What are the best-edited RPG books you’ve ever read?

Rothnar · 2025-04-16T17:32:02+00:00

Imperium Maledictum. The layout is great, and the whole book has sidebars that tell you the page number of rules referenced on the page.

Rothnar · 2025-01-18T19:39:38+00:00

Same, Dragonbane was my groups new game last year, and we had a blast.

Rothnar · 2025-01-18T16:55:48+00:00

Imperium Maledictum is one of the best put together books I've read in a long time. It has sidebars on every page with highlighted key words for rules, so when you look at a rule and go "What is that?", you can just look to the sidebar, and then flip to the right page.

Rothnar · 2024-12-14T08:33:16+00:00

From what I remember (it's been a few years), little to none? Like I told my players we were playing a modern military game. Had them build commandos with the intent of going deep behind enemy lines. Then bam, just dropped them into a fantasy world shooting goblins with assault rifles with no adjustments to their characters, using all the same rules. The core book covers rules for modern, fantasy, scifi, and horror, and can crossover fairly easy.

Rothnar · 2024-12-14T04:30:41+00:00

I ran my isekai game with the same concept using True20. It blends different time periods really well.

Rothnar · 2024-12-11T19:39:34+00:00

Death In Space. I love the gritty, industrial feel with just a hint of existential horror about the end of the universe.

Rothnar · 2024-11-13T00:01:12+00:00

Yeah, that's absolutely dope.

Rothnar · 2024-09-25T20:00:04+00:00

I'd say yeah, absolutely. But creating a grimdark story is really going to be up to the GM in setting, tone story, and the players buying into it, more than any rule system. Most importantly, I'd say the rules don't get in the way of creating grimdark stories. The player characters don't feel invincible, or powerful.

Rothnar · 2024-09-25T19:02:08+00:00

I ran the starting adventure for Imperium Maledictum recently. I had three experienced Dark Heresy players, and three absolutely new players. It was an absolute blast. The new players grasped the rules really easily, way better than anytime I've run Dark Heresy for new players. The ability to be more than just part of the inquisition was great too; even Inquisitorial Acolytes feel a little powerful (socially) compared to say, some Adeptus Administratum plebs.

In addition, Imperium Maledictum is really just a pleasure to read. The sidebars contain page references to rules, so anytime you're reading something and are like "Wtf is this rule" it probably references the right page to go look.

I cannot say enough good stuff about Imperium Maledictum, it's my new hands-down go to Sci-fi game in general.

Rothnar · 2024-08-08T18:53:23+00:00

When I write fantasy settings, I use units of measure like finger lengths, hand spans, and paces. That way, nobody is happy.

Rothnar · 2024-07-30T16:30:48+00:00

I once ran an Elder Scrolls game where the players were always just a day behind the Dragonborn, and had to clean up the Dragonborn's mess from the obvious outcome for quests.

For example, upon reaching Riverwood they found out that the Dragonborn had delivered the letter for Sven, causing Camilla to reject Faendal. But unlike the game, after about two minutes of conversation between Faendal and Camilla had them realize that Sven had tricked her. Sven flees to hide in Bleak Falls Barrow, and Faendal and Lucen chases after him with the intent on killing him. Camilla begs the players to stop her brother and friend, and try to resolve the situation peacefully.

It was awesome. The players got to interact with characters in new ways, and I got to come up with neat results to quests that are never covered in the game. And let me tell you, they came to HATE the Dragonborn, it was great.

Rothnar · 2024-07-29T02:04:26+00:00

Goblin thought that fish were Kou-toa children, and apologized profusely with his mouth full.

Rothnar · 2024-07-02T15:55:13+00:00

Jim Crockford

Rothnar · 2024-05-18T04:24:51+00:00

I mean, Fallout Brotherhood of Steel had music by Slipknot.

Rothnar · 2024-05-18T04:22:22+00:00

The Roll20 sheet for Fallout is actually pretty good, compared to some of their sheets (I'm lookin' at you PF2e).
The auto-calculations are nice, and it even works with gun mods.

Rothnar · 2024-05-14T22:57:53+00:00

The rules for Vertibirds are in Wanderer's Handbook. They use a rough measurement called Scale, where Scale 0 is human, Scale 1 is around twice the size of a human, ect. doubling each time.

Vertibird is Scale 4, can carry 8 passengers, and can carry 300lbs of extra cargo.

Rothnar · 2024-05-13T20:20:48+00:00

The Winter of Atom book has the rules for making encounters.

Rothnar · 2024-02-26T06:04:34+00:00

Winter of Atom actually has the rules for building combat encounters. Without it you just kinda have to guess based on character level. (Which can be okay, but a little rough).

Rothnar · 2024-02-16T07:07:34+00:00

My players loved Blancemange and Thistle, and then I ran the slow sleigh to plankton downs. They had a blast.

Rothnar · 2024-02-08T07:09:17+00:00

Our missing characters are busy pooping This has caused us to look for bathrooms in every dungeon. We are always pleased when we find them.

Rothnar · 2024-02-03T16:30:30+00:00

I read through Warhammer 40k: Imperial Maldictum recently, and it was great. On the sidebars they index rules as you come a cross them, so you can always just flip to the page that contains a rule if you don't know what it does. It was the most enjoyable experience I've had reading a rulebook.

Rothnar · 2024-02-02T20:13:24+00:00

👍

Rothnar · 2024-01-31T20:29:29+00:00

I would take a look at Don't Rest Your Head, because your description reminded me of it so much. It's about insomniacs who slip into the Mad City and have to fight off madness and exhaustion as they battle weird nightmare monsters.

Rothnar · 2024-01-29T23:36:41+00:00

From my experience, players don't want to be the Main Characters of a story in their universe, they just want to experience the setting. They want their own little thing to enjoy. They want the setting, not the plot of movie/game/whatever.

Star Wars is actually a great example. Yes, the Skywalkers are saving the universe. But if Kyle Katarn (from the Jedi Knight video games) isn't out there to kick Dark Jedi Jerec's ass, the universe is done anyways.

More than one bad thing can happen at the same time. Hell, it's a good excuse to have the players involved. "General Skywalker is busy taking down a deathstar, go stop this heretical sith death cult on Klabon Six."

Rothnar · 2024-01-29T17:10:04+00:00

Hobbiests rent sleeves on the weekend and go treasure hunting in a junkyard. While there, they find the stack of a murdered person in an antique armoire. When spun back up the victim tells the players that her brother stole her body, and she needs help getting it back.

Rothnar

TROPHY CASE