3rd Party Products - Do You Care?

GnomeWorks · Sep 23, 2009

So here's an honest question for all you 4e folk.

I've heard talk from some 4e folk that they aren't interested in 3rd party products for 4e due to their lack of being in the DDI-based stuff, like the character builder and what-not.

My question is thus - do you care about 3rd party products?

Obviously a purchase decision is probably going to be largely based on the company's reputation and the quality of the content in a given product, but ignore those aspects: do you even get to the point where you think about those things, or do you ignore a 3rd party product simply because it is 3rd party and doesn't have the kind of support that WotC stuff does?

This isn't a question about whether or not 3rd party support is important to you. It's a question of - if it's available, if it's out there, would you look into it and possibly purchase 3rd party products, or forgo doing so?

avin · Sep 23, 2009

Yes. I'm particularly looking for monsters (which I can manually add on my Monster Builder) and good adventures / fluff, a part where Wotc has been lackluster since 2E, in my opinion, of course.

Dice4Hire · Sep 23, 2009

Honestly no.

If I were, it would be adventures. I do not feel like WOTC is covering the adventure angle well enough in 4E, even with Dungeon and published modules, so I would like to see more of them on the level of Shattered Gates, Red Hand, etc.

Snoweel · Sep 23, 2009

I homebrew and I'm not particularly creative so I'm always interested in adventures and other 'fluffy' stuff.

I'll even convert material from other editions - in 4e it's super easy.

Central to my homebrew is a version of Green Ronin's Freeport with the serial numbers filed off. I also use a lot of Legend of the 5 Rings stuff but only a die hard L5R fan would recognise any of it.

Dice4Hire · Sep 23, 2009

Honestly no.

If I were, it would be adventures. I do not feel like WOTC is covering the adventure angle well enough in 4E, even with Dungeon and published modules, so I would like to see more of them on the level of Shattered Gates, Red Hand, etc.

Psion · Sep 23, 2009

I loved 3rd party stuff (for 3e), and I've got to say: even back in the day of eTools and PCGen, not having electronic support for third party books proved an obstacle.

With much more restrictive licensing and a retail landscape much less welcoming to 3pp, I can't see the situation being any better under 4e.

Wicht · Sep 23, 2009

This would make a good poll
- I mostly play 4e and care about third party published products
- I mostly play OGL games and care about third party published products
- I mostly play older editions and care about third party published products
- I mostly play 4e and DON'T care about third party published products
- I mostly play OGL games and DON'T care about third party published products
- I mostly play another edition and DON'T care about third party published products

Am I missing some choices?

wedgeski · Sep 23, 2009

I don't really miss the 3PP's, even though some of the stuff I bought during the 3e era was really spectacular. I already feel that most of the output from Wizards' is of extremely high quality, and I'm barely going to have enough time to touch it as it is.

vagabundo · Sep 23, 2009

Two issues:

My DDI sub is sucking up my gaming euro, so even if I had an interested - which I do - I have less to spend on extra stuff.

4e is very easy to homebrew, so I find I'm doing a lot myself, where previously I would look for something already done.

I'm primarily a DM, but my players seem to have all the options they want in the PHBI and II, they arn't hankeren for anything yet.

I could see my 3rd party purchases increasing as this generation moves on, but at the moment I've lots and lots of content to keep me going.

Thanee · Sep 23, 2009

For 3E I didn't really look into 3PP, so why do so for 4E (and I have no DDI and do not care about it either)?

It's not like there isn't more than enough material in the official books, already.

Yeah, good adventures would probably be about the only thing worth looking into, if there were any.

Bye
Thanee