D&D 5E Do you allow fan made material in your games?

[Lanliss]

I voted yes. I allow fan made material IMC and have made a fair amount of my own. Outside material does, however, get carefully vetted and anything I find unbalanced (or that doesn't fit the campaign) gets reworked until I'm satisfied with it. Historically, my players have preferred "non-vanilla" material. When I heard they rolled up a pair of humans and a half-elf for my newest campaign, I nearly died from the shock.

The exact reaction I would have if my players aimed for anything beyond vanilla. They stubbornly refuse to be interested in pushing the boundaries.

 

[MNblockhead]

I use some fan-made material in my campaign as a DM.

As far as players using fan-made material, I might, after some discussion. This hadn't come up in two years of this campaign until last week. A player wants to multiclass as a warlock. We've been talking about what would make sense in this campaign and our story so far. He was asking if he could make some changes to the RAW for one of the Warlock Pacts in the PHB and I suggested UA article option and another fan-made option that presented some interesting warlord-pact options.

 

[Tallifer]

I have declared my campaign open to it (subject to discretion), but no one has taken me up on it yet. We generally just refluff existing stuff to suit. However, my campaign has not actually has that many sessions since we switched from 4E to 5E yet.

 

[pdzoch]

I would never ban fan made material. I would moderate when it can be implemented though. It seems that D&D is purpose built to support fan made material. Didn't all those famous spells come from characters in either Gygax's or Arneson's original playing group? so, yes, I would allow fan made material, provided that there is a story based reason to include it.

 

[Ath'kethin]

No, but there's a corollary question that should be asked: do you disallow "official" content that you don't like? Because that's also a "no" for me.

Now see, here you and I disagree. I ban a good chunk of the PHB in my game because I don't feel it's appropriate for my campaign and it would take more effort than I feel it's worth to houserule.

I don't see how there's a problem anywhere along the line. I allow what I'm comfortable with in my games, whether it's from WotC or Xoth.net Publishing or Sasquatch or EN5ider or my own brain or these forums or my friend's ideas or whatever. I would expect any DM to do the same.

 

[Bitbrain]

The main DM for my group allows fan made content, but he likes to look over it first to see if it needs to be balanced.

The secondary DM for my group is more restrictive.
Fanmade content is permitted, but only if it was first incorporated into the handout he gives to everyone at session 0.

 

[MechaPilot]

The default answer is: No. You cannot just show up with whatever....

The real answer is: Bring it to me, we'll discuss it, & I'll decide.

An interesting perspective-based fact: Your "real answer" is exactly how I feel about fan content, but I voted yes instead of no.

If a piece of fan content fails to meet my standards, I will usually try to find ways to modify it to meet those standards, and explain and propose those modifications to the player, who can then accept them, make a counter-proposal based on my reasoning for why I proposed modifying it as I did, or pick something else.

 

[MechaPilot]

You could say that WoTc stuff is fanmade as well. I never said 3PP stuff so I made it clear.

I treat WotC material as if it were fanmade. Just because it's in an official D&D book, doesn't mean it's okay to use it. Players, always ask your DM first. DMs, be nice and give your players a heads-up about what's not allowed (or what's been modified) before they start making their characters.

 

[MechaPilot]

No, but there's a corollary question that should be asked: do you disallow "official" content that you don't like? Because that's also a "no" for me.

I do disallow official content.

NO long-range teleport (only the gods in my games can do that). All my players know that.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've got a couple players using stuff from both DMs Guild and WotC UA. In both cases I brought them in and gave them to the player as an option if they wanted to use it.

Were any player to find their own content and bring it to me and ask to use it... I'd most likely say sure. Mainly because my players are not conversant enough in "options to game the system" that I'd have to worry about unbalancing.

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