What are your top 5 RPG sourcebooks based solely on the quality of the fluff/lore they contain?
Hard mode: No GURPS historical sourcebooks.
Life on Terra Nova, 2nd Ed. The perfect introduction book for Heavy Gear.
Middenheim: City of Chaos
The Old World Bestiary
Sword and Sorcerer
Blacksand!
Cthulhu Dark Ages
GURPS Atlantis
GURPS Mars
GURPS Horror
GURPS Illuminati
Transhuman Space
Tribe 8 doesn't get enough love on here. Despite all the metaplot bullshit, it had some excellent writing.
>>44736202
Delta Green
I could write out the Delta Green supplement books but you get the idea. I think Delta Green is probably one of the best sourcebooks for Call of Cthulhu, if not all RPGs, ever made.
KotE: The Thousand Hells
WoD: Gehenna
The Exalted Compass books
The nonspecific nWoD books (Innocents, Urban Legends, etc)
The Planescape Monstrous Compendiums
>>44736202
>Elder Evils
DnD 3.5e book detailing world-threatening villains and their organizations. Exceptionally well presented, it includes scenarios for encountering and learning more about each villain at low, medium, and finally high levels. Gorgeous character illustrations and good map layouts for lairs.
>Paranoia XP Troubleshooter's Manual
I have never laughed so hard while reading a sourcebook. Messages from a mad computer are written into the borders of the pages and it comes with little team badges you can hand out to the players illustrating their jobs, responsibilities, and likely ways that they'll die in the line of duty.
>Rappan Athuk: the Dunegon of Graves
A deathtrap dungeon by the excellent writers of Necromancer Games, focusing more on puzzle elements than direct encounters. Bring backup character sheets.
>GM Gems
Covers a broad array of topics from the usual odd treasures and encounters to extraordinary campsites, strange smells in dungeons, and "short encounters for short attention spans."
>The World's Largest Dungeon
The megadungeon of all megadungeons. It is subdivided into multiple smaller dungeons (those each of these sections is a module's worth of material unto itself). The quality between each dungeon's sector varies from the truly awesome (a volcanic mountain in the middle of a lake of lava houses a gigantic demon at the heart of the dungeon) to the less-so (a sector basically nothing but generic undead encounters in a huge crypt). The real appeal of the book is how different sector and factions in the dungeon interact with each other either via trade, alliance, or war.
>>44736202
Planescape would definitely be one of them.
>>44736202
>No GURPS historical sourcebooks
Joke's on you, GURPS 3e historical sourcebooks are crap and 4ethankfullydoesn't have any.
>>44736202
oWoDI admittedly haven't played any of the games beyond The Masquerade but those books have some big fucking fluff
>>44736202
Iron Kingdoms 3.5 World Guide.
Iron Kingdoms 3.5: Five Fingers
Various Planescape sourcebooks
Hollowfaust - City of Necromancers
Delta Green.
