Good "readable" PnP books?

Heh, oh man, that's terrible, not sure if the slang definition is that highly known. Though on a less juvenile note, that sounds somewhat like Humanity in Vampire or whatever they called it, Essence? I think. In Shadowrun.

Yeah, it's Essence in Shadowrun. It more relates to how much cyberware (and to a lesser extent) bioware you graft onto your PC than how 'powerful' your PC or NPC is though.

It's not exactly a direct correlation, but usually the more cyberware your PC was packing, the more powerful they were, I remember in early versions that Level 4 wired reflexes was just godlike when it came to combat, similar to copious amounts of Celerity in early versions of Vampire. Except vampire it was extra actions after everyone else, instead of extra actions before.

(Except for spellcasters, where it was reverse, and then Adepts, which were like the Monk class of Shadowrun)

Yeah, Level 4 Wired Reflexes would do that. It's a lot of nuyen and Essence to trade off for that though, especially as a new PC in normal game. You can move fast and a lot, but you're not going to be hitting with much. Of course, having 4 actions a combat turn you don't need to hit that hard each time.

I'd also tell the person playing that PC to play them like he/she was a gigantic meth addict that just drank all the soycaf.

Heh, I like playing Adepts in Shadowrun.

This new Marvel RPG looks interesting.
http://io9.com/5888568/reshape-wolverine-and-spider mans-worlds-with-the-new-marvel-rpg

Trail of Cthulhu is a great read, leagues above anything Chaosium has put out. The GUMSHOE system sounds great on paper, sadly I have not been able to actually play it but I used some supplements with the Chaosium CoC system which worked out well. The other Pelgrane Press stuff is pretty good too, they have a bunch of games by Robin D. Laws of Feng Shui fame, Esoterrorists, Mutant City Blues and Fear Itself.

Agreed on Trail of Cthulhu -- looks great, great read, really want to try it (or Esoterrorists, which uses the same system) but haven't had a chance to yet. What I really want to try running is Laws' RPG adaptation of "The Repairer of Reputations", the short story by Robert Chambers.

Ordered the new Marvel RPG hardcopy (and got a free PDF version - which is nice!). Looks pretty. Going to read this weekend.

So far, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying is kind of interesting. Very much story and character driven. And oddly to me, not geared towards creating your own character. It is more for playing an existing hero. Apparently this is based on the Cortex Plus system (which was based on The Sovereign Stone system, says wikipedia) used in the Leverage, Smallville, Firefly, BSG RPGs.

They've posted a gameplay example of the Marvel game. Seems to flow ok, but tracking the dice changes takes some getting used to. And the effects things is a bit weird to me at the end. Did Wolverine kill the people he hit or just wound them? Does the player choose that?

It's a bit vague, isn't it? I think since he declared the gloves were off and he was slashing wildly and using berserk on top of it all, they are either dead or wish they were.

I bought the softcover of this thinking I could play it with the kids, but I think they're too young to manage all those dice pools. Oh well, it was a cheap mistake as RPG books go.

I have all of these and they are great. Mutant City Blues is great if you like police procedural shows.. also, mutants!

GURPS Discworld is really, really excellent. It's got plenty of Pterry's signature humor, original illustrations, and lots of fun gameplay stuff as well, including stats for major characters.

They are talking more about the new Delta Green refresh and it sounds super great. Post-9/11 war-on-terror buckets of money and less oversight then ever funneled into DG just means the investigator's life expectancy got that much shorter.

Maybe some day I'll actually run a game of DG instead of just reading the books..

Whatever happened to that PC game that was suppose to come out using that DG license?

Strangled in its crib YEARS ago.

Can you really imagine a DG video game? It sounds awful. Hey I love XCOM but why does DG need to be a military tactics similator? I mean part of the point of Mythos games is that if you find yourself in a combat situation, skill points in fleeing is going to be a hell of a lot more useful then firearms. Players don't win in Delta Green, they at best survive another mission with less sanity, and that makes for a terrible video game.

That sounds a bit like perma-death to me, which I am not categorically opposed to.

Hey, speaking of modern clandestine horror.. Nights Black Agents is apparently out

"The idea of Jason Borne vs Count Dracula is so ridiculous, who would play this shit...? Oh, wait.. Kenneth Hite wrote this? Never mind, I'm in."

The next supplement is going to be literally 'The book Bram Stroker wrote in 1897 is actually a true story, now use it to track down leads'.

This thread bumping reminds me -- the new Iron Kingdoms RPG came out, based on the Warmachine rules instead of D20, and so far it's pretty cool.

I don't know whether I'll actually do a game set in it, but since I already love the IK setting, it's great reading.

This looks pretty cool. Where'd you get your copy?

Personally, I don't really care for the setting, but how the game chooses to simulate it's world.

Twilight is an interesting read, and I have a preference for the wargaming type RPGs.

I preordered it from Miniature Market, but it looks like they're sold out now. The WarStore has it in stock, though, and I've happily ordered from them before.

It's weird that I hadn't already hopped into this thread to evangelize Eclipse Phase, but then I realized that other people had already done it for me. Their latest setting book, Rimward, is just out, focusing on the outer rim of the solar system, and the inhabitants therein.

I just got Eclipse Phase and it is, indeed, amazing. Just reading the opening fiction bit gave me a zillion ideas for stories and adventures.

I too just got it, and while I love the story fiction, the explanatory stuff is incredibly dense. I'm not a complete thickie but I am struggling to plow through the core book. Maybe it's just how the damn thing is laid out. I appreciate they've got a lot of political, social, and religious concepts to get across but I am finding it hard work.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/2888/Chill-Second-Edition?it=1

Mayfair edition of Chill. Horror survival, not Cthulhu. Terrible monsters you may have heard of in legend, myth, or folktale with names you may even be able to pronounce. Zombie overlords with no hands or feet. Evil children.

Redundant!

I had the old Nobilis 1st edition, the Pepto Bismol pink book. I never got the second edition, the real coffee table book, but I always lusted after it. So when I saw there was a third edition I tossed it on my Amazon wishlist just as an idle thought.

So my mom got it for me for my birthday. Which is pretty random of her. Not quite as random as my mother-in-law buying me Earth Reborn last year, but pretty random.

The book is gorgeous. 360+ high quality pages. Full color. But ... but it's packed with manga inspired art. I donno about Nobilis 2nd, but Nobilis 1st was pretty spare with its art (it was all black and white and printed on what was basically newsprint) but what art there was was pretty understated.

Look forward to reading it, though. Despite the weeaboo art.

"Kult"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult

A 1991 modern metaphysical horror game were our world is like a mix of Hellraiser and The Matrix. I really enjoyed reading the 1st edition manual and supplements back in my PnP days, with the "angel" in the cover and the illustrations supposedly done by Leonardo da Vinci.

Highly recommended.

This is what I was gonna recommend, the HG books are just full of great fiction.

I got a copy of the Eclipse Phase core in today and the binding is really shitty. I'm hoping it's just a fluke and i can return it, but I've seen some other complaints about the bindings around the Internet too. Anyone else have a 3rd edition hardcover that came with a shitty binding job?

Sorry, mine is first edition with quality stitch binding, as have been all the other eclipse phase books I've picked up. I wonder if they've switched to a new print-on-demand publisher who's using lower quality printing? I've certainly had trouble in the past with things from Fantasy Flight, for example - my collector's edition Deathwatch core book shipped to me with pages misglued and sticking out at odd angles.

Mine's a 3rd Edition and it's fine.

I found a 3rd printing hardcover in mint condition at Half Price Books today and the binding is great.

Nobody mentioned HōL (& Buttery Wholesomeness) yet? Oh, I just did.

2nd Edition AD&D had some of the best campaign settings, too. I'm not talking about the generic fantasy ones like Forgotten Realms, of course but the ones they started putting out after that which took the game in interesting directions: Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Spelljammer*, Planescape, even Al Qadim.

*Spelljammer is still my favourite D&D campaign setting. Dungeonpunk sci-fi with everything and the kitchen sink thrown in. Think of anything from popular sci-fi or the Age of Sail and it's probably got a reference or analogue in there...and if not, it's trivial to crowbar it in anyway. I mean, it's got elven undead insect Guyver power-armour (and scaled up versions which are basically undead insect Evangelions) vs Orc Tyranid Swarms in the canon as a couple of near-throwaway mentions in a Monstrous Cyclopedia.

It was also one of the first D&D settings to start moving past "These monsters are always evil and ambulatory XP sacks" into a little more depth: the beholders went from "freaky eyeball monster" to "freaky eyeball monsters with a genocidal civil war based on racial purity" (a la the various Dalek schisms in Dr Who) and illithids got a downright sympathetic treatment which basically portrayed them as "Sure, they're octopus-headed freaks that eat brains...but they just want to make a living like anyone else". In fact, they had to create a race specifically as "No, these guys really are Just Plain Evil and have no redeeming qualities whatsoever" (the Neogi) after the various other monster races got depth added. Hell, even the Unhuman War (Elves vs Orcs...IN SPACE!) got treated more as "Arrogant Racist Elves vs Mongol Horde Goblinoids (and we wish they'd both go away and leave us alone)" rather than the more traditional LotR-style battle.

Nobilis 2nd is indeed worth lusting over. Its art is likewise sparse and understated; despite the coffee table layout, it's very much a textual impact. Very readable. Continue to lust!

I was disappointed with Nobilis 3rd overall, though I bet it sure looks better on paper. (The kindle edition is a mess, layout-wise. But it was really cheap at the time!) The weeaboo tweeness definitely soaked into the overall feel of it, and on top of that, it's just not nearly as well organized as the 2nd edition. Not as complete; it clearly expects people coming to it to already be familiar with the setting. I can only imagine entirely new readers would be thoroughly adrift with no motor; It felt like she wrote the 3rd edition to an audience actively playing in her own games, or obsessively following her Hitherby Dragons blog(s) fiction. Just didn't stand on its own merits.