Third Party: If So, Then What?

[Mercurius]

In reverse order of preference:

4) Adventures.
3) DM aids like random encounter tables, fleshed out encounters for every occasion.
2) Settings. We can never have enough interesting, flavorful settings out there (aren't you doing Mieville's world?).
1) My number one wish would be to see something like a cross between the Ultimate Toolbox and the Random Dungeon Generator, sort of an "Ultimate Dungeon Generator" book that helps you build dungeons from scratch or on-the-fly with little prep required.

I will second (or third or tenth) the lack of interest in more crunch books. We don't need no more freakin' feats/powers/classes/etc.

 

[mevers]

Encounters! 4e encounters rely on terrain, hazards, and encounter groups. Strong encounters can be hard to do off the cuff. Dungeon Delve was great but something with even more generic, yet adaptable encouters would be great- an urban ambush, or some quick lairs, etc, scaled for different levels, that DM's could not only drop in anywhere but learn from (that last part means they need to be great stuff).

This!

But even better if you can link 3 or 4 of these absolutely awesome encounters into a short side trek adventure that I can easily drop into my existing campaign, and that will leave a few plot hooks dangling that the players can or choose to run with if they want.

Price them at about 2 or 3 bucks for the pdf download, and I would snap them up in a heartbeat. Bonus points if you include a monster builder file for me to easily import the monsters.

Goodman Games Critter Encounters: Bugged Out! was a good start, but I would prefer something a little more.... sophisticated.

 

[mevers]

My first double post.

 

[ggroy]

A better question is what type of people have been buying 4E 3PP books, whether in print or pdf/print-on-demand.

Of the 4E DMs and players I know or have met over the last year or so (here locally and at conventions), I got the impression it has been mainly the hardcore DMs which have been regularly buying 4E 3PP modules and some player specific splatbooks. The only players I know of who bought any 4E 3PP player specific splatbooks, were almost always the powergamer "munchkin" type players. Though in the case of 4E powergamers, some have stopped buying any 3PP splatbooks when the DM of their games have banned many 4E 3PP player specific splatbooks for being too "overpowered" or some other unspecified reasons.

At the present time, I have no idea how many munchkin powergamers are still buying any 4E 3PP player specific splatbooks. At several nearby FLGS, the owners have mentioned that the Mongoose 4E "Quintessential ..." books have sold very few copies.

If there is reason to believe that many 4E players and DMs will not buy any 4E 3PP products, it would not be surprising to see that the main customers left for 4E 3PP products are the hardcore DMs and maybe a few munchkin powergamers. I don't know what percentage of 4E DMs would be in the "hardcore" category, but a 4E 3PP market catering primarily to hardcore 4E DMs may possibly be the only viable market left at this point for 4E 3PP publishers.

 

[vagabundo]

WotC is doing a great job of producing tonnes of player options.

I'm not overwhelmed by their adventure quality though. Paizo have some real classic adventures, ironically I think the 4e ruleset is more flexible and could handle some fabulous stories and settings elegantly.

 

[Monkey King]

Open Design is producing some award-winning 4th Edition materials and adventures (Halls of the Mountain King, Wrath of the River King, Courts of the Shadow Fey).

Yet the Pathfinder versions of adventures are consistently outselling the 4E versions. I suspect that the 3pp support will continue to be stronger for Pathfinder than for 4E. I can't say whether that's for licensing reasons, or because of the strength of the DDI in crunch support.

 

[Jack99]

At the present time, I have no idea how many munchkin powergamers are still buying any 4E 3PP player specific splatbooks. At several nearby FLGS, the owners have mentioned that the Mongoose 4E "Quintessential ..." books have sold very few copies.

Those books were not only full of overpowered (read broken) content, but they were poorly written and overall far from impressive. I am not surprised that they sold poorly. Most reviewers I heard/read about shared the opinion I expressed above.

 

[ggroy]

Those books were not only full of overpowered (read broken) content, but they were poorly written and overall far from impressive. I am not surprised that they sold poorly. Most reviewers I heard/read about shared the opinion I expressed above.

I haven't read any of these Mongoose 4E "Quintessential ..." books yet. I don't own any of them.

But if it is true that they are very overpowered and broken, then I wouldn't be surprised at all that quite a number of 4E DMs have explicitly banned them from their games. I know one 4E DM locally who has explicitly banned the already released 4E "Quintessential ..." books from his game. Several "munchkin" powergamers in one of his games wanted to use these books, but he explicitly banned them after reading through the books and not liking what he saw. (Too much overpowered stuff).

 

[Obryn]

Mongoose's Quintessential series earned its bad reputation early on. They have been bad, boring, or broken since the early d20/OGL days. Frankly, I have no idea how they continued to churn them out. Someone must have liked them, I suppose.

It's not even a little surprising to me that Mongoose's sales of a new 4e Quintessential series sucked. I'd consider it a mercy killing, frankly. Bad reputation + zero advertisement + bad reviews = Failure. It's the kind of product that may have been golden back in the heady days of 2000 & 2001, but the market has moved away from books such as these.

-O

 

[Greg K]

If I were running 4e, I would purchase the following

Advanced Player's Guide (Expeditous Retreat)
Plague (Expeditous Retreat)
Critter Caches (Blackdirge/Goodman Games)
Some of Adamant's Pact Books

I'd also welcome a 4e From Stone to Steel, alternate class features and mechancis.