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The RPG Book Gauntlet; or, How To Quickly Decide If You Give A Shit

There sure are a lot of RPG books out there these days. Like most things, most of them aren't very good. Here's a quick and simple method for deciding if a book is worth your time and potentially a portion of your limited shelf space. Run them through...

The Gauntlet

There are five categories, and a total of six possible stars. The categories are of necessity a bit loose, but they serve. They are as follows.

  1. System? Does the book include a system? For me, this generally means they include a way of generating characters, and a method of task resolution. Sometimes a book is marginal; in those cases, I follow my nose. If the book does not include a system, ⭐. If the book does include a system, nothing.
  2. Keyed maps? Do keyed maps comprise a majority of the book? Don't count pages, just go by feel. If the book is mostly keyed maps, ⭐. If the book is mostly keyed maps, and the keyed maps are good, ⭐⭐. If the book is mostly other stuff, nothing.
  3. Sentences and paragraphs? Is the book mostly written in human language, the way books generally are? If it is, ⭐. If not, nothing.
  4. White paper? Is the book presented as black text on white paper, the way books generally are? If it is, ⭐. If not, nothing.
  5. X-factor. A catch-all category that amounts to, "Do I like the book?" The trick is not to invest too much time into answering this one, just ask yourself if it seems radical and awesome or not? If it does, ⭐. If not, nothing.

That's a total of six stars—a useful number of stars, because there's no middle value. After traversing The Gauntlet, a book is either good (4 or more stars) or bad (3 or fewer stars). There are bad books that I like and continue to own, and there are good books that I don't bother with, but a central goal here is to make a decision: is this book good or bad?

Let's Do The Damn Thing

Here's twenty books that I ran through the gauntlet just now. It took a few minutes. It's skewed a bit toward books I like, because I don't think much about books I don't like, but I did throw some bad ones in there for illustrative purposes. I have not enumerated here which stars I awarded to each book, because this isn't meant to communicate anything but my personal assessment of things. You'll have to run books through The Gauntlet yourself to see where you stand. I've not read all of these books thoroughly (some I haven't read at all), and that's the beauty of The Gauntlet: you can assess a book with very little up-front information, and decide from there how to proceed.

  1. Caverns of Thracia ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  2. Chronicles of Talislanta 1e ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  3. Diaspora 2e ⭐⭐⭐
  4. Dungeon Full of Monsters ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  5. Dungeons & Dragons 5e ⭐
  6. Hole in the Oak ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  7. Mike's Dungeons ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  8. Prison Planet ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  9. Stonehell ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  10. Stonetop ⭐⭐
  11. Supplement V: Carcosa ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  12. T1: Hommlet ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  13. The Vanilla Game ⭐⭐⭐
  14. Times That Fry Men's Souls ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  15. Vaults of Vaarn ⭐⭐
  16. Veins of the Earth ⭐⭐⭐
  17. Wet Grandpa ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  18. Whitehack ⭐⭐⭐
  19. Wolves Upon The Coast ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  20. Wonder & Wickedness ⭐⭐⭐⭐