D&D 5E 3PP Consider This

[Zardnaar]

IN my games I allow 3pp stuff for 5E. Some people do not like it which is fair enough as some of it is outright crap. However its not like WoTC has not made bad stuff before. The trick is to find the good stuff. A few 3PP are also done by ex TSR/WotC staffers who have been working on D&D a lot longer than say Mike Mearls has. IN fact I can remember an interview in Dragon circa 2000 with Mearls who at the time was working for a 3pp himself. Mearls later contributed for Dungeon magazine Gary Gygax worked with Troll Lord Games (who are now making 5E stuff) and Green Ronin and Kobold Publishing who have made some of the 5E APs are ex WoTC staffers as well.

Consider Wolfgang Baur. Who is Wolfgang Baur? Well he used to work for TSR and his earliest work I can find is in the January/February Issue 15 of Dungeon Magazine and he wrote an adventure titled The Glass House. Mr Baur has been publishing for D&D since 1E. So what has he done since then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Baur


A few other bits and pieces.
The Ship of Night (Dungeon 20, Nov/Dec 1989)

Kingdom of the Ghouls (Dungeon 70, Sep/Oct 1998

He also wrote for the Age of Worms and Savage Tide AP's in 3.5

Basically some of the best Dungeon adventures (which also makes them some of the best D&D adventures as well)

and the Kobolds published the Hordes of the Dragon Queen and RoT (HotDQ was a bit of a stinker, rules in flux and all that though).

Going by Mearls work at writing adventures I would be more inclined to look at anything Wolfgang publishes over Mearls at least for adventures.

 

[Morrus]

What do you want us to consider?

 

[pukunui]

What do you want us to consider?

I think he's trying to say that we should consider looking at third party material, if we haven't already done so, because some of it is worth using in your 5e game (mainly the stuff written by D&D veterans like Wolfgang Baur).

 

[Lanliss]

What do you want us to consider?

It looks like a go at convincing those who refuse to allow 3PP that it really isn't that bad.

 

[Morrus]

It looks like a go at convincing those who refuse to allow 3PP that it really isn't that bad.

I thought he was asking us 3PP to consider something.

 

[Lanliss]

I thought he was asking us 3PP to consider something.

Maybe. I read it more like "consider this about 3PP". Maybe I am wrong.

 

[Morrus]

Well, he's right that Wolfgang Baur has been working on D&D longer than Mike Mearls. I think it's fair to say that Mearls has done more 5E work than Wolfgang, but, yeah, this goes back to that "professional game designer" thing that came up in another thread. There are definitely professional game designers working on third party D&D stuff. Most of them, as the OP points out, even worked for WotC (or TSR).

Assuming he's not talking DM's Guild, of course. That's another thing entirely.

Branding is branding, and it works on a lot of folks. That's why companies spend more on branding than on development.

 

[Zardnaar]

It looks like a go at convincing those who refuse to allow 3PP that it really isn't that bad.

This I had a brainfart. Rough day yesterday.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, sure! Of course 3PP is as legitimate as WotC books. None of them are Gygax or even TSR. WotC has the legal ownership of the brand, but nobody "owns" the game except the DM.

Professionally-published stuff such as WotC/Frog God/Kobold Press/etc. books tend to be of better quality than homebrew or DMsGuild stuff, but that is largely attributable to two things: (1) professional editing services, such as editing for clarity/proofreading/consistency-checking, and (2) filtering out the really poorly-designed stuff.

But that's it. Overall I'd expect professional products to be as good as, say, the homebrew of the top 25% best DMs out there. Or in other words, there are dozens of posters on Enworld whose homebrew I'd probably find just as well-designed and useful as anything by WotC/Frog God/Kobold Press, if they took the time to write it up and get it edited.

 

[Morrus]

In fact, Mearls started off writing for Mongoose Publishing! Back in 2002 or so, with one of their Quintesstial X books. Then he worked for Malhavoc (Monte Cook's company at the time) for a bit. His roots are very 3PP.

Jeremy Crawford also started off with OGL stuff, as I recall. I first remember him with Green Ronin's Blue Rose, which was about 10 years ago. Got an ENnie for it! He may well have done things before that, of course - just running off the top of my head.

And Rob Schwalb, one of the 5E designers, now runs Schwalb Entertainment (and has actually just contributed to a project I'll be announcing soon!)

I'm getting old. D&D development and management regimes keep changing under me... I remember Rodney when he was a fan running the SWRPG Network (he's now left WotC)!

I think of all the 5E development team, the only one who never worked for another company is Chris Perkins.

Generally speaking, distinguishing between 3PP and people who happen to currently be employed at WotC right now is fairly meaningless. A lot of WotC folks were 3PP folks, and a lot of 3PP folks were WotC folks. One day some somebody will be talking about how Mike Mearls' new 3PP book is no good because it's not "official", in the same way they talk about Wolfgang Baur or Chris Pramas.