:13 am

I really don't like the Magic Item Compendium. Basically every other splat was at least okay, but MIC felt incredibly video game-y and also brought a truly stunning amount of power creep.
If it weren't for MIC, my default stance would be "any WotC book allowed," but once I'm banning one thing, it's time to think about all the things.
Runners up are Spell Compendium and Magic of Incarnum, for basically the same reasons.

Anyone else?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:28 am

Wow, it's like you made a list of the least broken books that you hate because they are broken, but provide options to everyone.

I mean, nevermind that the most powerful SpC spells are actually nerfed Complete spells or FR spells. Fuck that SpC.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:30 am

Cthulhutech. I went in expecting Metal Slug action heroes plasma-ing starspawn in the face, and I got a fractal of awfulness.

Are we talking specifically RPG rulebooks, books tangentially connected to elfgames, or any books? Because I had a few gripes with Agatha Christie's Murder is Easy

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:34 am

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Are we talking specifically RPG rulebooks, books tangentially connected to elfgames, or any books?

It's IMHO, so I assume game-related. The 'pieces of entertainment that lost you' thread is a good place for AgChris hate.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:46 am

Tome of Magic, because learning convoluted subsystems that are basically spellcasting is terrible.

Complete Warrior and Complete Psionic, because they were horrible, horrible shams.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:46 am

Tome of Magic, because learning convoluted subsystems that are basically spellcasting is terrible.

Complete Warrior and Complete Psionic, because they were horrible, horrible shams.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:47 am

I don't think Power Creep means what you think it means.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 4:01 am

+1 to Kaelik's complaint. I am baffled at MiC and SpC banning, doubly so for the reasoning.

(RPG) Books I hate... I did waste money on Savage World Deadlands/Weird West. They took Deadlands and squeezed all the quirkiness out of it until it was a bland cow pie. Sure, original Deadlands has some horrible mechanics, but at least it had some charm as well. Even d20 Deadlands could have been salvageable if it wasn't written by hacks just trying to cash in on d20shovelware but I cannot imagine a world where Savage Worlds made something palatable out of Deadlands.

Rifts Vampire Kingdoms... is at the very least worthy of scorn. Mostly for ruining an iconic monster for an entire setting.

Rifts Atlantis for Sunaj Assassins (and to a lesser degree Atlanbetterthanyoueans). Fucking fills me with rage for how stupid their backstory is. Even as a stupid teenager it made me feel dirty with how much stupid is lathered in there.

All 3.5, for fucking up my beautiful 3e with so many pointless changes that I still discover and rediscover them so many years later. That I had to buy a 3.5 PhB and SpC to get by in Living Greyhawk (at the time it was the only available source for my D&D fix) is an unforgiveable shame.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 4:02 am

Most the SR "Shadows" books, because the people who wrote that crap had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Like SLC as some disarmed gun hating paradise (Utah being where the state sued the university system to allow students with licensees to carry guns on campus, and won...) or the insanity of SR Japan.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 4:02 am

Players Handbook, it has fighter and wizard in it. It is the root of decades of grief and ignorance.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 4:35 am

Of all the D&D books I've ever read Book of Exalted Deeds is probably the worst. It fails on every level something could fail it. It is an unoriginal copypasta, it is boring and bland, it is FULL of filler and padding and everything in it is either so low powered it never saw use or written incomprehensibly. I would vote Exalted Deeds as the worst 3.Anything era book ever made.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 5:37 am

I dunno BoED is pretty lame, but it's up against things like:

Ghostwalk (not quite 3.0 not quite 3,5, wtf are the rules, and why do I even care?)
Deities and Demigods (Here are complicated rules for Deities as NPCs, that amount to "Any Deitiy you meet will be in persistent Time Stops all the time and can precognitively summon an actually infinite legion of angels/devils well before any encounter could conceivably start", thereby invalidating the entire exercise of having statblocks for Deities.
Sword and Sorcery's Creature Collection I (Hey, this OGL means that we can beat WotC's publication date for the Monster Manual, wait how's this new edition work?)
The Epic Level Handbook (There're sooo many reasons this got dubbed the "D&D Joke Book.")
Either of Bruce Cordell's attempts with Psionics.

And those are just off the top of my head for books I actually read, remembered and cared about enough to hate.

For other systems,

I keep a copy of the Imagine RPG players handbook around just to mock the entire "let's add complications to older editions of D&D" school of design. It's obscure enough that nobody gets butthurt when I use it as the bad example it is.
Street Fighter the Storytelling Game. Falls so very very short of its potential. Obviously written by people who were not good at fighting games, or game design, or staying true to the source material. But who could do literal translations of the canon characters and wrote a game where an optimizing player with a storyteller awarding generous XP could be roughly competitive with the licensed characters after just over two years of weekly play. Oh yeah, and the canon characters were actually supposed to show up repeatedly in most campaigns.
Whichever edition of Mekton had the Roadstriker supplement with literally the worst art in a published RPG ever. The book was otherwise unremarkable, but the art was memorably bad.
Champions New Millenium. Ugh. Fuzion is everything that is wrong with stat+skill systems in one neat little bundle. And this is it shitting all over a much better system. The attempt to simplify was admirable. The idea to replace the arcane add fractions, then multiply, then add other fractions, then divide advantage/limitation system by just getting more or fewer dice balanced around the default power level was actually good. Everything else about it is wrong. From everyone with a Reflex of less than 10 being a scrub; to having a sample difficulty chart that went through "phenmonal", "stupendous", "cosmic" and eventually topped out at "phenomonally megacosmic" and yet lacked any examples tasks to go with those adjectives; to revamped for the 90s characters without ironic self-awareness. If you hired Rob Liefield to write your superhero game, this is what his interns would churn out.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 6:09 am

The entire Black Crusade line. The whole setting was very location-specific, so the book fluff, instead of giving you cool details on the Dark Gods, told you about the Screaming Vortex, which is all the fun of having someone describe a Hieronymus Bosch painting to you instead of getting to look at it yourself. They all have grossly OP gear that encourages people to make glass cannons that render every encounter either a joke or a TP. And they all contain one subsystem that should have been in the main game, except Fantasy Flight Games loves to release crippleware and $100 watermarked PDFs.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 7:02 am

The epic level handbook, for not even trying to solve the caster/noncaster problems.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 9:38 am

Savage Species.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 10:03 am

I absolutely hate the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. Fuck that book so hard. It is worse than FATAL; fuck, even FATAL was upfront about the Fantasy Adventures to Adult Lechery. Now I'm super-pissed because this thread made me think of that FUCKING BOOK. GODDAMN IT, NOW I BROKE THE CAPS LOCK! FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUK-

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 12:53 pm

Shit, I knew I'd forget some in my tiredness.

Yes- Savage Species.

ELH, Psionics and Book of Furries are all bad, but they didn't do things that made me angry like ruining valid character options.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 1:56 pm

...You Lost Me wrote:Complete Warrior and Complete Psionic, because they were horrible, horrible shams.

Complete Psionic is the absolute worst. It's not only terrible, but it actually makes other books worse, which is quite an accomplishment.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 2:02 pm

fectin wrote:I really don't like the Magic Item Compendium. Basically every other splat was at least okay, but MIC felt incredibly video game-y and also brought a truly stunning amount of power creep.

Ignoring the belt of battle (which should have lived up to it's name and allowed attack/full attack actions instead of being a cheap rod of quicken) and circlet of rapid casting how is it really power creep?

It's power creep for the non (semi-)casters, but why would you ever play one? The options mostly overlap with stuff the (semi-)casters can do any way.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 2:56 pm

MIC has like [very small number] good items in it, and the rest is total shit.

So people who bring it to the table spend the entire session pouring through a poorly organized book in the hope that something cool pop out at them. Then it doesn't.

Thats why I hate it. Not because of power creep, and not because its too good. Because it annoys me when people bring it to the game.

Complete Psionics gets points for being a psionic supplement that makes psionics worse if you use it.

ELH - For being worthless. The only thing its ever used for is cheating to get feats early, or the higher skill DCs. The skill DCs could seriously have been a web supplement.

BOED/BOVD - For being terrible AND offensive. Being both is a pretty big achievement. Somehow they also manages to make "old school" players fear them for being overpowered. I can't tell you how many times I've had it come up where someone asks to play a VOP monk and I tell them its probably not appropriate for the game. Only to have another player chide them for "being a munchkin and minmaxing way too much" and then fight me when I say "No its because he will suck hardcore, and then drag everyone else down".

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 4:35 pm

War! for Shadowrun. Hell, Runner's Companion for SR, and I was part responsible for that.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 5:03 pm

There are books that are worse written than the BoED, but none that make me as angry when I look in them.

And despite the shitty stats and even worse art, I'd raher have the Creature Collection series than MM II-V.

Atmo · Post by **Atmo** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 7:06 pm

GURPS, as my bones chill just by reading ANY entry.

Dragonlance, because gay and HORRIBLE GM destroyed this world for me.

Some yuck brazillian games (one of them i think was stolen and sold this horrible "for newbies" way).

4e, because font 14. And ugly game.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 9:59 pm

Savage Species.

It claimed to be trying to do something difficult. Like say, something you would need a whole splat book and an edition transition to do.

Then it not only failed to exploit the opportunity, it deliberately sabotaged it's own advertised content/mission to ensure it was unplayable. Deliberately.

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 1:46 am

Most books that are just bad (World of Synnibarr, deadEarth, Swords' Path Glory) I can still enjoy on some level. I do hate the 4th Ed. PHB because I wanted a new edition and that wasn't it. Virtually every page I can find something I detest, from the cover with the woman with one boob slightly higher than the other through to the initially-incomprehensible [W]s to the obviously broken powers like Orb of Imposition I know there are extensive errata for, the lolwhut 5 alignments, damage-on-a-miss powers, half-elves that have racial abilities neither parent race has, longbows doing more damage than crossbows, paladins that add Cha to weapon damage and need a power to actually add their Str bonus, characters that add their Int bonus to AC while unconscious, etc. etc. etc. Burns me like no other book.

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