Death Bat's Top Five Tabletop RPG Books for 2014

To match my video game awards this week I offer up the top five game books for tabletop RPGs that took my fancy in 2014. This list is going to look a little biased...you have been forewarned!

#5. Blood Tide
The hefty Basic Roleplaying tome on the world of magic and mystery in the Caribbean is a fantastic and well-researched effort at making pirates accessible as both a mythic genre and a historical setting. If you liked those movies and also know what I mean when I say that On Stranger Tides was one of the best books ever written (Tim Powers, check it out) then you should investigate this book.

#4. 13th Age Bestiary 
This amazing monster book and one of the only such tomes I've enjoyed reading in quite a long time. Every entry is loaded with ideas and concepts about using the monsters in 13th Age games. Every stat block is concise and to the point, a trademark of 13th Age's style, with system-specific tricks and gimmicks to make the monster interesting. Invaluable resource for 13th Age games.

#3. Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion
This amazing book, as as slim as it is, shows just how good Savage Worlds is at doing fast and furious multigenre, and was the source of a great SF campaign and a lot of blog inspiration last year.

#2. 13 True Ways (13th Age)
13 True Ways is the quintessential expansion for 13th Age, this book is a magnanimous addition to that system. From the way it managed to introduce devils into the game and show a multitude of ways to "make them your own" to the six new classes and plethora of setting material 13 True Ways is a real hoot. I got a lot of good gaming out of 13th Age in 2014.

#1. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (Player's Handbook, Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide)
These three books swept in and in one fell swoop brought the game back to where I wanted it, while stealthily introducing new concepts and expectations for how D&D should play that have already become so comfortable at my gaming table that stepping back to older editions without these changes feels like a regression. Who knew I'd grow to love the advantage mechanic, bounded accuracy, and a hefty ephasis on "less is more" when it comes to modifiers and variable? This is the last D&D I want to buy, and it's the first edition I feel could be the one I game into my old age with. Please don't eff this one up, WotC.

Honorable Mention:

Lots of good stuff came out this last year, but especially interesting to me were the following books. If only I'd found time to run them, these games might have made it into the top 5:

Interface Zero 2.0 - a fantastic and deep cyberpunk world for Savage Worlds. Possibly too deep for the kind of game SW is, this book could have done just fine if it was half the size it is right now.

Shadowrun 5th Edition - I am not qualified to compare this version of the game to prior editions, as I didn't even decide I wanted to care about Shadowrun until the new android/PC RPGs came out and motivated me to investigate this book. It sold me on the idea of mixing fantasy and cyberpunk, though, and the 5th edition mechanics seem very sound.

Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition (alias Blood & Smoke: the Strix Chronicles)
Bet this one took you by surprise. Far and away the most interesting read of 2014, the revision of the Vampire: The Requiem runs deeper than just a sound reworking of the mechanics, adding in a new metastory about the ancient Strix and a strong emphasis on a more...2014ish take on vampires (still with 100% less glitter, thank you). Appears to have recently been re-repackaged as Vampire: the Requiem 2nd edition, perhaps due to the insane level of confusion I am sure the original title caused people, for a product which you can only find if you know that it is available online through rpgnow.com, being published by Onyx Path and not White Wolf. I would have made this a top contender if I had just found the opportunity to run it.

13 True Ways printing error, news at 13

My physical copies of the 13 True Ways, Book of loot and Shadows of Eldolan all showed up at the same time today from Pelgrane Press. Joy! It is like Xmas in the 13th Age come early. But then I opened up my 13 True Ways book and found that roughly half the pages were stuck together starting along the top spine down, a couple dozen pages severely....almost all had to rip to come apart. Not good!

I've sent off an email to Pelgrane's customer support and will let you know how the process goes.

That said.....although I empathize with those who consider themselves digital media only these days (hell I consider myself digital only for paperbacks and normal books now) I gotta say, these are some gorgeous looking books, wouldn't trade them up for PDF only, period.

Now, if I can just get a 13 True Ways that isn't terminally sticky.....

13 True Ways in PDF

13th Age is finally getting some decent support (outside of its copious fans) as the 13th Age Bestiary is finally in print and on store shelves, and 13 True Ways is in PDF format and available for pre-order in print. I pre-ordered mine and have been absorbing this great book in PDF format...it's too cool to wait for the physical edition.

This is an overview for now, less of a review as yet since I'm still plowing through it all, but the content speaks for itself. 13 True Ways starts off with six new classes, including some really exotic spell casters such as the occultist, who is a unique individual (literally) that can interrupt the flow of time and probability. There's the chaos mage, who's basically the class for people who want to screw around with the campaign and other players at the table. There's the 13th Age take on druids and monks, which for the druid is a very robust class with a lot of interesting options (monk too), and there's the 13th Age version of the warlord in the form of the commander, utilizing a command-point mechanic that is very smart and intuitive. Lastly there's the necromancer, busy consorting with and summoning undead. These classes introduce the first real summoning mechanics into 13th Age, and also include a retooling of animal companions for the druid (and retroactively for the ranger from the core).

A rather complex but detailed section on multiclassing is offered. Not being in the playtest for this I was surprised....didn't know they were working on it. The rules are detailed, as they must be for the interesting ways classes are designed in 13th Age, but it looks like you can make the creepy barbarian necromancer of your dreams here.

More of the Dragon Empire world of 13th Age is presented in this book as well, including cities of noteworthy status with more than enough material to run games with the material as presented. Additional sections later on in the book provide thematic seeds for 13 dungeons, taverns and other ideas.

The book includes a few artifacts (a new concept for 13th Age) and a plethora of new magic items. It also has a surprisingly robust bestiary addition, which includes devils and metallic dragons as well as a variety of other classics and a few new beasts. Devils get additional treatment in a section from Robin Laws on how to introduce them to your version of the default setting, which may also be useful for those running their own unique settings that somehow need a foil to introduce devils.

Needless to say its beautifully illustrated. The PDF is a hefty size right now (102 MB in a zip file) but it is complete. I printed out a copy and had it bound, since I have no idea how long it will be before my physical copy arrives....and I know I'll want to utilize this book in my next 13th Age game.

Anyway, check it out. Well worth the money if you're a 13th Age fan like me.