Does Your Group Allow Homebrew or 3PP Material for D&D Games?

Mine does, although so far we haven't actually used any, other than a couple of minor tweaks to the core material for flavor's sake. A few items were brought up and discussed and we said we'd try them out, but then they were never followed up on.

So although right now everything in our game is from the core material, we're totally open to the possibility of 3rd party or homebrew material.

 

[Morrus]

Since I hate neither creativity or joy, my answer is of course yes. Allowing rolled stats is far more imbalanced than 90% of the homebrew material out there, especially the stuff that's been vetted by communities like GiantITP or Reddit's r/unearthedarcana. And En5ider, of course.

And obsession with balance is worse than ignoring it. Too much balance makes for blandness and uniformity. Balance is just one tool, not an end unto itself.

 

[SkidAce]

Maybe because as a newish DM I'm not arrogant enough to assume I know better than a team of professional game designers? There are plenty of options that have been thoroughly tested in the official sources.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

Why would you have to know better?

Try something, it doesn't work, it blows up, have fun, try again.

 

[TwoSix]

And obsession with balance is worse than ignoring it. Too much balance makes for blandness and uniformity. Balance is just one tool, not an end unto itself.

IMO, you want to consider balance up to the point of making sure your creation doesn't completely invalidate (or is completely invalidated by) another choice. It needs to have some kind of niche that sets it apart.

Take the Morph class from En5ider. As a wildshape based class, it's almost certainly weaker than the Druid, as the Druid is a full caster and the Morph is a non-caster. However, the ability to change into a greater variety of forms, and the ability to gain more uses of utility wildshapes, gives it a play niche that the Druid doesn't have, and makes it a worthwhile choice.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Maybe because as a newish DM I'm not arrogant enough to assume I know better than a team of professional game designers?

It's not arrogant to think that you are more likely to know what you think is "cool" or "fun" than a complete stranger is. So it's not arrogant to think you have a good idea for something to add to your group's playing of the game.

It would be arrogant if you thought you knew other people outside your group's tastes better than the team of professionals do - but that's not even remotely necessary for home-brew.

For example, I don't have to know what you or Dave Kenzer or Jolly Blackburn think of my home-brewed HackMaster races, and I don't have to think that those races are so good that anyone else would be glad to use them if I made them available in order to have home-brewed them. I also don't need them to be factually balanced with the races in the HackMaster book.

I only need to know if my group and I think they are cool, and if my group and I feel like they are balanced against the other race options at our table well enough that no one feels like they are the only good choice, and no one feels like they are never a good choice.

Because my home-brew is for my home, and nowhere else. And it is magnitudes easier to make up rules junk that a group of 10 people think is cool than it is to make up rules junk that the majority of the playerbase of an RPG are going to think is cool - while the latter is a task for the professionals, the former is something those professionals have always considered it a fact for anyone playing the game to be capable of (seriously - all versions of D&D have always included text along the lines of "You know what your group enjoys better than we do, so you're better equipped to tune the game to your specific group's preferences than we are", and most non-D&D RPGs share the same sentiment).

 

[Shiroiken]

Somewhat of a problematic poll combining homebrew and 3PP. On the DM side of things, it's almost impossible NOT to use homebrew for custom magic items, traps, and NPCs, and probably monsters too. My campaign is running several classic Greyhawk adventures, most of which have monsters not yet made in 5E; I've had to use Fifth Edition Foes and my own monsters to make up the difference. However, on the player's side of the screen everything is mostly by the book.

The campaign I play in is Thule, which I guess counts as a 3PP. No other 3PP allowed, however.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Somewhat of a problematic poll combining homebrew and 3PP.

That is because of the other thread(s) which inspired this poll, in which a claim was made that most DMs don't allow non-official content of any kind.

So the poll is designed to test that very claim by presenting the options of A) some amount of non-official material of some kind is allowed, or B) "official only" is actually the case.

 

[pkt77242]

I find it interesting that the some people say that they don't allow 3PP and then say negative things about the DMsguild but they don't mention the large 3PP like Kobold Press, Green Ronin, Sasquatch, Frog God or En5ider.

Do do people just not look at those or are they not aware of them? Is there a reason that they are avoided?

 

[Bupp]

I honestly think I'd have zero interest in RPGs if they didn't have that inbuilt customizability. To me, someone who only uses official material feels so constrained as to defeat the point of the game for me. I know folks like that exist, but it's a mindset that is utterly beyond me.

I agree with this 100%.

Back when I first started we made up our own stuff, and that was before we discovered Dragon Magazine. I used to spend a good chunk of my money as a young teen photocopying pages out to collect everything together in one spot.

Later I felt using rules not in the core book was almost mandatory. I had players that owned and nearly memorized the Monster Manual (I & II), and the Fiend Folio, not to mention the magic items out of the DMG. To keep them on their toes, and keep a little mystery in the game I would homebrew or use stuff from other sources. Back then I would even bolt on pieces from other game systems. We used to use the critical hit tables from Middle Earth RPG. Heck, my 5e game uses 13th Age's Escalation Die.

Now, I'm an En5ider patron. I buy stuff on the DMs Guild. I have copies of Fifth Edition Foes and Tome of Beasts. I use homebrew material posted here. I read and use stuff from many different blogs. I make my own stuff, and convert stuff on my blog from those same old Dragon Magazines I photocopied so many years ago.

I have my Google Drive account set up like my own personal SRD, which I've shared with my players. I copy and paste blog entries into it. When I have time, I take apart PDFs to separate them into their own entries so I don't have to search through books for them. When I run games, I commonly substitute monsters. Enemy spellcasters use new spells, and rarely have my players found a magic item from the DMG.

Usually I give stuff a read thru, and if I like it, I use it. Player options are available with the understanding that they are "playtest material" and that we may tweak, change, or completely discard stuff at any time. Same with any magic items and spells I hand out. I've changed monsters because they were not working as intended as well.

 

[Jester David]

There's a wide range of potential 3PP

1) At the top is my stuff. I wrote it. I think it's balanced but I always want to playtest it more. More eyes on it are better.
2) Then there's anything written by established names: Kobold Press, Green Ronin, etc.
3) Next is work by people whose design chops I trust or have a solid reputation and/or the bestselling stuff on the DMs Guild. I might need to vet something, but I'm generally prepared to do the work.

(I tend to have copies of all the above in a shared folder on the cloud I gave my players read access to. So they can skim and see what catches their eye.)

4) Below that is everything high quality. Where the people put in the effort of designing the content. Work was done. Even if I don't know the dude personally or am familiar with their stuff, it looks good which is a sign of attention to detail and care about the product. Again, some double checking and editing my be required.
5) After that is everything else. The amateur products that look poor quality or like someone is testing the water. I'm cautious, but if the idea seems cool...

 

[Sacrosanct]

But no character build options from any source that isn't official WotC. If it is 3PP or homebrew it is never anything the players can count on without direct and overt DM intervention..

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that's the whole point of the conversation between DM and player, right? I mean, if I as a player want to try something not officially WoTC, I come up to you before the game and we talk about it and see if it's even a concept that fits in your game world, and if it is, does it mechanically feel right with you. I'm interpreting your statement here to read that you'll shut down the player during game play, and that seems odd to me because I would think that's a conversation you have before gameplay even begins.