D&D General "As a whole, 3rd Party Products Make D&D Better." (a poll)
- Thread starter el-remmen
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Benjamin Olson
Hero
To me it depends on the type of content. In terms of character options, spell options, etc. I am not interested in unofficial content because it has little guarantee of being meaningfully playtested, and when it isn't unbalanced or out of sync with familiar or typical 5e mechanics it often falls in a trap of being too conservatively "the kind of thing WotC would definitely publish" to be interesting. In any case there is so much official content here for the amount of characters anyone will ever actually get to build and play that I'm just not interested in searching out which unofficial options seem of equivalent worth and adding them to the mix.
But then there are monsters. The 5e Monster Manual involves pretty anemic monster design created before anyone really had a sufficient feel for how the game played, so although WotC's monster design subsequently improved, I would rate 3rd party content as better on average because a much larger percentage of it was made by people who had a feel for how monster fights go in 5e D&D as actually played.
Most importantly, there are adventures. WotC's short adventures are mostly fine (currently running my 3rd and 4th groups through Lost Mines of Phandelver and still love it as a product), but the full book affairs are (almost) all just horribly compromised by having too many cooks not really knowing what each other are doing, and probably working on pretty hard and fast deadlines. "Compromised" is the best word in general because they also seem to (presumably) be heavily reworked in response to input from the marketing and legal departments, and sometimes also a cultural sensitivity reader, and likely in response to what other teams working on other adventures are doing. Or else they just have too many authors in order to get giant books written in short spans of time. Whatever the cause the results tend to be undigestable, messy adventures full of vestigial elements from earlier versions that don't really cohere or make sense, that are just way too much work for the DM. The only real selling point of official adventures for me at this point is that, if you run them on a VTT you can google image search basically any location ever mentioned in the adventure and find a battlemap someone has made or at least picked out specifically for that location.
So ultimately I voted true, primarily because I think the major official adventures are simply no longer functional products.
But then there are monsters. The 5e Monster Manual involves pretty anemic monster design created before anyone really had a sufficient feel for how the game played, so although WotC's monster design subsequently improved, I would rate 3rd party content as better on average because a much larger percentage of it was made by people who had a feel for how monster fights go in 5e D&D as actually played.
Most importantly, there are adventures. WotC's short adventures are mostly fine (currently running my 3rd and 4th groups through Lost Mines of Phandelver and still love it as a product), but the full book affairs are (almost) all just horribly compromised by having too many cooks not really knowing what each other are doing, and probably working on pretty hard and fast deadlines. "Compromised" is the best word in general because they also seem to (presumably) be heavily reworked in response to input from the marketing and legal departments, and sometimes also a cultural sensitivity reader, and likely in response to what other teams working on other adventures are doing. Or else they just have too many authors in order to get giant books written in short spans of time. Whatever the cause the results tend to be undigestable, messy adventures full of vestigial elements from earlier versions that don't really cohere or make sense, that are just way too much work for the DM. The only real selling point of official adventures for me at this point is that, if you run them on a VTT you can google image search basically any location ever mentioned in the adventure and find a battlemap someone has made or at least picked out specifically for that location.
So ultimately I voted true, primarily because I think the major official adventures are simply no longer functional products.
I don't think WotC's thinking has changed on at least one aspect of 3rd part products: they don't want to make 32 page adventures and a hundred settings. If WotC was trying to eliminate 3PP material entirely, they wouldn't be negotiating with the likes of Kobold. They want someone to produce that stuff, they just want to control it more than they have in the past.Welp, if the "OGL" (scare quotes are important when referring to Orwellian language) leak is to be believed we know how WotC would vote in this poll.
DarkCrisis
Reeks of Jedi
Best 5E adventure I’ve ran was third party. Not even close to the official adventures
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Oooh, which one? I'm definitely looking for an adventure path that takes characters to 1-11+ and holds together all the way
DarkCrisis
Reeks of Jedi
Odyssey of the Dragonlords. I mythic Greek style setting and adventure
jgsugden
Legend
On the whole, the money I have spent on WotC/TSR products (or licensed products like DDM minis) have given me a huge return on my investment in terms of fun per dollar. I include things like DNDBeyond in that calculation. So much of what I buy from the official source is critical to my gaming and gets used a lot. Note that I do not tend to buy a lot of adventure paths.
On the flip side, my 'enjoyment per dollar' on 3P products is muuuuuuuuuuuch lower. There are a lot more busts, and these 3P products tend to not be as cohesive with the official products, making them feel a bit out of place ... and it is very rare that 3P products provide me with something that I could not match in quality with homebrew material.
To that end, I voted no. It isn't that there is no value to 3P products - but the enjoyment per $ spent has just been so much less as to make it generally a bad idea.
On the flip side, my 'enjoyment per dollar' on 3P products is muuuuuuuuuuuch lower. There are a lot more busts, and these 3P products tend to not be as cohesive with the official products, making them feel a bit out of place ... and it is very rare that 3P products provide me with something that I could not match in quality with homebrew material.
To that end, I voted no. It isn't that there is no value to 3P products - but the enjoyment per $ spent has just been so much less as to make it generally a bad idea.
jgsugden
Legend
1/2 Greek, 1/2 Game of Thrones.
I am playing it and we're now 11th level. It is a fine adventure, but there are some balance issues (I'd modify one of the early encounters rather than run it as is because there is a high chance for PC death unless they use strong tactics). I feel like we're still a ways from the end at 11th level.
My biggest complaints:
* There are some things that are telegraphed, but the adventure apparently does not think the PCs will figure it out. It was weird to all of the players when the DM told us the advanture had no advice for the DM when the PCs figured out the 'secret'.
* There some 'additional features' for PCs that end up feeling a little flat. The DM can - and I think should - enhance them by better incorporating them into more areas of the adventure.
* It is very thematic, and you can see there are a lot of potential hooks in character design, so you feel like you're leaving a lot on the table when you make your choice... but then those opportunities seem a little flat in the game.
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