Well that’s a goalpost move if I ever saw one. We were discussing whether third party products were officially licensed or not (they are; they use an official license). You’re now talking about which are more popular. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to score, but the message is getting a bit garbled.
That point might not have come out as well as intended.
The argument I'm making is that not all licences products are equal. Not just in quality, but in the perception of how "official" and sanctioned they are.
There's a big gulf between a product like the
Book of Erotic Fantasy - a product WotC did
not want made and changed the rules of qualifying for the "D&D compatible product" logo and something like
Tome of Beasts which is equally unofficial but done by an ex-TSR employee and hyped on the official podcast and something like
Lost Tales of Myth Drannor which is being done by a bunch of people who freelance for the D&D organised play program and has permission to copy the trade dress of official D&D products.
Are are "licensed products" but they're really not on equal footing or the same.
Which I was trying to demonstrate by invoking the popularity of the products.
I imagine
Lost Tales of Myth Drannor has some well-written adventures, with the content being written by experienced adventure writers. But the same could be said about the best-selling adventures of M.T. Black. Or the staff at Kobold Press for their books
Prepared and the newly released
Prepared 2.
But LToMD received a news post on the front page of this site while
Prepared 2 did not. Despite both being "licensed". And there's far more demand and interest for the former. Why? Because there's an implied official sanctioning from WotC. It has their silent, unspoken seal of approval.
Ditto Curse and D&D Beyond. We have no idea of their chops at designing feats for D&D. They're programmers. Really, we should trust their feat design as much as we trust Mike Mearls' ability to code in Python. That they're including feats
should get as much attention on ENWorld as, oh, me releasing a book of Feats on the DMsGuild. But it doesn't get that level of attention. Because they are a direct partner of WotC.
As I said earlier, there is the "veneer of officialness".
But that's a consumer misunderstanding, this rabbit hole never ends if we follow it. Consumers will often believe whatever they feel is most convenient for them to believe. Look at the reception to beyond itself, it's a licensed product not much different from something like roll20, that is only interested in supporting 5th edition DND, but people don't demand roll20 codes with their player handbooks when roll20 licenses them to sell WOTC material. It's that Beyond looked desirable, but would cost money, so people took to believing that they were somehow entitled to it- just look through this thread, Curse's product has been out for a month but people still refer to it as being WOTCs. We need to clear up misunderstandings of what these products are, not reinforce them with a "well if the consumers think it's official it must be true"
It's totally a difference that exists entirely within the mind. As can also be demonstrated by the people who quickly dismissed the feats as "3rd party crap". The feats will be good or bad depending on their design alone...
But things are inequal.
If you pre-order the book on the platform you'll get the new feats with Xanthar in Beyond and these new feats. And the difference to a person creating a character will be largely cosmetic. But if you buy all the content available, excluding those feats it's still only WotC material. There's no Kobold Press or Green Ronin feats in D&D Beyond that I can see. Which implies that any non-WotC feats that are included are somehow sanctioned or approved.
This may or may not be true. WotC might not approve or even glance in the direction of Curse's game design. In the same way that WotC just published but didn't really write the 3e
Dragonlance Campaign Setting. But, regardless, that approval is implied.
It's a fuzzy topic. Heck, just look at the debate over who "wrote" the first three 5e storyline adventures. Were those official WotC products? Or licensed products?
