D&D 5E Do you ACTUALLY use 3rd Party Books?

[FormerLurker]

Have you actually used 3rd Party products at your game table in your last campaign or two?
(Books and PDFs, not personal homebrew.)

I've bought lots of 3PP content but none of it has been used apart from monsters...

-edit-

I excluded campaign setting and adventures as those can be pretty system agnostic.

 

[Oofta]

I use some lore stuff I've gotten from DmsGuild. I have the Tome of Monsters from Kobold Press and a couple other books mostly because my wife (who also DMs) wanted them. But they pretty much sit on a shelf and gather dust.

So technically I use 3PP stuff but it's either not covered under the OGL anyway or it accounts for less than 1% of what I actually use. In decades of play I've never been in a game that allowed 3PP character options.

 

[Reynard]

I have used 3PP stuff since literally the day 3E dropped (Creature Collection) through the present (Midgard Heroes) -- monster books, player facing material, adventures, settings, etc... It has been a boon to my gaming and gaming in general. People that scoff at it have obviously not paid attention to the last 20+ years.

 

[Velderan]

I'm assuming by "Yes, but only monsters" you meant the wider range of DM centered products which is what I voted for.

I believe it was @GMforPowergamers who said it, but I agree with not allowing player focused 3PP content at my table because it often can be imbalanced and if you allow 1 player to use something that is actually balanced pretty well, it gets harder to tell another player no to something that's imbalanced.

 

[Oofta]

I have used 3PP stuff since literally the day 3E dropped (Creature Collection) through the present (Midgard Heroes) -- monster books, player facing material, adventures, settings, etc... It has been a boon to my gaming and gaming in general. People that scoff at it have obviously not paid attention to the last 20+ years.

Just because I don't use something doesn't mean I don't acknowledge the value it has to others. Whether or not the OGL was good for the industry as a whole is a whole other issue, personally I think it may well have stifled innovation.

 

[Cruentus]

Couldn’t really answer the poll because I’m not sure where I fit. I use 3PP materials, but only bits and pieces in my homebrew sandbox. I don’t use whole settings, rarely use classes, sometimes modded monsters, sometimes a specific location. I use them for inspiration, but don’t depend on them.

 

[schneeland]

Our current campaign is 3rd party (Call from the Deep). Not sure how that would fit into the poll.

 

[iserith]

No, I don't use any third-party D&D 5e stuff. Sometimes I'll get OSR adventures and convert them.

 

[Reynard]

Couldn’t really answer the poll because I’m not sure where I fit. I use 3PP materials, but only bits and pieces in my homebrew sandbox. I don’t use whole settings, rarely use classes, sometimes modded monsters, sometimes a specific location. I use them for inspiration, but don’t depend on them.

I think that the OGL actually increased innovation. It not only had people experimenting with d20/D&D, it had people who pushed back against it innovating. The Forge and the games that came out of there, house systems by companies that did not join the d20 glut, new takes on old ideas. The last 23 years have been full of innovation with a large number of strong companies unassociated with D&D/d20.

 

[Ibrandul]

Yes—and more than just player options and monsters. I’ve used random encounter builders (Loke’s Untold Encounters of the Random Kind), prebuilt locations (Nord’s Remarkable Inns and Their Drinks), and on and on.