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I voted "other" because my true vote is "none of the above".
I didn't buy 3PP products during 3e and I'm even less likely to be interested in them for 4e. Why?
1. 3PP stuff doesn't make it into the Compendium or Character Builder. I use those things all the time, as they are huge time savers. I don't want to deal with merging extraneous print-only stuff with the convenient electronic tools I have.
2. I've got plenty of supplements and adventures coming from WotC. With a new book about once a month, new crunch in Dragon and new adventures in Dungeon, I can't possibly use what's available from WotC already. I certainly don't need more.
3. The stuff I'm getting from DDI is way cheaper than what I would pay for print 3PP stuff.
4. Everything I've seen from WotC so far has been very high quality and hasn't jacked with the game balance too much. If WotC were putting out cruddy stuff, I might be willing to take a chance on 3PP material, but that's not the case.
My honest opinion is that a lack of 3PP support hasn't hurt 4e at all. As far as I'm concerned, 3PPs are extraneous at best and competition at worst. I won't say 4e is better off without 3PP support, but... well, it might be better off without 3PP support.
I feel weird. I don't consider the Compendium/Character Builder the end-all be-all. The fact that some things won't be on it is fine by me.
Hell, the only time I use the compendium is if I can't remember where something is, or I need to do a general search for synergy effects.
I actually prefer using the Character Builder instead of the compendium for referencing things. That being said, the main use of the Compendium is for cut/paste/printing monster statblocks for DM use. Not having to write monster statblocks or use several pages of the monster manual at the same time is golden.
I'm most interested in adventures which is why I was hoping Necromancer Games would be able to publish very soon. Monster books are also always good, if the art is well-done and an editor with a grasp of the mechanics is employed. I would also love to see an update to FFG's Midnight setting.
I don't want any 3PP material for creating PCs simply because my players and I like the character builder too much. In our time-poor environment, being able to create and update PCs with the character builder is something that ultimately convinced us to go with 4E. So unless there is some way to easily import 3PP powers etc... then I'm not interested.
I think WotC has dropped the ball on its adventures. If they're not written by Rich Baker then they're rather weak. Scales of War is a travesty as a campaign: none of the lessons learnt and applied by Paizo to adventure paths seem to have been taken into account. Individual adventures can be quite good but it ain't no coherent campaign!
I simply stopped buying the hard-copy adventures. I would rather spend my time updating Paizo's adventure paths than salvage pieces from the H1-3, P1-3, E1-3 series (although I quite liked H2).
I also believe that WotC should be allowed to deny the GSL to companies that really wrecked the 3PP market during 3.5E. Frex, IMO, Mongoose shouldn't be permitted a licence. How they stayed in business remains a surprise (although their Conan line is pretty good) and they were, IMO, the biggest contributor to the 3PP glut and the perception of the 3PP glut and are highly unlikely to have mended their ways. They're best out of the 4E market simply for the sake of the 4E market.
Perhaps a better solution would have been a two-tier or even three-tier GSL. Companies like Green Ronin (not that they seem interested), Paizo (ditto) and Necromancer Games, and possibly FFG for its campaign settings, should have been given a much more lenient "first-tier" GSL because of the respect with which they treated the d20 licence as evidenced by the quality of the products.
Companies like Mongoose would get a bottom-tier GSL perhaps only allowing for PDF publishing so that distribution channels don't get clogged up with rubbish. "Hit and miss" companies like Goodman Games (I know that's heresy here because they're so popular) get a second-tier GSL much like the one that exists now.
I also believe that WotC should be allowed to deny the GSL to companies that really wrecked the 3PP market during 3.5E. Frex, IMO, Mongoose shouldn't be permitted a licence. How they stayed in business remains a surprise (although their Conan line is pretty good) and they were, IMO, the biggest contributor to the 3PP glut and the perception of the 3PP glut and are highly unlikely to have mended their ways.
Seriously? There quality was I admit questionable at times. However, they were pretty middle of the road. If you want the 100% biggest contributor you only have to look at Fast Forward Entertainment. Those books are still clogging shelves at gaming conventions.
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Seriously? There quality was I admit questionable at times. However, they were pretty middle of the road. If you want the 100% biggest contributor you only have to look at Fast Forward Entertainment. Those books are still clogging shelves at gaming conventions.
That was my exactly my thought upon reading the post.
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Not sure I would or would not buy any. But if some of them and others where made I would have taken a look at them and likely given 4e another try. To see if those books optional rules would make 4e better suit my tastes and gaming style.
So hard to say if I would have bought any, but then they might have gotten me to switch to 4e too. But now we will never know.
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I debated putting "other" for adventures, but, frankly, I've seen just two adventures by WotC that were enjoyable (the orc stronghold thing and Red Hand). Goodman games tends to be very good, but I have many of that style of module now. So, while I would support 3PP of modules, I've yet to see anything that goes wow on the adventure side and am rapidly becoming skeptical.
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Edit: Mhmm... Expeditious Retreat Press... could anyone comment if they are any good? Are we better off just using the system-neutral setting?
I can. They've been working pretty hard on the book for a little while now. I know because I've talked to them about it and they borrowed some 4e adventures from me to see exactly how NPCs are being stated up and to help double check the way they are doing it. I have no insider info on how the book is going to turn out but my faith in the company is such that expect good things from them.
Source material I am leery on, just for balance reasons. I never used published setting (I always homebrew), so I don't bother with settings. I'll get the monster book for one though.
I wouldn't get much for new classes or powers, but I might get a book of rituals and/or magic items.
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There are 18+ base classes available already and scores of paragon paths, with PH3 on the horizon. Dozens of playable races.
Thousands (?) of monsters - all accessible online through DDI, with a new "official" Monster Manual coming out every year.
The 4e equivalent of the awesome 3e Magic Item Compendium came out early in the cycle, not at the very end... so we have a huge variety of items, with Adventurer's Vault 2 on the horizon.
No previous version has ever had this amount of official crunch in such a brief period of time, and in such an accessible format (DDI). I have no need of 3rd party material which (from hard lessons learned during 3e) will usually have lower production values, more balancing problems, more typographical errors and less accessibility than the oceans of official material.
Having said that, I'd love to see more modules being provided by 3rd parties... but those weren't an option in the poll.
Freeport at first was just modules and the WLD is a module of sorts.
True, true...
But I equated Freeport with the campaign setting. For the record, that was one of the few 3rd party products I really liked in 3e. I'm just not sure I'd buy it now, though. We're getting a new campaign setting every 12 months from the official sources, not counting emergent settings like Nentir Vale.
Plus, the real value of a campaign setting is the fluff... which I already have! That lovely 3e Freeport campaign guide is still equally usable in 4e. I just slap some 4e NPC stats around some of the vibrant characters therein, and I'm away. Why buy it again?
To put it another way, I bought the 4e Forgotten Realms Players Guide for the crunch (genasi, drow, swordmage, rituals, etc)... but I'd never buy the Campaign Setting. I've already got an awesome [3e] campaign book for the Realms. And I've got sufficient [1e] material for Dragonlance, all of the [2e] Planescape books, and some detailed [Rolemaster] books for Middle Earth. As long as WotC gives me a crunchtastic PH / MM / DMG every year, I'm set for life!
As for WLD, the less said the better. It might've been a good idea 25 years ago, but a thousand-room dungeon hasn't appealed to me in a loooong time.
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