My Kingdom for a Fucking Library Card

So I mentioned "book lists" in my previous post on Socialist Gaming, and it was a little controversial. By "controversial" I mean like one guy pointed out how it might be viewed as contradictory or confusing and he had a point. So, here we are. This dovetails into a discussion of online gaming, but while I prepare a little something on that, I'm going to focus on the reasons you'd want to make a book list and when to avoid it.

A lot of the time predefining a list of books your game will use is unnecessary. If you're gaming face to face, there's a pretty strong agreement to stick to the books the group owns. There are always exceptions, though, and there are even more reasons to do it if your game is being held online. However, I wouldn't say many of the reasons are strictly balance related, though a few are.

Online Gaming. If you're doing a game over the Internet, you can expect your PCs to be using PDF files(OBTAINED LEGALLY, RIGHT) to build and reference, as well as online resource sites and character builders. That's fine, but it leads to every book, every splat and every setting book being at their fingertips, and a lot of them might be books you're not familiar with. I want to point out it's not the end of the world if someone uses a feat or a spell from a fiddly little splat book somewhere, because there's not a whole lot for you to read. As a player you can help by being up front about your build plans and not trying to fool the GM, like that would work anyway. Still, if you're not comfortable with using source you haven't read, you might want to do a list.

Unintended Consequences. When you're mixing two games or allowing things from a setting book for a setting you're not running in, there can sometimes be interactions the developers couldn't possibly have conceived of when writing the material. This can come up when you decide to 'wash' something of its setting ties, since it's entirely possible the social aspect of the ability was intended as a balancing factor. This will ABSOLUTELY come up if you want to run a game that's a mix of Pathfinder and 3.X, since things in 3.X intended to fix balance of barbarians, fighters, rogues or monks(as an example) would threaten to overpower them in pathfinder, doubling up on efforts to 'fix' the class. In these cases it's best to define a list as "All pathfinder source" then a selection of 3.X books.

New GM. You want to try to avoid restricting the players just because you're insecure. Promises of "I'll allow more interesting stuff next time" don't often hold water, because either next time never comes, or you're still just as nervous as you were the first time. Still, if you're worried about your ability to function as GM and create challenges, restricting the scope of the game might help. Just be careful to remember you ARE using a crutch.

New Players. If you're dealing with people who are super newbies, running a short, 3-5 session game with very few books might be helpful to get them to understand the core rules. There's two big pitfalls with this, though. Depending on the game, you might make the whole hobby look really lame if you make them play without any of the cool stuff. Check if they're overwhelmed or not before assuming they are. The other pitfall is even simpler: Remember that people who are coddled don't learn very well.

Poor Source. This is kind of the elephant in the room. I will always, ALWAYS advocate working within the rules, since the rules are the only true arbiter between you and the PCs. However...not all of these books are very good. The writers of the 3.0 monster PC book Savage Species were famously told to make the book suck. Sometimes this happens, and sometimes third party developers make the mechanics in their books powerful to get you to buy the book. Other times, like with Dragon Magazine, no playtesting had actually been done. All I can tell you with this is that, usually, awful source will be obvious. Remember what I said in my previous post, and remember you're not crafting a PNP game like other people craft a PC.

Basically, you don't WANT to make a book list. This is just something that ends up being necessary. Try not to make one, especially if you're playing face to face. Nobody wants to buy a book and then get told they're never going to use it. If you've got to make a list, be generous. You might think it's "cool" to run a game with "just the core books", but that doesn't sound nearly as fun to the people who actually have to make characters, most of the time.

Oh, and if you do restrict the available books...don't start pulling shit out of banned books and arguing that "I'm the GM, I can do what I want." It makes your book list disingenuous. It's okay for you to use things the PCs wouldn't be allowed to every so often, but avoid making the PC think you restricted the book list JUST to do that.