D&D General Has 5e become noise?


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Why not talk about the official WotC books? Is their content somehow less exhausting because WotC makes it?
It's hard to get exhausted when you're swimming against a trickle rather than a tide. WotC has a steady flow of new product rather than a deluge.

For me, I suppose all 5E products that aren't put out by WotC is noise to me. I don't use third party products mainly because I'm not really interested in expanding my options for D&D. Last year, I opened a thread asking about third party 5E compatible books and I got a lot of good suggestions, but when I started looking into it I quickly lost interest. Some of what was suggested looked pretty cool, it just wasn't for me.
 


It's hard to get exhausted when you're swimming against a trickle rather than a tide. WotC has a steady flow of new product rather than a deluge.

For me, I suppose all 5E products that aren't put out by WotC is noise to me. I don't use third party products mainly because I'm not really interested in expanding my options for D&D. Last year, I opened a thread asking about third party 5E compatible books and I got a lot of good suggestions, but when I started looking into it I quickly lost interest. Some of what was suggested looked pretty cool, it just wasn't for me.
You’re the opposite of me. The anti-me. I can’t remember the last time I used a WotC 5E book, but it is certainly measured in years. I’m just more interested in the different stuff third parties create.
 

It's not just "noise" if you are keen to be able to find lots of different people to play with. A vast number of people joined the hobby with 5e and its a familiar system to far more. You can virtually always get a group together.

The question is what value published materials hold. For me personally I've encountered enough 5e stuff that I don't really need any more "for inspiration and ideas" products and I've got plenty of stat blocks at my beck and call, so my interest in most published campaigns or monster books is diminished.

Maybe I could be sold on a 5e total conversion products with an IP I care about. I still buy some official WotC campaign modules when I feel the network and branding values (being able to find lots of online resources and being able to pitch a campaign that people recognize by name and are already interested in), along with whatever affinity I have for what the specific product is trying to do, outweigh the slog of trying to decipher a WotC module. I could be sold on a 3rd party 5e module, but the same factors are at play and they don't generally have the massive promotion to have the same selling points in networking and branding. I no longer hold out hope that a published module will actually make my life as a DM easier.

Which is all just to say the products have become more noise to me as the value and use I find in published products in general has waned.
 

It's not just "noise" if you are keen to be able to find lots of different people to play with. A vast number of people joined the hobby with 5e and its a familiar system to far more. You can virtually always get a group together.

The question is what value published materials hold. For me personally I've encountered enough 5e stuff that I don't really need any more "for inspiration and ideas" products and I've got plenty of stat blocks at my beck and call, so my interest in most published campaigns or monster books is diminished.

Maybe I could be sold on a 5e total conversion products with an IP I care about. I still buy some official WotC campaign modules when I feel the network and branding values (being able to find lots of online resources and being able to pitch a campaign that people recognize by name and are already interested in), along with whatever affinity I have for what the specific product is trying to do, outweigh the slog of trying to decipher a WotC module. I could be sold on a 3rd party 5e module, but the same factors are at play and they don't generally have the massive promotion to have the same selling points in networking and branding. I no longer hold out hope that a published module will actually make my life as a DM easier.

Which is all just to say the products have become more noise to me as the value and use I find in published products in general has waned.
I'm always interested in finding more rules about modeling various parts of a setting in any RPG, and 5e in particular since my favored and most commonly played game, Level Up, is a 5e game. I'm just not especially looking for non-Sim 5e mechanics.
 


what is this counting? Sound too high for Kickstarters, does it include DTRPG and DMsGuild titles?
Here is the original context from @Echohawk along with the comparable charts for 3.5 and OD&D:

"I think that would depend heavily on what counts as "3rd party materials". However, a quick examination of products flagged as being "D&D Compatible" on RPGGeek seems to indicate that 5e is in a league of its own for 3rd party support, compared to all previous editions:
Original D&D Compatible Products: 585
Basic D&D Compatible Products: 1042
AD&D First Edition (1e) Compatible Products: 1628
AD&D Second Edition (2e) Compatible Products: 1022
d20 System/OGL Product (D&D 3.0 Compatible): 1781
d20 System/OGL Product (D&D 3.5 Compatible): 3419
4e Game System Product (D&D 4.0 Compatible): 734
5e Game System Product (D&D 5th Edition Compatible): 26,868"

D&D 3.5e Compatible.jpg

OD&D Compatible.jpg


Post in thread 'How Much D&D Stuff Is There Anyway?' D&D General - How Much D&D Stuff Is There Anyway?
 

I feel ya. I've got more stuff than I can actually use. I forget what's in all the books. When I add extra resources, it just confuses things and slows the game.
Nothing against the system, but Level Up broke 5e for me. Just too much.
The only way the hobby survives for me is to ignore all the supplemental stuff coming out.
I like a lot about LU A5E, in fact the best part was when we first switched to it and broke from all the horde of 5e content that had built up. "Just use these core books!" But now we've been playing A5E for 2-3 years, and we've built up our trove of supplemental A5E 1pp and 3pp content.. and it's just so much :'D Now it's all bloated and weighty, there's so much broken-OP stuff that makes my life as a DM a pain (I literally can't stop the berserker without killing every other party member 4x over, who decided that an archetype giving berserker prof in mental saves was a good idea?!). Anyway, content bloat. It happens to the best of us. We do this to ourselves, it feels like.
 


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