3rd Party Products - Do You Care?

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.
No, not really. I am running the WotC adventures Hx/Px/Ex, and I am also running something homebrew. There isn't that much need for stuff. Even under 3E, I didnd't use much 3PP products. Only variant game systems were of interest to me, like Arcana Evolved or Iron Heroes.

Adventures might be interesting to my group as a whole. PC crunch is not interesting if it is not integrated in the Character Builder.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Badwe

First Post
most of what other people have said i would echo. adventures are by far the thing i am most likely to buy (and, to date, the only thing I have bought). Unfortunately for 3p, aside from any grumblings about OGL vs GSL, WotC is too good at producing material for their own base, and their print quality compared to 3pp is impossible to approach.

The poster who mentioned manually importing 3pp monsters into the monster builder has convinced me to reconsider my stance on monster books. Honestly, I would go a step farther. In the latest WWDDGD, part of the event was building your own encounters. to do this, they provided sheets of monster stats, clearly constructed from the stat cards that come in DDM packs, that you could cut apart in order to group cards together by encounter. This is a brilliant idea, and layout is probably the biggest hurdle to integrating 3p monsters into a DM's personal prep. Give me a "Character Power Cards" sized box full of monster stat cards, and possibly a handy reference booklet for all the non-stat stuff (history DCs, sample encounters, tactics) and you have a strong product, imho.
 


I'd flip it around. The (intended, IMO) consequences of DDI strangling third-party publishers makes me *much* less interested in 4e. I'd probably buy more WotC 4e stuff if there were a thriving 3pp marketplace to fill in the niches WotC doesn't hit, or that provided fluff more in line with my preferences. And I'd be a lot more willing to keep up a DDI subscription if it supported those products.
 

lotuseater

Explorer
i'm interested, and if money were unlimited and our earth's resources infinite, then i would buy a lot. but mostly i just look at what's out there, and if i see something i like, i steal the idea for myself and homebrew it.
 


GnomeWorks

Adventurer
Am I missing some choices?

Sorry to disappoint, but that's not really the point of my question.

Storminator said:
I haven't had any interest in 3rd party stuff so far.

That's not really what I'm asking here.

Assume that something exists that catches your interest, to the extent that an average WotC product catches your interest. Do you bother buying it (presuming it's got decent content and is decently priced, etc etc), or no? If not, is it because - specifically - it isn't a WotC product?
 

Derulbaskul

Adventurer
I'm one of those who doesn't buy PC-related stuff in large part because of the character builder. Then again, I haven't seen much 3pp product for PCs.

I still buy 3pp adventures simply because that's something WotC has yet to master (Rich Baker excepted, of course- he really is good), IMO, and that's unlikely to change soon.

I also buy Paizo adventures as soon as they are released. I hope the WotC designers also do so: it might be good for them to see how an adventure path requires a plot... and something other than randomly generated monsters filling encounters. I do wish Necromancer Games was publishing adventures for 4th edition but I understand the commercial reasons for not doing so.

I would like to see more 3pp monster books in large part because they're so easy to input into the monster builder. That said, I've been happy with WotC's efforts with their monsters, more or less, and the monster builder makes it so damn easy to do your own conversions anyway (plus the work by the Jester, Sporemine and Mesh Hong). And I have had a lot of practice with the monster builder because of the recent failed patch that required me to re-input all the monsters I had previously saved. Insert browned off smiley here.
 

Mallus

Legend
I don't have much interest in 3PP material for 4e. My group uses homemade adventures in a homebrewed setting. I wouldn't ignore a product because of it's publisher, but so far, my needs for 4e materials have been met by WotC. I have to say, I've been pleasantly surprised by their overall quality.

I didn't purchase many 3PP materials for 3e, either. In fact, I think all I picked up was Arcana Unearthed/Evolved (which I did love).
 

Voadam

Legend
I'm considering getting Blackdirge's upcoming 4e 3pp Cthulhu Critter cache monster book and I don't even play 4e or buy WotC 4e products.

I believe I have more 3pp stuff overall than 1pp. No I take that back, the Dragon Archive CD has a ton of 1pp material.

My last 3pp OGL purchase was this month.
 

Remove ads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Remove ads

Recent & Upcoming Releases

Top