buzz
Adventurer
The thread about Monte's 20-level spell system got me thinking about all of the third-party d20 material I've bought over the years. Which ended up being useful to me, and/or did I feel were worth keeping? Which weren't?
The main thing I realized is that any book that served mainly as a rules add-on for D&D almost never got used. I played a BoEM sorcerer for a bit, but honestly didn't enjoy the class as much as the WotC one. There simply wasn't as much "infrastructure" in the core books to support the variant as there was for the original. Not to mention, my D&D groups have been largely WotC-focused, product-wise. The DMs generally did not invest in the third-party stuff, ergo, they didn't always want to use it in our campaigns.
For the most part, it's the above that I sold en masse when cleaning out my game shelf recently. A lot of it was cool, but I just never used any of it.
What we did use consistently were adventure and setting product. Necromancer settings and adventures have figured pretty prominently in our games; "Crucible of Freya" basically launched my Saturday crew. And, early on in the 3.0 era, I made use of Atlas' Penumbra line. I also am holding on to my copy of Midnight 2e, as it's just so freaking cool that I'm not letting go of it. Ditto Ptolus. (A 4e update of that would be a godsend.)
More interestingly, it's stand-alone OGL product I've been the most happy with, namely Iron Heroes, Spycraft 2.0, and M&M.
So, going forward... I really don't see myself investing in any 4e equivalent of the many class, race, and subsystem splats we saw for 3.x. Precedent has shown that this stuff will just collect dust on my shelf. Adventures I will definitely keep my eye on; I look forward to what Paizo and Necromancer might do with 4e.
OGL games? I'll wait and see. A 4e-updated IH would be a no-brainer for me. M&M and SC2.0 basically are their own games now, and don't need any updating.
That said, I will probably not be going on any buying sprees the way I did when d20 first launched. WotC alone produces more support product for D&D than I can reasonably use. And I play non-D&D d20 games so infrequently that I can only justify so many purchases.
(Not to mention, my tastes have changed enough since d20 came into existence that I'm far more likely to impulse purchase indie RPGs than I am d20 products.)
The main thing I realized is that any book that served mainly as a rules add-on for D&D almost never got used. I played a BoEM sorcerer for a bit, but honestly didn't enjoy the class as much as the WotC one. There simply wasn't as much "infrastructure" in the core books to support the variant as there was for the original. Not to mention, my D&D groups have been largely WotC-focused, product-wise. The DMs generally did not invest in the third-party stuff, ergo, they didn't always want to use it in our campaigns.
For the most part, it's the above that I sold en masse when cleaning out my game shelf recently. A lot of it was cool, but I just never used any of it.
What we did use consistently were adventure and setting product. Necromancer settings and adventures have figured pretty prominently in our games; "Crucible of Freya" basically launched my Saturday crew. And, early on in the 3.0 era, I made use of Atlas' Penumbra line. I also am holding on to my copy of Midnight 2e, as it's just so freaking cool that I'm not letting go of it. Ditto Ptolus. (A 4e update of that would be a godsend.)
More interestingly, it's stand-alone OGL product I've been the most happy with, namely Iron Heroes, Spycraft 2.0, and M&M.
So, going forward... I really don't see myself investing in any 4e equivalent of the many class, race, and subsystem splats we saw for 3.x. Precedent has shown that this stuff will just collect dust on my shelf. Adventures I will definitely keep my eye on; I look forward to what Paizo and Necromancer might do with 4e.
OGL games? I'll wait and see. A 4e-updated IH would be a no-brainer for me. M&M and SC2.0 basically are their own games now, and don't need any updating.
That said, I will probably not be going on any buying sprees the way I did when d20 first launched. WotC alone produces more support product for D&D than I can reasonably use. And I play non-D&D d20 games so infrequently that I can only justify so many purchases.
(Not to mention, my tastes have changed enough since d20 came into existence that I'm far more likely to impulse purchase indie RPGs than I am d20 products.)
