(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best video games handbooks

"The blonde plays well and the brunette plays badly, and no lectures will change this state of affairs" - Ostap Bender

On a more serious note, read this about Richard Réti

In the year before he died Réti published an article (Rotterdamsch Schaacknieuws, April
1928) on how he trained himself to play blindfold chess as a youngster and how important
he thought this practice was in transforming him fairly rapidly from a mediocre 16-year-old
amateur into a far stronger player. He notes at the beginning of his article that non-chess-
players and even very weak players usually view blindfold chess as something akin to black
magic. Obviously this is not a true depiction, he continues, by pointing out that every great
master can play a game blindfolded and that, in his opinion, there is hardly any difference
between blindfold and regular chess. He says that most masters develop this ability as a con-
sequence of their chess knowledge and are often surprised that they can play blindfolded
without much effort.

However, he argues that it would be preferable to learn how to play without sight of the board
at a beginning stage in the development of chess skill. He believes that the methods he used early
in his mastery of chess ought to be more widely adopted and publicized, and that any rea-
sonably intelligent person can learn to play a game blindfolded in a relatively few weeks,
giving the person a boost of confidence and immediate evidence that he is improving at the
game.

He then describes the methods he used, which were indirectly inspired by his first
observation of a blindfold player in action. (Top-notch blindfold champions like Blackburne,
Alekhine, and Koltanowski, among others, were also impressed at an early age by witness-
ing blindfold play.) Réti found that simply trying to play blindfolded did not work for him:
He would make illegal moves and forget that certain pieces had already been captured and
were no longer on the board. He always wrote down his moves so that he could check them
later on a regular board. Although only 16 years old, he devised a system of his own, which
he says raised him within a few months from a rather weak player to a top-class player in
regular chess.

Looking at a regular board, he took careful note of the relations between different
squares, the locations and numbers of squares on long and short diagonals, and the points
of their intersections. As he had read somewhere, he mentally divided the chessboard into
four small quadrants and studied their separate features individually and in relation to each
other. Then he tried to visualize the whole board, especially of course the colors of different
squares (light or dark), and the points of intersection of different diagonals, columns and
rows. He then mentally added pieces, one at a time, and visualized the squares they con-
trolled from different locations. He practiced, for example, with a Black and White piece
placed anywhere on his mental chessboard and tested his ability to determine how either
could be moved so as to attack the other, at first always checking his accuracy afterwards on
a regular board. Then he worked with simple endgames, for example checkmating the Black
king with White’s rook and king from many different starting positions on the chessboard
in his mind.

Réti mentally added more and more pieces until eventually he reached the actual start-
ing position in a real game. Whenever he played a regular game, he kept score and after-
wards tried to play over the game mentally. Then he studied different openings, with and
without an actual chessboard, and finally complete games from books. He claimed that he
learned much more from all this kind of practice, about two hours a day for two to three
months, than he would have gained from playing or studying regular games for years. He had
become a very strong player.

Source: Hearst, Eliot, and John Knott. Blindfold chess: History, psychology, techniques, champions, world records, and important games. McFarland, 2009, 65-66

>Is it OK to read the Apocrypha books in the Bible?

Why wouldn't a book be OK to read? You can read the DM manual to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons if you like, and if you want to vomit you could always read Freak Legion. Reading isn't much different from allowing yourself to hear what someone has to say, and we would hardly feel good about saying "Yo! Plug your ears, someone is saying something controversial today!"

>What is the difference between the Apocrypha and Gnostic books?

Maccabees covers a historic period that Kings and Chronicles simply miss. Tobit describes... well it describes something weird. The three additional chapters of Daniel give us some good stories for gaining wisdom and fairness. You get the idea.

Since you like logic and puzzles, check out Smulyan's books. He does really deep math, but disguised/taught with the help of fun puzzles. Check out this one where he essentially works out godel's theorem with the help of puzzles: https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Undecided-Puzzle-Guide-Godel/dp/0394549430
Do beware, some of his books are for a more advanced audience and are not such an easy/fun read as his puzzle books unless you're quite trained already.

Some things I used several years ago. I make no claim that they are "that one" resource.

http://home.comcast.net/~kwbridge/

http://home.comcast.net/~kwbridge/basics.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Commonsense-Bidding-Complete-Methods-Standard/dp/0517884305/

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Bridge-Conventions-William-Root/dp/0517884291/

Play for free online at bridgebase.com. Best to play with someone you know. Otherwise prepare to get yelled at by random partners for not knowing what you're doing.

Find a bridge club with beginner lessons or at least a good Non-Life Master game. https://web3.acbl.org/findalist/club

Where are you from?

The Doom Brigade, by Weiss and Perrin (link below for cover photo).

It was my first Dragonlance book, and one of the very first fantasy books I had ever read. It has gone on to become one of my favourite and most cherished books, and it sparked a lifelong love of reading scifi and fantasy. I still go back and re-read it every few years and it takes me right back to 12yr old me poking around in the shelves of a bookstore and suddenly being carried away on an amazing (and ongoing) journey at first glance... Now that I think about that again, I realize that it sounds very similar to the opening section of The Shadow of the Wind (Zafon) in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, which incidentally is another favourite book that played a foundational role in my love of reading.

The Doom Brigade
The Shadow of the Wind

This is actually a really good read.
It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember it being very comprehensive. I read it as an already experience raider, but found it very beneficial as a guild leader. It has information for people at varying levels of experience, from people new to raiding, to those managing and leading raids. I recommend looking at the table of contents in the preview and some of the reviews to get an idea of the contents.

This won't give you the exact add ons you're looking for, but it will give you in depth knowledge and strategies that apply to raids in any MMO.

https://www.amazon.com/Raiders-Companion-Adam-Ferrel-Trzonkowski-ebook/dp/B00719SHLM/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

You'd want to CYA, right? Consulting with a lawyer shouldn't cost more than $100-$200 for a first time visit. I would hope that would be worth the peace of mind.

As far as Amazon, a quick search there shows that at least one dude has done it, so Amazon apparently doesn't care too much. But just because something gets by Amazon's standards doesn't mean it's lawsuit-proof.

It should be:

paperwhite version

Full Color

paperback not yet available but should be once approved by createspace. I'm guessing definitely by next week but it could be as fast as 3 days from now.

I highly recommend this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Pandolfinis-Ultimate-Guide-Chess-Strategies/dp/0743226178
It briefly covers the basic rules again, but it also goes into strategy and stuff in a very intuitive way that's great for beginners.

Alright I just grabbed the first stack of my books in the 3 - 3.5e range and I need a way to sort them to see what I have, and sort between 3e and 3.5e. I'm going to list them here,

don't worry if you don't see all of them I'll be editing this comment to add more as I pull more out of storage.

Once I have a full list i'll post their pictures with today's paper and then start doing some research to figure out what a fair price is for each of them.

EDIT: My list of books and sorting is complete (who stole my v.3e core books god damnit!)

My books are pristine. I used (and still do) post-it page markers to not only ensure I didn't mark any pages, but also to use as quick reference so not to create dog ears.

Removing one of them shows they did not mark the pages. I'll leave them in for the pics, but am going to remove them after.

I'm going to take pics of the 3 core books with today's Brampton Guardian, and then start looking at prices.

Just a quick note though I looked at Amazon because wikipedia didn't have my special edition, leather bound version of the Player's Handbook, and the used copies listed at $300 just to give an idea of where prices might be.

I'm going to check a variety of sources to get an idea of fair price on used books and will happily share where I am getting my pricing from. May stop in at the Comic Warehouse later and get their advice too.

Because I will be using a variety of sources the prices I list will not be negotiable.

If you see any of my compendium or extended core books you are interested in let me know and I'll take pics and calculate prices.

3e

Monsters of Faerûn

Hero Builder's Guidebook

Arms and Equipment

Savage Species

Fiend Folio

Manual of The Planes

Psionics Handbook

Epic Level Handbook

Deities and Demigods

Book of Vile Darkness

Book of Challenges

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook

Ghostwalk


3.5e

Core Rule Books

Special Edition Player's Handbook v.3.5 Deluxe Edition, Leather Bound

Proof

Dungeon Master's Guide v.3.5

Proof

Monster Manual v.3.5

Proof

Expanded Core Rule Books

Players Handbook II

Monster Manual II

Monster Manual III

Compendium Rule Books

Expanded Psionics Handbook

Planar Handbook

Complete Arcane

Spell Compendium

Races of Stone

Complete Warrior

Complete Divine

Book of Exalted Deeds

Complete Adventurer

Weapons of Legacy

Map Folio I

Map Folio II

Frostburn

Magic of Incarnum

Unearthed Arcana

Draconomicon

This link looks like the character sheets:

https://www.amazon.com/Character-Sheets-Wizards-RPG-Team/dp/0786966181/

The product link in my original post looks like it's maybe something else.

Anyway, just hunting for rumors!

Amazon is pretty cool but then you have turds like this...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B07B88MCS5/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=new

• Look for Adventurer's League adventures and/or blog posts by Teos Abadia
  
• Wolfgang Baur's Adventure Builder series
  
• The Kobold Guide to Game Design: Volume 1 Adventures by Wolfgang Baur, Ed Greenwood, Keith Baker, and Nicolas Logue
  
• Tome of Adventure Design by Matthew J. Finch
  
• The Dungeon Alphabet edited by David "Zeb" Cook
  
  ​

A few I haven't read, but have heard good things about here and elsewhere:

• On Writing and Worldbuilding, Vol I
  
• Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding
  
• Fantasy cartography book
  
• Short book on language creation

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Oh wow, only $20. Not bad for a book that's been out of print for 14 years.

Edit: sorry if I come off as snarky; the book was considered a blatant money grab at the time of its release as a half-assed attempt to make D&D players buy into the D&D Miniatures game.

I have a copy of the GURPS Discworld setting at home - it's such a brilliant resource for simple world building stuff.

EDIT: added link to the version I have, though I bought it from my LGS here in the UK.

is still gonna be hard, but john Nunn's "Solving in Style" is an excelent introduction to chess compositions.

https://www.amazon.com/Solving-Style-John-Nunn/dp/1901983668

There's Runequest 6 which was published in 2014, and a new Gloranthan RQ being worked on currently under the title of RUNEQUEST: Roleplaying in Glorantha by Chaosium.

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/RUNEQUEST-SIXTH-Pete-Lawrence-Whitaker/dp/0987725904
  
• https://www.chaosium.com/blog/rqgnew-runequest-edition-to-be-known-as-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha/
  
  I have RQ6, and it's a nice edition.
  
  Actually I've just noticed that the quickstart of the new RQ was published end of 2017 by Chaosium.
  
  
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Runequest-Roleplaying-Glorantha-Quick-Start/dp/1568824505/ref=pd_sbs_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=33HG8ZS5085N5R8Q54W3
  
  
  

Stuff a character can do during their combat turn. The new Essentials set comes with cards that have this printed on them, and it's also included on the character folders that come with official character sheets. My players love them.

https://www.amazon.com/Character-Sheets-Wizards-RPG-Team/dp/0786966181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518912964&sr=8-1&keywords=d%26d+character+sheets&dpID=61hRFkr6M8L&preST=_SX258_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

https://www.amazon.com/Untitled-RPG-Accessory-Wizards-Team/dp/0786966181/

Yes.