D&D 5th edition - which book to keep, most generic or useful?

[Qoltar]

Greetings gamers,

Simple Question - if you were to decide to sell off two of the main three core books of "Dungeons & Dragons" 5th edition and KEEP one of the the three - Which two do you sell?

Which one Do you Keep for future use?

Players Handbook - Keep or sell?
Monster Manual - Keep it or sell it?
Dungeon Master's Guide - keep or sell?

In other words - which of those three books has the most 'generic' or useful stuff that could possibly applied to other role playing games in the future?

I mostly tend to be the GM or the DM of an RPG.
Whats best to keep? What is best to sell off? (To Half Price books or somewhere similar)

- Ed C.

[Anthony]

Depends on what you're thinking of doing.

The PHB is sufficient to let you run a game, and is certainly all you need to play in a game.
The DMG contains general purpose GMing information that is valid for multiple games, though experienced GMs probably already know it.
The Monster Manual is a bestiary. You could convert it to another game system, though mostly the same monsters can be found elsewhere.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Greetings gamers,

Simple Question - if you were to decide to sell off two of the main three core books of "Dungeons & Dragons" 5th edition and KEEP one of the the three - Which two do you sell?

Which one Do you Keep for future use?

Players Handbook - Keep or sell?
Monster Manual - Keep it or sell it?
Dungeon Master's Guide - keep or sell?

In other words - which of those three books has the most 'generic' or useful stuff that could possibly applied to other role playing games in the future?

I mostly tend to be the GM or the DM of an RPG.
Whats best to keep? What is best to sell off? (To Half Price books or somewhere similar)

- Ed C.

Monster Manual, obviously. That's full of generally useful ideas.

[adm]

Here are the basic rules from the publisher for free covering the PHB and DMG, keep the Monster Manuel.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feat...e-document-srd

[thastygliax]

Originally Posted by adm

Here are the basic rules from the publisher for free covering the PHB and DMG, keep the Monster Manuel.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feat...e-document-srd

That SRD, which IIRC is essentially identical to the free Basic Rules documents, also includes an abbreviated bestiary drawn from the MM. Frankly, all three books are grossly short-changed (for example, the PHB section only includes one subrace per race, one subclass per class, and almost no backgrounds).

My own perspective on this question pretty much matches Anthony's:

Originally Posted by Anthony

Depends on what you're thinking of doing.

The PHB is sufficient to let you run a game, and is certainly all you need to play in a game.
The DMG contains general purpose GMing information that is valid for multiple games, though experienced GMs probably already know it.
The Monster Manual is a bestiary. You could convert it to another game system, though mostly the same monsters can be found elsewhere.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Greetings gamers,

Simple Question - if you were to decide to sell off two of the main three core books of "Dungeons & Dragons" 5th edition and KEEP one of the the three - Which two do you sell?

Which one Do you Keep for future use?

Players Handbook - Keep or sell?
Monster Manual - Keep it or sell it?
Dungeon Master's Guide - keep or sell?

In other words - which of those three books has the most 'generic' or useful stuff that could possibly applied to other role playing games in the future?

I mostly tend to be the GM or the DM of an RPG.
Whats best to keep? What is best to sell off? (To Half Price books or somewhere similar)

- Ed C.

Nothing generic there, really.

The MM is the closest - only about 20-25% is rules material. Almost 40% is art.

The DMG advice is passable, but about half the page count is mechanical. A large part is the mechanics for the magic items list.

The PHB is 80% rules, 15% art, 5% non-art fluff.

if I were not going to run/play it again, the MM is the only one worth keeping, and even then, other sources are better at presenting the information for most of the content.

Sell them all, or keep all 3.