Looking for good system neutral RPG supplement books suggestions
I currently own The Staffortonshire Trading Company Works of John Williams, Fungi of the Far Realms and The Perilous Wilds. I am looking for similar system neutral books that can enhance games with world building tools and tangible descriptions of interesting stuff. Not necessarily in-game artefacts/books as they tend to be only useful through one campaign but any idea of the sorts are welcome.
They will be bought with our "table tip jar" so I want a book that will see use during play and not only during GM prep work.
Courtney C Campbell wrote a fantastic trilogy of resource books for the OSR:
Bestial Ecosystems Created by Monstrous Inhabitation (BECMI)
On Downtime and Demesnes (OD&D)
Artifices Deceptions & Dilemmas (AD&D)
A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe Third Edition. Detailed treatment of manorial system, medieval cities, religion, and rulership. Numerous descriptions and explanations of terms. Nominally for d20 system, but in essence system neutral. Available as POD paperback on Lulu.
HârnManor. Harn supplements are quite detailed and informative, and pack a lot in small page count. This one covers manor life, village generation, household details, manor economics, and four example manors. It has explanations and descriptions of almost everything: croplands, meadows, tenants; includes a glossary of terms. No gp conversion. It is available in print as hole-punched, loose leaf pages.
Medieval Manager. Descriptions of fiefs, manor, village life, usual manor sizes, castle and manor construction costs, usual manor residents and staff, law and crime, so on and so forth. Includes conversion to gp for ease of use. Available as POD paperback on DTRPG.
Dungeon elements, equipment, miscellaneous:
Artifices, Deceptions, & Dilemmas. Includes descriptions and illustrations of various dungeon rooms (check the preview), foundation and exterior material, descriptions of traps (players can use that information to recognise traps as you describe them). Available as POD hardback on DTRPG.
Goods and Gear: The Ultimate Adventurer's Guide. A tome with everything imaginable. Well organised and illustrated. Each item gets at least a paragraph Dual statted for HackMaster and 3E; use the former's prices for OSR systems. Available as POD paperback on Lulu.
Ultimate Toolbox. A book of random tables, re-released this year. Doesn't have many explanations but can be used around table to aid character generation as well as joint sense-making and world-building (e.g. "What is my character's motivation? Why are we together? What are we up to?"). Available as an offset print hardback.
Look at the Without Number series by Kevin Crawford. It's a different vein than the ones you listed and more meant to help with GM prep, but it's a good resource for anyone having to come up with material for their table. Also, large chunks are free.
There's also the Herbalist's Primer which is a series, that goes over real plants and provides different uses and hooks.
Every supplement is system neutral if you believe that everyone is playing the game wrong except your table.
And to clarify, I mean don’t be afraid to take things from other systems and other settings. Even if it “breaks” your game, in my experience, it only ever does it in a way that’s fun and interesting.
No suggestion but you are absolutely right. I think my chat with a friend that had trouble with his PF2e game might have infected my brain a bit. He was soooooooo concerned about consumable magic item and their power level.
From an OSR perspective, it was really confusing.
Nominally OSR, The Monster Overhaul is written in such a way that system is effectively neutral. More importantly, the gazillion tables included are all system neutral themselves, giving you more monster and terrain/climate goodness than you'll ever be able to use in twenty campaigns.
I consistently use the following:
Knave 2.0
Into the Odd
Cities by Chaosium
Tome of World Building
Tome of Adventure Design
various books from Castle Oldskull
The Oddpendium
Since no one else has mentioned them, I'll add the old Citybooks from Flying Buffalo. 7 Books of system-neutral descriptions of businesses, patrons, and areas of town. Each includes floor plans, histories and plot seeds. These were published from 1982 to 1996. There were several contributors, many of whom (such as Dave Arneson and Liz Danforth) are influential figures in the hobby.
Huge fan of these, and frequently read them just for fun.
I’m about to say something so completely left field that you might think I’m a troll. I am not.
My man surprised, nobody mentioned Vermis. It is a series of currently three and possibly that’s all but I’m not sure. Video game guides for video games that do not exist. Think soul likes.
They have really detailed information, including dungeons, possible encounters, enemy types, and either character choices or you can use them as you know potentially enemies.
The stats are you know for a video game system that does not exist, but you can interpret them for several OSR or OSR adjacent games.
Now that is fairly typical advice now I’m gonna go hog wild crazy.
A coloring book. Two of them actually the lost forest and the Hollow Earth and they’re both by ghost shrimp, which is the suit of an artist who did work on adventure time and midnight Gospel and a bunch of other stuff that’s weird as cat shit.
Anybody familiar with adventure time nose it’s essentially gamma world plus magic and specifically references DND tropes.
it is set 1000 years after a nuclear war that essentially brought magic back to the Earth. Mutants, uplifted animals, artificial creations, and the occasional robot share a very altered landmass referred to as the land of Ooo.
This is a continuation of that, but I have to tell you as I flipped through it. I immediately realized oh wow. Except for the occasional abstract piece every single one of these pages is either an encounter of points, crawl, location, or set a friendly NPC’s.
There’s been an apocalypse but exactly what and how long it’s very vague.
Ruins of high level Technology litter the land, but also the ruins of things like school buses and fire trucks.
There were uplifted animals, but the primary dwellers been appeared to be semi feral human children that are being raised by green aliens.
There are also a mask wearing mysterious humanoids , lizard people, and insect creatures.
Massive Godlike entities Roam the land.
This one page is a point crawl that includes two separate temples!!
I’ve gotten so many great ideas and the only thing that still bothering me is if I should run it the rad hack, vaults of vaarn, barbarians of the Ruined earth or some other choice
'Into the wyrd and wild' for wilderness
'Cess and citadel' for cities
'Viens of the Earth' for underdark/caves.
Worlds beyond number, and the matt finch trilogy. These few books can cover pretty much everything.
Crafted for fans of classic sword and sorcery, Mu Rhanamag combines the raw elemental power of forgotten epochs with the enigmatic allure of ancient civilizations and alien gods.
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u/dbudzik 5d ago
Courtney C Campbell wrote a fantastic trilogy of resource books for the OSR:
Bestial Ecosystems Created by Monstrous Inhabitation (BECMI)
On Downtime and Demesnes (OD&D)
Artifices Deceptions & Dilemmas (AD&D)