D&D 5E 5e Players: How often have you been allowed to use 3PP?

[EzekielRaiden]

BOTH Very frequently/always and Very rarely/never.

I find Critical Role material is allowed at almost every table I've played at since they became popular. Outside of them, the policy is almost always "No" or "It hasn't been playtested enough to be trusted". It's practically a knee-jerk reaction to not allow 3PP besides CR.

Yeah. I was pretty much expecting a bimodal distribution. Lots of "mostly or usually yes," lots of "absolutely the hell not."

As mentioned above, part of my motivation here was, is it actually that weird for someone to have an experience with 5e where 3PP is essentially never allowed when they're players? And the answer is a pretty resounding "no, it isn't weird at all, in fact it's quite common." But folks I had spoken with, very very recently, reacted as though this was some utterly alien experience that nobody they'd ever spoken to had had.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah. I was pretty much expecting a bimodal distribution. Lots of "mostly or usually yes," lots of "absolutely the hell not."

As mentioned above, part of my motivation here was, is it actually that weird for someone to have an experience with 5e where 3PP is essentially never allowed when they're players? And the answer is a pretty resounding "no, it isn't weird at all, in fact it's quite common." But folks I had spoken with, very very recently, reacted as though this was some utterly alien experience that nobody they'd ever spoken to had had.

Think you're extrapolating a lot there.

Life's life get used to people saying no.

Generally from 3pp I'm looking for stuff that fills holes in WotC. Expanded spell and feats, new archetypes. New classes not so much big book of subsystems not so much


Also adventures. Very small list of trusted publishers, a few DMs Guild eg MT Black.

Production values helps. 5 pages of a PDF printed out meh.

A nice Kobold Press, Pauzo or whoever hardcover gets players on board fairly fast. Eg Midgard PHB.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Think you're extrapolating a lot there.

Life's life get used to people saying no.

Generally from 3pp I'm looking for stuff that fills holes in WotC. Expanded spell and feats, new archetypes. New classes not so much big book of subsystems not so much


Also adventures. Very small list of trusted publishers, a few DMs Guild eg MT Black.

Production values helps. 5 pages of a PDF printed out meh.

A nice Kobold Press, Pauzo or whoever hardcover gets players on board fairly fast. Eg Midgard PHB.

shrug Seemed to me the excessive extrapolation was "what?? You haven't been allowed to use ANY 3PP? Does that even happen???"

 

[Paul Farquhar]

shrug Seemed to me the excessive extrapolation was "what?? You haven't been allowed to use ANY 3PP? Does that even happen???"

Most people either play with friends, so 3PP is allowed, or play with strangers, and it's core rules only (which is what you would expect). I suspect the number of people who do both is small.

Core Rules +1 was standard for the Adventurers League for a long time.

 

[TwoSix]

Right. But I've been specifically told to do it as a player to fix problems I have with 5e. That's one of the reasons I made this thread. (The other was just that folks in other threads were agog and aghast at the idea that people would have so rarely seen 3PP content in games.)

As a player, getting the social contract at your table(s) to change to allow more 3pp is still easier than getting WotC to change the official rules to match your preferences.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As a player, getting the social contract at your table(s) to change to allow more 3pp is still easier than getting WotC to change the official rules to match your preferences.

If you are willing to put the work in you can build relationships and collect together likeminded people online. It's harder than face-to-face, but it's possible.

Like everything, if you want something, but aren't willing to put in the legwork yourself, no one is going to do it for you. I'm pretty sure Gary Gygax didn't sit in his basement waiting for someone to invent D&D for him.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you are willing to put the work in you can build relationships and collect together likeminded people online. It's harder than face-to-face, but it's possible.

Like everything, if you want something, but aren't willing to put in the legwork yourself, no one is going to do it for you. I'm pretty sure Gary Gygax didn't sit in his basement waiting for someone to invent D&D for him.

I went looking for games for over a year. Slowly loosening my expectations until they became "literally anything that might vaguely resemble what I might enjoy in a game."

When I came up empty after that, I gave up.

Don't tell me I haven't done the leg work.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I went looking for games for over a year. Slowly loosening my expectations until they became "literally anything that might vaguely resemble what I might enjoy in a game."

When I came up empty after that, I gave up.

Don't tell me I haven't done the leg work.

Doing the legwork includes recognising when one stratagy isn't working and trying a different one.

I mean, it's quite possible that no one else in the entire universe likes what you "might enjoy in a game". But that seems unlikely. More probable, you need to sell it to people.

 

[humble minion]

I allowed it in my current game. I provided a list of suggested 3pp material I would allow (from a thematic point of view, and drawing from a few reputable 3pps), and said that anything else I'd evaluate if asked, but that i reserved the right to rein it back in if it proved problematic in play.

It's been a mixed success so far. One player took a 3pp class (kibblestasty's Warlord), but one of the others has spent weeks trawling the wilder and less-credible corners of the D&D internet trying to find the absolutely perfect homebrew subclass, and then trying to talk me into modifying it just a little bit more.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Doing the legwork includes recognising when one stratagy isn't working and trying a different one.

I mean, it's quite possible that no one else in the entire universe likes what you "might enjoy in a game". But that seems unlikely. More probable, you need to sell it to people.

I tried forums (four different ones, including ENWorld), I tried PbP, I tried Roll20 and one of its competitors that I no longer remember the name of (mostly because it was a complete dud), I tried pitching concepts, I tried Reddit, I tried Discord. (Discord produces a lot of games, but not a lot of hits, if you get my meaning.) Started out looking for 4e, loosened that to 4e-adjacent (e.g. 13A), loosened that to other systems I wanted to see (e.g. Shadowrun 5e), loosened it again to "alright anything that isn't D&D 5e that I've actually heard of, and isn't a horror game," then to "alright, fine, I guess I'll look at 5e games and be picky about them," and finally to just looking for any 5e game that might, possibly, maybe play like something I could enjoy.

What, exactly, was I supposed to do better/different? I haven't the money to pay to play, nor would I do so even if I could. I don't have reliable transportation, and even if I did I have terrible social anxiety, so physical in-person games are essentially impossible for me (doubly so once the pandemic hit).

I tried. I got nothing, out of more than a year of searching, regularly, multiple times a week, consistently. Applying to at least one game every week, consistently. The games I got into? They died before they hit six sessions (or the equivalent for PbP.) Often before they even hit four. I put up "looking for DM" pitches. Zero replies. I entered my name in "player looking for group" lists. Zero messages. I even rustled up a group of folks I knew from various forums, but we...didn't gel, shall we say.

And all of this was after I'd already found and lost two actually fun, great groups, the former (4e D&D) to IRL family disaster taking the DM away, the latter (13A) due to the PbP DM ghosting us right as our adventure was about to go somewhere new.

I tried.