D&D 5E Wanting more content doesn't always equate to wanting tons of splat options so please stop.

[Zardnaar]

Holy crap. Did you just say that the staff of award-winning companies like Green Ronin, Frog God, Kobold Press, and Sasquatch aren't professional game designers?

Did you know that these companies include people who have been writing professionally for D&D for longer than WotC has even existed? That they are the very definition of professionals?

LOL yeah.

I think Wolfgang Bauer wrote for TSR before WoTC existed.

 

[Zardnaar]

Holy crap. Did you just say that the staff of award-winning companies like Green Ronin, Frog God, Kobold Press, and Sasquatch aren't professional game designers?

Did you know that these companies include people who have been writing professionally for D&D for longer than WotC has even existed? That they are the very definition of professionals?

LOL yeah.

I think Wolfgang Bauer wrote for TSR before WoTC existed. Mearls would have been a kid back then.

 

[Morrus]

LOL yeah.

I think Wolfgang Bauer wrote for TSR before WoTC existed. Mearls would have been a kid back then.

Indeed. Mike Mearls, ironically enough, was starting out by writing third-party 3E books for Mongoose Publishing and Malhavoc Press while Pramas was working for WotC.

Anyone who claims that these folks are not professional game writers is simply uninformed.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

While there is some imbalance, to equate it to the massively imbalanced crap third parties put out is incorrect. WotC stuff is usually good and much more balanced overall.

The majority of things which I have banned from my D&D games for being imbalanced have been published by WotC. So maybe your information is just one opinion, like mine is, rather than objective fact?

 

[Maxperson]

You do realize that many of the the large 3rd party publishers do play test their stuff right (in fact a member of my group is a play tester for one of them)? Also you do realize that many of them worked for WoTC previously (or Paizo) and some of them have collaborated with WoTC on 5th edition right (Kobold Press, Green Ronin, and Sasquatch games leap to mind).

A good 90% of the third party stuff I looked at during 3e was over powered, stupidly broken, or just plains stupid. As I've said before, my time is limited. I'm not going to waste it trying to sift through the dross looking for the occasional diamond.

 

[Maxperson]

While I would agree with the core 3, once you move beyond that they aren't near as rigorously play-tested. You don't know that they are better balanced, you assume it, and I hopefully you know the consequences of assuming?

History has proven what I said to be true. Even if it's not as rigorously tested, that just means that WotC is better without as much testing that the 3rd party stuff is. There are definitely some overpowered and/or broken things in WotC splat books, but not nearly as much and not nearly as 90% of the third party stuff I looked at during 3e, and I looked at a lot of it. I had much more time back then.

 

[Maxperson]

Holy crap. Did you just say that the staff of award-winning companies like Green Ronin, Frog God, Kobold Press, and Sasquatch aren't professional game designers?

Did you know that these companies include people who have been writing professionally for D&D for longer than WotC has even existed? That they are the very definition of professionals?

Then perhaps they were responsible for a lot of what was broken in 3e. All I know is that I looked through a ton of 3e third party stuff and while a lot of it was interesting, it was also overpowered and/or broken about 90% of the time. As a result, I bought very little of it.

 

[Morrus]

Then perhaps they were responsible for a lot of what was broken in 3e.

Or perhaps you're woefully uninformed?

 

[Maxperson]

Or perhaps you're woefully uninformed?

About what? 90% of the third party stuff I looked at, and I looked at stuff a ton of 3e third party stuff, was much worse than most things put out by WotC. Maybe they got better for 4e. I didn't really play 4e so I didn't look at any 4e third party stuff.

 

[hawkeyefan]

You are engaging in a False Equivalence. WotC products =/= third party products. I look through WotC products before buying, but I don't need to study them in anywhere near the same level of detail, because I know that they will better balanced.

It 'S not false equivalence at all. People making game material equals people making game material.

Maybe for some fan-based content out of the Guild, your comments may fit. Maybe for some of the less established 3rd party stuff during the 3E days. But for the established 3rd party providers? Many of them have been working in the industry and on D&D in particular for decades. It doesn't take a lot of research to figure out who they are...it doesn't take tons of time. Hell, many have been pointed out to you here in this thread.

And given the bloat and unbalancing options that have existed in official material of past editions, I don't know if you can accept WotC as being inherently better.