Yesterday, 09:14 PM
I think there is a real divide in RPG books, especially sort of oldschool-adjacent RPG books, between those that are "books to help you prep" and "books that do your prep for you." Mythic Bastionland is clearly in the former camp, as are basically all catalogue-style books: bestiaries of monsters, treasuries of items, grimoires of spells, and all the rest. They're books that you use in the days and weeks before the session to stock your maps and so on.
When I was just starting out in RPGs many years ago, these kinds of books were often my absolute favorites—Veins of the Earth held its place as an all-timer in my mind for many a year—but as I've gotten older, I find myself valuing them less and less. I've said it before, but any prep the GM ~gets to~ do is prep the GM must do. And increasingly I find that if I'm going to prep, I want to prep my own work, not somebody else's. If I'm going to run something out of a book, I want that book to do my work for me. Cracking open a new RPG book that seems to expect me to do hours and hours of prep just to get the game to the table (like Mythic Bastionland, or Veins, or any of the others) feels like I'm buying myself homework.
When I was just starting out in RPGs many years ago, these kinds of books were often my absolute favorites—Veins of the Earth held its place as an all-timer in my mind for many a year—but as I've gotten older, I find myself valuing them less and less. I've said it before, but any prep the GM ~gets to~ do is prep the GM must do. And increasingly I find that if I'm going to prep, I want to prep my own work, not somebody else's. If I'm going to run something out of a book, I want that book to do my work for me. Cracking open a new RPG book that seems to expect me to do hours and hours of prep just to get the game to the table (like Mythic Bastionland, or Veins, or any of the others) feels like I'm buying myself homework.