What (non-RPG) books are the best RPG supplements?

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TristramEvans

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As a spin-off from the Must-Have RPG Supplement thread, what books have you found, fiction or nonfiction, have been the best supplements or resources for RPGs? This can be as specific or broad as you want.

My first suggestion is Dianne Wynn Jone's The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

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Ostensibly presented as a travel guide, this book deconstructs every fantasy fiction cliche and is doubly useful for inspiration as to what to include or to avoid including in a game. As a GM, it can almost function as a comprehensive randomization table for what players could encounter wandering throughout a fantasy sandbox world.
 
IMG_1258.JPGTwo specific choices that are meant to illustrate wider examples.

Any great fantasy artists book and
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Any great book of maps. If your absolutely stuck for ideas then these two resources are great.

I'd also say any great classic stories like the Mabinogion, Beowulf or the Eddas.

Worked for Tolkien
 
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places is great for inspiration, despite clearly showing that throughout history most fictional places have been highly allegorical.

One of my own personal influences was a German book about medieval weapons and armor which I must've borrowed from the local library a dozen times. Contained lots of pictures like this:
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(Calm yourself, Gygaxians.)
 
I'd also say any great classic stories like the Mabinogion, Beowulf or the Eddas.

Don't forget La Morte d'Arthur, the various Irish Myth Cycles and your bona fide hostorical epics. Gilgamesh, The Illiad, the Odyssey and so on.

There's comics, too. 2000AD can be a particularly fertile source of inspiration Especially as it's characters cover the whole spectrum from two fisted heroics, gumshoe detectives, hard boiled cops, soldiers, bounty hunters, wizards and psychotic robots. And that's just the ABC Warriors. The short length of each instalment means there's a fast turnaround of ideas, too. Which helps a lot with pacing and plotting for weekly game sessions that are limited on time.
 
I just paid a pretty penny for the Alan Lee illustrated Mabinogian I owned as a kid
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Not my favourite translation (I prefer Guest's with the liner notes), but absolutely beautiful.
Never been able to find an affordable copy very jealous.
 
So, this would be a better translation?
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Dang, right now I can only find this for 80 Euro or the original Welsh version...
 
So, this would be a better translation?
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Dang, right now I can only find this for 80 Euro or the original Welsh version...

Yeah, I've got this copy for the pretty pictures, and have another Guest edition for research.
 
IMG_1260.JPG Another sketchbook by Alan Lee.

The illustrations in here are also very inspirational.
 
You know you can get this translation for free on the Project Gutenberg site. And for a very reasonable £5.99 on Amazon.

Don't get suckered into paying Alan Lee's fees.

lol, I subscribe to the Easton Press and regularly pay $50 -100 for books I could get for free online. But my library looks nice.
 
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Weirdly enough another book I liked to flick through for inspiration was this. Art, mAps, culture etc.

I had a few for other series too.
 
Jorge Luis Borges in general, but especially his Universal History of Infamy (NPCs!) and Book of Imaginary Beings (monsters!).

The two coffee table books on Western Medieval and Feudal Japanese arms and armor that my father bought us so many years ago.

I've been greedily eyeing A World of Ice and Fire but I'm not sure I want to run a ASoIaF game yet.
 
Leigh Brackett's books like Sword of Rhiannon capture the tone and pace I like in fantasy games.

The short stories of J.G. Ballard and Tiptree, stories like Stranger Station by Damon Knight and Rogue Moon are great for stealing sf ideas around time and truly alien aliens.

T.E.D. Klein's novellas in Dark Gods and his one novel The Ceremonies are great inspiration for CoC campaign.

Big fan of Barry Windsor Smith's Conan comics.

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Modern day I really love the sf artwork of Simon Roy.

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T.E.D. Klein's novellas in Dark Gods and his one novel The Ceremonies are great inspiration for CoC campaign.

TED Klein is probably my absolute favourite horror writer. Discovered him in Dark Forces and have been very sad his output is so small, as everything he writes is exactly what I consider perfect in execution.
 
The Dictionary of Chivalry is one of my favourite resources for the middle ages. It blends obscure historical information with legends and folklore in easily digestible nuggets, including extracts from everyone from Chaucer to Tennyson to TH White, and with some fantastic illustrations by Pauline Baynes, the artist for Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham and the Smith of Wotton Major.
 
I've become such a digital brat. Between Google and Wikipedia, I have a hard time justifying resource book purchases. I have a big book of names I use often, but even that's been superseded by websearches and PDFs.

Alan Lee's work is amazing...but that's why I have a Pinterest account. :oops:
 
Jorge Luis Borges in general, but especially his Universal History of Infamy (NPCs!) and Book of Imaginary Beings (monsters!).

The two coffee table books on Western Medieval and Feudal Japanese arms and armor that my father bought us so many years ago.

I've been greedily eyeing A World of Ice and Fire but I'm not sure I want to run a ASoIaF game yet.

Borges, all the way. So much great imagination densely packed into just the necessary space for the story.

Every time I hear a cross word about the Peryton as a D&D monster I get the urge to get my Springheel Jack on. So everybody just be cool.

Be. Cool.
 
Who the hell doesnt like Perytons? They're awesome, up there with Gryphons and Hippogriffs.

Hmm, maybe I just have a thing about quadrupeds combined with avians.
 
Battleground Berlin, by Kondrashev and Bailey is the best book on Cold War spies you will ever read. Also, everything by Beevor on WWII for historic or alt-history games.

Also, shelfies are great.
 
I don't really have any books to recommend off hand, but you can also use movies and tv shows for inspiration. I'm talking about both fiction and non-fiction here. Heck, you could even get some story ideas from watching the news!

(Had to fix a spelling error!)
 
Not really a book or supplement, but I find artwork to be very inspirational in capturing a 'vibe' for the setting I am trying to run.

I like to have various books displayed in the background while we are playing.

For example, if I want to portray classic sword & sorcery then I will often have my old Boris Vajero and Frank Frazetta artbooks sitting behind the table; nothing visually portrays the genre better.
 
Lately I've been getting a lot of mileage out of collections of folklore and books like Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling or Censored by Confucius by Yuan Mei. A lot of them are just bizarre accounts of a particular monster or strange event. I find I can often just pick one at random and build an adventure off the idea.
 
Seems as good a place as any to make my first post (hi guys!)

The Glass Harmonica (also published as "The Book of Weird") by Barbara Ninde Byfield -- an A to Z lexicon of all things from alchemists, to wizards, witches, goblins, and trolls. Great for pulling out a quick bit of inspiration. The illustrations are great too.

Swedish Folk Tales -- Some of the stories are great to pull inspiration from, but it's the Jon Bauer illustrations that have always captured my imagination and anchored my sense of the fantastical.
 
Oxford World's Classics always have great footnotes. I have some just for the footnotes.
 
Just going through the archives here and saw this, in my opinion yes it is the best rendering in English and Welsh friends (native speakers) have said so as well. There is another equally good by Will Parker that is an alternative that has really fascinating footnotes, gathering plenty of stuff that'd be very difficult to learn of otherwise. Davies footnotes are ~99% accurate, Parker's ~90% or so I've been told.
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