Often I've noticed gamebooks and other stuff on the shelf where I think two-thirds of it or more just seems to crap or trash to me, but there will be one REALLY COOL to it that makes me think about buying ...maybe. That One Cool Part usually tends to be a fantadtic looking map or illustration of some kind. Sometimes that cool bit is a character write up or a set of random charts that I think look fun.

So, its a trade-off.

 Do I buy the so-so gamebook for a game I maybe even don't play - just to get the Gorgeous Map for possible use in another game that I might run?

You guys ever do this?

 Buy stuff you mostly don't like - just for the really good map, illustration, or character write up?

What are the best examples of this sort of thing?

 Which publishers are the most guilty of  " 80% crap/20% good stuff" ?

Hell, I wish there were more supplements that were game mechanics independent - jusat a book of cool maps and adventure setting illustrations for ispiration would be cool. (YES, I've already bought the two that Green Ronin did)

- Ed C.

I am guilty of this buying habit.  But then, I always use RPG publications as tool boxes, taking this map, that monster, and that npc, convert them to other systems and insert them in my camapign(s).
I can't remember when I last used anything RAW, out of the box.

But I also buy non-gaming books for the same reason. Artbooks, solution books for videogames (some of them are choc full of town maps and dungeons), and children's books.

QuoteHell, I wish there were more supplements that were game mechanics independent - jusat a book of cool maps and adventure setting illustrations for ispiration would be cool.

Yes, I would love that and I would buy that. I did buy that. (Backdrops, Seven Cities, Seven Strongholds, etc. by Atlas Games - great stuff.)
But you work in retail - you should know that this stuff doesn't sell all that well.

isn't the Internet just packed with free illustrations maps, ship designs alien worlds dragon's lairs and the like ? I actually find it hard that companies can make money from making resource material unles its specifically licensed into a popular game like 4e.

Quote from: Koltar;304873Hell, I wish there were more supplements that were game mechanics independent - jusat a book of cool maps and adventure setting illustrations for ispiration would be cool. (YES, I've already bought the two that Green Ronin did)

- Ed C.

Cults of Freeport?

Yes, that's pimpage.

Quote from: jibbajibba;305001isn't the Internet just packed with free illustrations maps, ship designs alien worlds dragon's lairs and the like ? I actually find it hard that companies can make money from making resource material unles its specifically licensed into a popular game like 4e.

A ship design for Traveller wouldn't work with - for example - StarCluster or Cold Space. When tech assumptions are made for any future game, those tech assumptions tend to differ wildly. Present day resources? I agree. Past resources? That really depends. I did a lot of research for a supplement I wrote - and never finished - on the Caribbean at the turn of the 18th century. I had to grab information from all over the place, and create my own maps. Modern maps show the world as it is, not as it was. Try finding a map of the Isthmus of Panama before the canal was built. You can find it, but it's not easy. You have to wade through a lot of dreck. Now think about finding a map of Isla Providencia around 1800 - was it English or Spanish at the time? - or the settlements on Cat Cay, or St. Eustatius, in the same period. It's a lot easier to buy a supplement with the research done for you.

-clash

I've got a ton of MERP supplements for that very reason. Beautiful maps, nicely illustrated, not really my game system. Keepers, though, useful fluff but not cruch I would ever use.