I was just looking at my PDF collection, which has Castles and Crusades in it.

My Players handbook look like it's more than enough to run CC.  Same goes for the older stuff like D&D 3.5 Player Handbook.

Is that about right?  Bestiaries I can see being useful.  What good is a GM Guide?

And, yes.  I've never played D&D.  I'm a vet, just one that played other systems.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 16, 2023, 01:11:38 AM
I was just looking at my PDF collection, which has Castles and Crusades in it.

My Players handbook look like it's more than enough to run CC.  Same goes for the older stuff like D&D 3.5 Player Handbook.

Is that about right?  Bestiaries I can see being useful.  What good is a GM Guide?

And, yes.  I've never played D&D.  I'm a vet, just one that played other systems.

The D&D DMG usually gets referred to for the magic items. And encounter tables if it has those (1e did, 5e basically doesn't - they are in Xanathar's Guide to Everything).

C&C of course had Monsters & Treasure which had all the GM side stuff needed in one book.

I'm just gonna say that the Castle Keeper's Guide is a fine supplement and well worth the money.

What's in the CKG? I never saw the need to get it after Monsters & Treasure was in one book (which I wasn't thrilled with compared to the excellent Player's Handbook).

I gotta say I'm probably not going to buy future RPGs that aren't All-in-One book.

If I ever buy another RPG which is questionable considering how much I homebrew now.

Essentially it has stuff to expand the game. It's a good book I'm planning on using a good chink of the material in the near future.

That was my attitude for a long time. Playing D&D growing up, we usually didn't even bother bringing the DMG to games, and when they switched from 3.0 to 3.5 I didn't bother buying the new DMG. That said, it's a question of playstyle. DM books often include a lot of the "campaign rules", things like travel, timekeeping, hirelings,  random encounter tables etc. If you run a more episodic or narrative game its probably not necessary, but if you use that kind of stuff it's worthwhile.

I managed to squeeze the GM and Monster portions of my rules into a single GM's Guide. The non-Monster Manual section covers;

1) Setting up the game (how to set the tone, integrate PCs into the world, how to create an adventure, etc.)

2) GM facing rules (rules for specific environments, creating diseases and curses, how to run mass battles, how to handle player rewards, and a bunch of optional rules for tailoring the game to your desires)

3) Creating Your Setting (a whole bunch of tables to roll on or choose from to help inexperienced GMs create a world for your PCs to explore).

4) Populating Your World (how to create NPCs of varying levels of detail and rules for creating your own monsters)

The Player facing rules already include rules for building vehicles, structures, traps, hazards and non-artifact magic items (players interact with magic items more so having the rules for them once they've been found and identified in the player-facing book just made more sense to me), so those weren't needed in the GM's Guide.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 16, 2023, 01:11:38 AM
Is that about right?  Bestiaries I can see being useful.  What good is a GM Guide?

Depends on how you define "need".

Can you play D&D with just the PHB? Probably... If you want to remake all the stuff in the DMG and MM  on your own. Now, there's no reason you can't do that - certainly most GMs ultimately wind up making their own monsters and magic items and stuff! But it's also really handy to just be able to flip to "Skeleton" in the Monster Manual and have a pre-written stat block, or to consult random treasure tables to figure out loot on a random encounter, or page through the magic item catalog to figure out what fancy trinket you want the Big Bad in the dungeon to have, things like that.

Do you need any of that? No. But it makes your job easier and less stressful to have them as an option, and you can always not use them when you want a more personal touch. Otherwise you spend a lot of time re-inventing the wheel.

Plus there is the issue of familiarity... Sure, a game I've run for years? I can probably pull a rough-but-functional stat block for a monster appropriate to the party out of my ass in play. I end up doing that quite a bit. I don't stat up every single NPC in the world, but sometimes my players do unexpected things where I have to have stats for unexpected NPCs. But it's fairly easy for me... in systems I've been running for a while. If I were playing a system I had no experience with, that would be much harder. And if I were a new player/gm entirely, just having started in the hobby? It would be a very daunting proposition. So having the DMG and MM at your disposal is very helpful.

Basically, you don't "need" them... strictly speaking. But they exist for a reason.

Yes; C&C is explicit in stating that you don't need their Castle Keeper's Guide to play.  And that's totally true.  I played the game for years without it, until I scored a nice used copy online.  It's got a ton of extra options as well as lots of advice on world building, castle construction, mass combat, etc.  There are also some very useful tables for generating specialized treasure & gems.  But again, it's optional.  The Monsters and Treasure book is more vital, but technically you can find pretty much all the rules to play in their Player's Handbook.

That being said, I'm also a big fan of single book RPGs, no matter how thick they are.  That is the main attraction of certain OSR games for me.  I like having everything in one handy book.  So I forked over cash for Advanced Labyrinth Lord, for example, though I'll likely forego the new edition (if it ever comes out) due to Dan Proctor's virtue signaling.  I will probably grab Matt Finch's new version of Swords and Wizardry as we enjoy that version of D&D and I already own all the extra monster books.

With the exception of C&C for which I own a bunch of stuff already, I doubt I'll buy any more games that exceed one core book.  My shelves are already stuffed with RPG material and I'm always buying books in general and space has become a serious issue unless I move to a bigger house.

Quote from: Persimmon on January 16, 2023, 10:44:58 AM
Yes; C&C is explicit in stating that you don't need their Castle Keeper's Guide to play.  And that's totally true.

TLG moved all the "higher level" info from the CKG to the PHB, which makes this even more applicable. The newer version of Monsters and Treasures is very useful if you are super lazy and don't feel like converting anything, but you could probably get by with an old AD&D Monster Manual without any real problems.

It seems clear to me that a three book core set is a money grab.  Why have players buy one book when three can triple our profits? 

It just seems skeezey greed to split up content.

The thing is I have bought GM guides for a few games I own and neatly universally found them a solid 3/10.  Maybe some random tables to use when you get in a creative block and need a bit of help.   However, they're just a whole lot of nothing.  I'm serious. 


To me the player handbooks of systems that split up their core books seem like that's all you need to play.  The bestiary is good, but the GM guides seem superfluous. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 16, 2023, 06:23:58 PM
It seems clear to me that a three book core set is a money grab.  Why have players buy one book when three can triple our profits? 

It just seems skeezey greed to split up content.

We get it. You aren't a D&D player and you think everything about it is silly.

A lot of people don't like massive 600+ page tomes. Hell, I don't, and I own several. Much above about the 250-300-ish page "sweet spot" my liking of a book starts to decline.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 16, 2023, 06:23:58 PMThe thing is I have bought GM guides for a few games I own and neatly universally found them a solid 3/10.  Maybe some random tables to use when you get in a creative block and need a bit of help.   However, they're just a whole lot of nothing.  I'm serious. 

To me the player handbooks of systems that split up their core books seem like that's all you need to play.  The bestiary is good, but the GM guides seem superfluous.

So don't buy them if you don't like them. That doesn't make them some sort of grift or scam.

there should only be two initial books:

1. mechanics, 200 pages at most

2. lore, can be up to 1000 pages detailing how everything works in the setting

The three-book format is a bit of an eccentricity on the part of D&D (and some of its derivatives). Others can correct me on the history, but as I understand it, the standard PHB/DMG/MM format started with the first edition of AD&D. I don't believe the B/X or BECMI sets were formatted that way, despite being published roughly concurrently. There's a certain commercial motivation there, but it was also because there were certain rules and bits of information which Gygax believed should be secrets known only by the DM. The first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide famously includes the following passage:

"As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death. Peeping players there will undoubtedly be, but they are simply lessening their own enjoyment of the game by taking away some of the sense of wonder that otherwise arises from a game which has rules hidden from participants. It is in your interests, and in theirs, to discourage possession of this book by players. If any of your participants do read herein, it is suggested that you assess them a heavy fee for consulting "sages" and other sources of information not normally attainable by the inhabitants of your milieu. If they express knowledge which could only be garnered by consulting these pages, a magic item or two can be taken as payment - insufficient, but perhaps it will tend to discourage such actions."

Charmingly naïve perhaps, but it's at least some evidence that the original motivations weren't entirely avaricious. Of course later editions of the game scrapped this idea, and have been fairly consistent in encouraging players to buy all three books. Yeah, that part appears greedy, but you could still argue that they're split apart so that players can opt to just purchase the PHB and save a little cash (certainly many of my players have done that over the years), and in fairness the 5e PHB costs about half what the 7th edition Call of Cthulhu core rulebook costs (at the moment).

Quote from: ForgottenF on January 16, 2023, 09:01:23 PM
in fairness the 5e PHB costs about half what the 7th edition Call of Cthulhu core rulebook costs (at the moment).

   If you're dealing with Amazon, yes, but by list price, they're only $5 apart.