Best 4e books? Alternately, best 5e books for use w/ 4e?

[dialNforNinja]

Didn't Western Hero just get a  new release? I'm sure I saw something about that... maybe it was just an official PDF version without a system update?

[Duke Bushido]

It was the 4e book I put a lot of work into scanning and cleaning up, and a lot of art repair as I could do myself or have done by better-skilled people.  I am particularly proud of the covers, but Jason originally put up the no-covers version.  

 

For the record:  I have just last night sent Jason the version with the covers "installed," as it were.  It may be a day or two before he makes the swap.  I worked on getting it good enough to print, should you want to go to the expense.

[Lord Liaden]

On 7/6/2019 at 1:29 PM, Duke Bushido said:

For Pulp, Fantasy, or Sci-Fi, I really suggest an old 3e book called "Lands of Mystery."  While it actually is an adventure and actually presents a world, there's also a lot of nice advice for creating a world in which to adventure.  It's from a "game play" point of view as opposed to a science point of view, so the focus is on keeping things enjoyable, physics be damned, and it's a quick read.  I haven't read the 5e Hidden Lands yet (#2 on my list), but I'm hoping it's an expansion of this work.

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but Hidden Lands has very little in common with Lands of Mystery. It's a supplement for Champions and the official Champions Universe, detailing a bunch of locations about which most of the wider human populace know little or nothing. It goes into considerable detail about the undersea kingdoms of Atlantis and Lemuria, as well as Arcadia, the city/valley of the immortal Empyreans. Several other sites are described at lesser length. The book includes a variety of character templates, a fairly sizeable and diverse assortment of NPCs, several maps, and a lot of historical/cultural information. It's one of my personal faves from the 5E Champs line.

[Duke Bushido]

6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but Hidden Lands has very little in common with Lands of Mystery. 

 

 

 

Crud.  Now I've got to go to bed all weepy....  

 

 

[Spence]

5 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Western Hero DOES write its self, all that's needed is a better bestiary and more adventures ideas, maybe  and a campaign setting.  And maps, lots of maps.

 

There, fixed it for you 😉

[archer]

On 7/15/2019 at 4:17 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

 

Western Hero DOES write its self, all that's needed is a better bestiary and more adventure ideas, maybe a campaign setting.  And maps, lots of maps.

 

I've watched hundreds of westerns.

 

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This ^ is a map of Dodge City. The buildings on the north side of the street are on the north side of the street while the buildings on the south side of the street are on the south side of the street. There are hitching posts on both sides of the street wherever anyone needs to take a cinematic backflip during a fistfight, while there's a horse trough underneath anyplace anyone falls off a rooftop or balcony. There are no houses in town.

 

The street is self-cleaning so there's never any horsecrap or puddles of water.

 

The jail and saloon are the only buildings which have an interior: everyplace else in town is just a facade.

 

Outside of town are hundreds of empty farmhouses since there's no mechanism to prevent anyone from losing his home to unscrupulous land barons before the PC's come to town. Indian attacks only happen twice a year (during the Unscrupulous Land Baron conferences, the spring conference in St Louis and the fall conference in San Francisco).

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well you need a couple different ranch layouts, a couple of mines, a few canyons ,gulches, and riverbeds, some town layouts, a few saloons and sample store floor plans, a couple of standard home layouts, a few typical train cars, that kind of thing for maps. Plus period-accurate maps of the old west at a couple key time periods (right before the Civil War, right after during the train expansion, and at the end of the era).  

 

Then like 50 quick and simple scenario ideas, a set of plot twists like "this time the evil landowner actually is the good guy being manipulated by a banker" or "the indian tribe wants the land because of a long-standing fight with another tribe, and care nothing about the whites except to get rid of them" two or three fairly well detailed adventures, and then a campaign arc of ten or so adventure concepts with main characters and locations written up.  That plus the goodies already in Western Hero ought to be good enough for anyone to fire up a campaign with.

 

The thing I love about Western settings is just about ANY background works.  Crusty sea captain?  no problem.  Grizzled war hero?  Step right up.  Son of an english lord?  Here's your ranch.  Fast-talking salesman?  No problem.  Spy?  Detective?  Preacher?  ANYTHING works.

[assault]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The thing I love about Western settings is just about ANY background works.  Crusty sea captain?  no problem.  Grizzled war hero?  Step right up.  Son of an english lord?  Here's your ranch.  Fast-talking salesman?  No problem.  Spy?  Detective?  Preacher?  ANYTHING works.

 

Australian bushranger. Chinese Imperial Guardsman.  Samurai.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I can even see the cover, from a shot in Silverado, where Brian Dennehy and Kevin Kline face off, you can see Kline under the arch of Dennehy's arm reaching for his gun.  Western town as the backdrop, maybe a few fearful townsfolk watching from the sides.  Western Hero.