This is a question for TTRPG GMs. What RPG books, supplements, or accessories do you find yourself using year after year? Which RPG products provide the biggest regular impact at your table?
My most used book is my copy of Dungeon World but my most used accessory is definitely my notebook, filled with session notes, sketches, and stories. Ah the thrills of the forever GM.
@slyflourish My most used accessory is a Pathfinder magnetic Combat Pad I bought back in 2011. Little magnets I can write on with wet erase markers, then shuffle around to make the initiative, plus space to scribble with wet-erase to track hp and stuff.
Fantastic tool.
I only things I have used multiple years are mainly for DnD 5e 2014:
- Monstrous Races - a supplement that turns everything from official Monster Manuals into playable races with a lovely commentary about how these were balanced.
- Conflux Creatures - just better creatures, this is the first thing I do is to replace monsters of premade adventures with the Conflux ones. They are just much better experience compared to sacks of HP that most 5e monsters are. There is no need to read “Monsters know what they are doing” when the stat block pretty much does it for you.
- Creature Loot by Medieval Melodies: https://medievalmelodies.blogspot.com/2017/06/creature-loot-intro.html - lootsies + crafting for all of the creatures.
- The Alexandrian: thealexandrian.net for reviews, advice and remixes of official campaigns
- Official WotC products besides the campaigns: Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons for all of the Dragon Lore
Lately, Discord seems the unifying tool among all my tables. I’m currently playing 2300AD, Firefly RPG, and Storycaster. So not really conventional games.
Shawn Tomkin’s Ironsworn series. Delve I regularly use for setting up point crawls. Ironsworn/Starforged/Sundered Isles have great collections of random tables, I use the book thematically most fitting for the situation at hand. The core tables of Action, Theme, Descriptor and Focus all get heavy use.
Kevin Crawford’s [SOMETHING] Without Number series have awesome tables as well. These however get more use when I need more detail. Prep stuff. Again most thematic book is picked first but I do have used Cites (cyberpunk) for fantasy cities.
When I want to create background for “medieval fantasy” characters I pick up Burning Wheel and burn something up. Through that I get a good selection of relevant skills to sue (for flavor)
Anything related to cosmos and mythology I say HELLO! to my growing collection of Glorantha material. From cult books to magic tomes and Atlases.