Is the "official D&D product" really that big a deal?

[jmucchiello]

People keep talking about all the great 3rd party books out there. It's June now. What 3rd party Monster book is there this year? New magic system?

There are PDFs of course. Not that I want to derail this thread into a "we need pulped wood product at the table" discussion.

 

[Storm Raven]

I use lots of third party materials, but my players generally don't have the books, and often ignore what is available for use in my campaigns. I have the following third party materials:

FFG's entire Legends and Lairs, Midnight, and Dragonstar lines.
Most of White Wolf's Scarred Lands line.
Several Malhavoc Press publications.
Mongoose Publishing's entire Encyclopedia Arcane series.
Several AEG publications.
Most of Bastion Press' d20 publications.
Green Ronin's Freeport materials.
Necromancer Games' Rappan Athuk trilogy.
A couple of Avalanche Press books.
A smattering of stuff by Penumbra.
One book each by Mystic Eye Games and Expeditious Retreat Press.

And the odd thing is that, despite the many times I have seen how many third party products are unbalanced or badly designed, they rarely get used. Not because I don't use them - I do, and many of the NPCs in my campaigns have one or two elements drawn from these sources. But even when I make material from these sources available, the players in my campaign stick to the stuff they can find in the WotC books.

 

[Asmor]

Storm, just out of curiosity, do you know what your players think of 3rd party material? Do they think its over-powered, under-powered, confusing, or do they not think of it in the first place?

 

[Storm Raven]

Storm, just out of curiosity, do you know what your players think of 3rd party material? Do they think its over-powered, under-powered, confusing, or do they not think of it in the first place?

It seems to me that they simply don't think of it. And when they do, they gravitate back to the WotC publications for some reason. More than once, a player has told me what they want in a character, and what they describe is almost exactly something that is in one of the many third party books I have, and have "cleared" for use. If I point it out to them, they might use it, but often they decide "I think I'm going to do something else - something I found in a WotC book."

I'm not sure what the root cause of this phenomenon is.

 

[Minicol]

In a couple recent threads, I've heard mention about the significance of the "official D&D product" label.

Are there really that many people out there who will only buy official stuff? Certainly, no ENWorlders, I'd assume. But do you know or play with people who will only buy WotC stuff?

If so, what's their reason for it?

Carl

As a true collector and fan of the game, I buy everything, though since I feel insulted by the decision to cancel you know what, there will be one company getting a lot less cash from me.

Otherwise, I used to make WOTC a priority, since their quality used to be better than the rest, especially regarding art. Since I discovered Green Ronin and Paradigm, I do not feel that way anymore. They proved that you can have better supplements than the official ones, and that adventures need not be limited to a few random monsters in a dirty dungeon. If only Fantasy Flight had remained on the market ...

In D20, you have products designed by people with brains, and I don't mean the G.....x thing.

D20 for ever, viva la revolucion !

 

[Minicol]

: the Ancient Isle[/url], which I think describes most visually as ancient Africa with an ancient Roman tech level (e.g. spectacular stone cities). We decided not to use the D&D brand on it (which incidentally gave us a little more art and writing freedom when it comes to a few things like the nasty habits and followers of our Vicelord deity ).

I imagine it'll appeal most to Nyambe fans and others looking for a non-European flavor based setting.


MINE ! My precious ....