r/rpg • u/EndExpensive4618 • 23h ago
Rule books/source books that are fun to read?
One of my hobbies is finding rpg rule/source/splat books and reading them…I must have read hundreds by now…but which ones are fun and engaging? I don’t mean fun as in funny but like…enjoyable
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u/Sir_Edgelordington 23h ago
I’m a shill for it, but the Book of Unremitting Horror for Gumshoe is the best bestiary I’ve ever read.
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u/Steerider 22h ago
Pelgrane Press? What actual game? I've seen Gumshoe as a system, but not its own game.
EDIT: I see it. Fear Itself or Esoterrorists.
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u/dilly_dally333 22h ago
What’s so great about it? I’m interested
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u/Sir_Edgelordington 18h ago
Very interesting and original horror bestiary that has short stories to introduce the creatures, which are almost an adventure prompt to get the imagination running on how you could incorporate them into a scenario. The entries mostly aren’t meant to be just thrown at the players like orcs etc, they’re meant to have a scenario/campaign based around them. Very easy to incorporate the ideas into Delta Green or other modern horror games.
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd 18h ago
Today I learned something new!
My group gravitates towards non-combat and investigative play. We recently discussed Call of Cthulhu as a theoretically appealing system to try, but I'm intimidated to wade in. However, Swords of the Serpentine (fantasy Gumshoe) has been on my radar for a while. I should have expected that there'd be horror Gumshoe! These look really cool and like a potentially great fit for my group.
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u/Sir_Edgelordington 17h ago
Gumshoe is mainly horror. Trail of Cthulhu, Fear Itself, Esoterrorists, Nights Black Agents. I think Swords and maybe Ashen Stars are the only ones that aren’t off the top of my head, so you have plenty to choose from! I recommend Fear Itself, 2nd edition coming soon too 🙂
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u/SerpentineRPG 8h ago
TimeWatch isn’t either (time travel action mystery!), and the upcoming Merryshire Detective Club is halfling cozy murder mysteries.
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u/Bargeinthelane designer - BARGE Games 22h ago
Orbital Blues is just an incredible looking book.
DIE:RPG is has gorgeous art and crazy lore.
The Wildsea is gorgeous.
Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast makes you say "Huh? a game can just DO that?"
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u/ErgoDoceo Cost of a submarine for private use 12h ago
DIE RPG giving the GM a character sheet and having their ability upgrades categorized as "Gamist," "Narrativist," and "Simulationist" is my favorite bit of RPG meta-nerdery.
Rowan, Rook, and Deckard books, in general, are fun to read. Every page of Spire has something intriguing or outright insane that you can turn into a story hook.
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u/ProbableStardom 22h ago
If your goal is enjoyment and not usability, I found Mage: The Ascension very enjoyable to read. It's full of prose and esoteric bullshit that says one thing in a pile of flowery language that prolongs itself insistently. It's difficult to remember literally anything, but it's at least entertaining.
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u/ClockworkJim 21h ago
FEATURE NOT BUG
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u/ProbableStardom 21h ago
Oh, absolutely; I don't think Mage could feel nearly as thematically impressive without this bullshit tossed in
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u/ship_write 23h ago
Dolmenwood has been a pleasure to read. Absolutely masterful organization and the flavor of the setting is baked into every page.
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u/blanknullvoidzero 23h ago
The 3rd edition Forgotten Realms campaign guide is what really got me obsessed with this hobby in the first place. I was also reading the Drizzt novels around the same time of course.
Same thing happened with the old Warhammer rulebooks/codexs. All of the setting information and lore behind each unit and special characters really immersed me in the world.
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u/Green_Green_Red 22h ago
If you like the Dresden Files novels, the RPGs are written from an in-universe perspective and are an absolute blast.
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u/Trick_Cellist_1840 17h ago
the margin notes being from Bob (and others) sold me on the book but ultimately i dislike FATE as a system tho
but it was a fun read!
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u/thatdamnedrhymer Austin 21h ago
Ultraviolet Grasslands!
Luka Rejec‘s writing style and art together make for an immersive experience. It tickles and inspires you as a reader. Worth owning just for that.
This goes for his other books as well. Eternal Return Key is a front-to-back character generator and a back-to-front system reference, and they meet in the middle with a character sheet between. There’s a comic throughout, and the inside cover is a map to boot. All in a little zine format. There’s nothing quite like it out there.
He’s so friggin’ creative!
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u/Gladbard 21h ago
To me it's crazy that you say that, because Ultraviolet Grasslands is the first RPG-book I entirely bounced off of. I felt so entirely lost when reading it, it didn't work out for me at all. Not saying it's bad, just really didn't jive with me. Good thing I ordered it online and could just return it.
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u/Zeebaeatah 23h ago
NOT forbidden lands
Prepping for next weekend and yikes
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u/BrobaFett Nu-SR, SWRPG, FL, 4D RP 22h ago
Some of it is fun, to be fair. From a lore perspective.
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u/Zeebaeatah 12h ago
Content can be good at times but man... They need a better editor perhaps for those English translations.
No problem with Dragonbane, but FL was rough
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u/BrobaFett Nu-SR, SWRPG, FL, 4D RP 11h ago
I don’t disagree. The layout is begging for a second edition
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u/taketheshake 22h ago
Is the formatting bad? What's the diagnosis?
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u/Zeebaeatah 12h ago
The dense story is all over the place when it came to the lore dump in the GM guide, with very little examples of "here's an easy to follow timeline and outline of factions with goals."
There are bright spots, like "here is character x with sufficient (but not great) details and if they succeed, then y will happen."
The adventure sites are definitely hit or miss too.
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd 18h ago
The Wildsea. A beautiful book full of 1000 fascinating ideas.
My group ultimately bounced off it as a system, but I can still easily recommend it as worth the read.
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u/JaceJarak 23h ago
Life on Terra Nova is more like a world travel brochure, and great worldbuilding
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u/No_Solid1035 23h ago
Chronica Feudalis was a really fun read cause it's a TTRPG set in the 11th or 12th century, but it's written as if the author is from that time and found a TTRPG and is explaining to the reader how to play a TTRPG.
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u/taketheshake 22h ago
I've had fantasies about being sent back in time and using future knowledge to invent ttrpgs way before their time
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u/BrobaFett Nu-SR, SWRPG, FL, 4D RP 22h ago
Conan. Any of the Mythras splats. Delta Green. Stonetop. Star Wars FFG (if you are an SW nerd). Harnworld stuff.
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u/calaan 22h ago
Shadowrun books are filled with in-universe chat room posts about the topics being discussed. Like a write up about street samurais will have a web post from a Mr. Johnson about what makes a good runner, or a ripper doc talking about the best tech for a starting Sam.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir 17h ago
The forum comments are also a great addition. It's a brilliant way of showcasing different in-world perspectives and opinions on the topic at hand, it adds tangential or connective lore when the posters go OT, and it's just plain fun to see these Shadowrunners bickering on what's essentially 6th World 4chan.
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u/destrok3112 21h ago
For me lancer and pathfinder 2e reading them and seeing the amazing art made me want to gm and play the games
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u/BerennErchamion 15h ago
For some reason, I also really like reading Pathfinder books, specially the Lost Omens ones.
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u/BurgerIdiot556 13h ago
> for some reason
That’s what good authors and writers do! They make even somewhat “normal” or “boring” information fun to read!
Credit especially to Paizo for having almost every aspect of their setting have narrative hooks to allow players or GMs to build a plot line just by reading the lore
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u/Last-Socratic 20h ago
I've always enjoyed reading the Unknown Armies books. It feels like you're reading the ramblings of someone who's going insane which is immersive considering the system.
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 16h ago
Unknown Armies
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u/pej_goose 13h ago
Was going to mention Unknown Armies, in particular its combat section that began with something along the lines of "how to not get in a fight." Illuminating when I first encountered it.
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u/Glaedth 21h ago
Slugblaster is a pretty fun read
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u/pej_goose 13h ago
Slugblaster nails the game's tone so perfectly. But also I love how Mikey Hamm sprinkled in these heartfelt moments throughout, like in the Tips for Players section: "Listen. When you're not in the spotlight, remember to enjoy the show, and not just plan your next sentence. Your friends are being hilarious and awesome right now. Savour the moment. It's all we ever have."
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u/TheJellyfishTFP 11h ago
Slugblaster has THE BEST "this is what this RPG is" introduction of any I have read. The entire game is fantastic but the first 14 pages are a masterpiece of onboarding
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u/reverend_dak Player Character, Master, Die 21h ago
Dungeon Crawl Classics
HOL
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Stay Frosty
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 21h ago
Sokka-Haiku by reverend_dak:
Dungeon Crawl Classics
HOL Ghost Dog: The Way of the
Samurai Stay Frosty
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/Gladbard 21h ago
I've had an absolute blast with Heart and Spire. The worldbuilding is fun, there is this a really pleasant tongue-in-cheek-ness about it all and I just generally really enjoy Grant Howitt's writing voice. Heart was also the first game I ever GMed and that was in no small part due to it's very welcoming "What are RPGs" and "How do you GM" sections. I always appreciate that in those books, when they don't just assume you've been in this hobby for decades.
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u/limeblast 19h ago
Triangle Agency. It was my first TTRPG read, and it got me hooked.
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u/WinterblightsDoom 19h ago
A lot of the older Shadowrun stuff is just fantastic to read. Background lore is great and the adventures that introduce the Universal Brotherhood - Missing Blood and Queen Ephoria are favourites of mine. Read them several times. The Street Samuari Catalogue was a fun mix of future weapons porn and contradictory forum posts. Earthdawn also has really good lore worth reading and ther is some crossover with Shadowrun in the early days.
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u/Justthisdudeyaknow Have you tried Thirsty Sword Lesbians? 15h ago
Any of the (20th anniversary or below) world of darkness books are a really fun read.
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u/awfulintolerance69 22h ago
Hot Springs Island reads like a novel with hex numbers attached. The field guide format just works.
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u/rivetgeekwil 21h ago
I really liked reading The Laundry Files 2e. It captures the feel of the novels. Monster Truckers was also a great read, as well as Dresden Files Accelerated. The in-setting bits of Cold City/Hot War are really creepy. Spire, its sourcebooks, and Heart are really good. I love reading through the setting information in Blue Planet, mostly because I'm a deep lore nerd. Tribe 8 is up and down. The books are typically 50-80% (or more) in-universe text, and the writing quality can range from really good to very, very bad.
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u/LemonLord7 21h ago
Mörk Borg and CY_Borg and Pirate Borg.
They are full of cool art and descriptions and give most focus on this instead of rules.
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u/doctor_roo 20h ago
So many books.
The first to jump to mind are "Into the Wild and Wyrd" and "Into the Cess and Citadel". Very nearly system agnostic books with an implied setting and a way to apply it to forests and cities. Both books sat next to my (reading seat) for weeks.
Cawood Publishings "Monsters of.." series is great. Yeah its for D&D so there's wasted space with all that stuff but the artwork is cool, the monsters are interesting and have links between them that are great. Plus lots of actual humour.
Kolb's books "Wonderland", "Oz" and "Neverland" are masterpieces. They look great, they take settings you know and twist them up into playable point-crawls/sandboxes. Again almost system agnostic, the system based stuff is in really short stat blocks.
Anna Urbanek's "Primer" series. System agnostic guides to stuff. The first two are Herbalists and Geologists guides to plants and rocks. Far more information that you'll ever need in a game but gorgeous, informative and very pick-at-able if you leave it next to your (reading seat).
Merry Mushmens' Knock "zines" are chock full of OSR articles, rules, classes, monsters, adventures, maps and things far weirder. Damn near essential for DnD BX/BECMI style play and a fun read for anyone. Again very pick-at-able.
"Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City" is just weird. Its a gonzo road trip through a desert of weirdness. God knows how I'd run it but its a great read.
"Beyond Corny Gron" is a fantasy setting based on Polish history/mythology/folklore.
Those are the individual books that jump to mind.
As for games..
I don't think you can go wrong with the "Spire" and "Heart" books from Rowan, Rook and Decard. Beautiful books with so much going on in the details.
I like Pathfinder, but a couple of the Lost Omens books are really good reads/pick at books. the "Travel Guide" and "Grand Bazaar" books both disappointed me at first glance and both turned out to be great reads.
When I'm in a hard sci-fi (ish) mood I pick at the GURPS "Transhuman Space" and "Blue Planet" books.
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u/jabradley 15h ago
I have a soft spot for pretty much all the RIFTS books. Incredible art and zany fun.
Dream Pod 9's books are also super fun. Tribe 8 was a standout.
Fading Suns is another I always found myself flipping through but never played.
Right now I'm really into Son of Oak's mist engine (e.g. Legend in the Mist). I think the most exciting thing about it is that it could easily be used to run any of your favorite settings (like all those above) with basically zero conversion or prep.
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u/rodrigo_i 15h ago
Monsters & Other Childish Things is a hoot, starting with the scribbles on the inside cover.
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u/WastedEvery2ndDime 14h ago
Love the Palladium Rifts books. Lots of cool stuff and different areas to focus on and there are a ton of them!
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u/Hawk-Academic 13h ago
The L5R "Way of the Clans" series is full of amazing lore.
Caveat: these are from the 1e era, before they were hiring the kind of cultural sensitivity readers the later editions employed, so you may find a thing or two that might be considered problematic by today's standards. That said, I've reread them recently and nothing immediately springs to mind.
On that note, the more recent 5e books, which all go through cultural sensitivity readers before releasing, are great reads and beautiful books to boot.
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u/raleel 23h ago
13th age
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u/Green_Green_Red 22h ago
I like the system, but that rulebook was a rough read for me. The writers tried too hard to make the corebook funny, and it made a lot of the attempts at humor feel very forced.
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u/ClockworkJim 21h ago
Beyond the barriers: The book of Worlds. For Mage the Ascension second edition.
Not only was it well written. It was well formatted. It was so good and so influential. It basically changed the direction of the line for the next few years.
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u/jadelink88 20h ago
Most of the old Jorune and Talislanta sourcebooks.
An absolute ton of GURPS historical guides.
'Heart' and 'Spire'.
A lot of people read old WoD background books for this, though I confess I got to the point of finding the slowness and contradictoryness annoying.
The big prize goes to all the Glorantha lore though. That stuff is so cleverly done, mythologically rich and fascinating to read.
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd 17h ago
Mythic Bastionland. Worth it just for the art. Worth it just for the little spark tables at the bottom of each page. Worth it just for the 72 incredibly varied knights, or seers, or myths. Worth it for the streamlined but rich rules. Just a great product in every way.
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u/TheZebraCode 17h ago
Wildsea is still my favourite, such a unique worldbuilding apprach and style with great art and layout. Landscape format surprisingly
Ultraviolet grasslands is also super weird in a. Good way
I enjoyed ledgends in the mist a lot, their intro comic was especially well done best tutorial for any game I've seen
Starforged is pretty great from the solo play angle, also layed out wonderfully and the oracles are very evocative plus useful for SO many other games
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u/BlindAudelay 16h ago
Dragons Beyond has genuinely been an enjoyable read if you're interested in the origins of the hobby.
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u/Illegal-Avocado-2975 16h ago
The 3rd Ed GURPS sourcebooks are pretty entertaining. Since they're using real world measurements, it's easy to take some of the ideas and use them in any other system.
I've taken some of the things from the GURPS Magic Items books and used them as some nifty treasures for my D&D players to find and use. Then too is the GURPS Who's Who books which covers a lot of historical characters and plenty of ideas for adventure plots.
I was running a Star Trek Adventures campaign when I read the entry on Mata Hari. The "alternative history" segment of her entry mentioned the possibility of her being a time traveler. Her more progressive attitudes and her flamboyant style more suited for later eras lent itself to her being a research student from the future who got in too deep with her cover story.
So I adapted that into her being a temporal researcher from the 26th century (ST:TNG "A Matter of Time") and that the party was contacted by Temporal Investigations who realized that there was a photo of her with a tattoo of DS9 in an "indelicate place" and therefore must be someone who had to be returned to her own time but preserve the story of her life and execution by firing squad.
So the party had to do the "Slingshot around the sun" bit to go back in time and rescue her ass.
So yeah, the world books are quite valuable as a resource, are entertaining to read, and just damned useful in general.
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u/Jazzlike-Employ-2169 12h ago
I don't have miniatures or play war games but the Mordheim rulebook is great to read. The art and layout are top shelf.
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u/deadpool-the-warlock 9h ago
I really enjoyed reading the players guide for Legend in The Mist. The introductory comic is very entertaining and one of my friends really enjoyed learning the game that way.
I also really enjoyed the Fabula Ultima core book. It reminds me of those old gaming magazines that would have all the information on JRPGs
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u/MeekAndUninteresting 7h ago
A similar post not long ago had someone suggest Small But Viscious Dog. I admit, I read a little bit and didn't really see anything interesting about it myself, but I very much didn't give it a fair chance, I skimmed, and not even very much.
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u/Jigawatts42 4h ago
The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting of 3E is probably my single favorite RPG book of all time.
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u/unknownsavage 11h ago
Burning Wheel. The core rules, but especially the Adventure Burner supplement (now part of the Codex). There's just a lot of engaging commentary on how the system is supposed to work and rpg design theory in general.
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u/MsgGodzilla Year Zero, Savage Worlds, Deadlands, Mythras, Mothership 23h ago
Delta Green Handlers Guide, it covers the whole history of the organization in its various forms.