Official DnD, D20, and OGL - who are you?

[Dragonblade]

I consider myself largely a purist.

I have purchased all the WotC books since the advent of 3rd Edition. I have not bought Ghostwalk or Draconomicon, simply because I don't think I would use them.

The only WotC books I have not been completely happy with were the splatbooks (Sword and Fist, etc.) All the other WotC books have been excellent, IMO.

I do look to 3rd party publishers but tend not to buy any book just because they feature one or two cool things. A third party publisher must have nice artwork, good solid game mechanics, and must offer me something that WotC doesn't.

For example, I have Spycraft and M&M and they are great games. But for D&D, the only non-WotC book I really allow is the Complete Book of Eldritch Might.

I wasn't impressed with AU, Scarred Lands, Midnight, Kalamar, etc. on the whole. Though, certainly elements of these settings are interesting, they are not enough to warrant me buying them.

FR has been pretty much the standard for my game. It has every possible campaign I could ever want to play all in one world. You have your stereotypical Medieval Euro fantasy (Faerun), you have your Arabian desert fantasy (Al-Qadim), you have Asian fantasy (Kara-Tur), you have gods, plane-hopping, a world big enough to handle epic adventures, everything. I can run wars, politics, kick-in-the-door dungeon crawling, whatever I want without changing settings.

Its almost perfect. My only complaint is the lack of verisimilitude in the way that D&D magic seems bolted on to a world that was developed to parallel historical Earth cultures. I don't think the world would have developed the way it did had D&D magic been taken into consideration from the outset.

However, Eberron does look like it will solve this little issue, and could replace the Realms as my favorite default world.

Now, when it comes to my homebrew setting, then 3rd party publishers offer me some more ideas. But I still buy relatively few third party products.

Conan was the first 3rd party product I have bought in a long time. I like some of the core classes and will integrate them into my homebrew setting. Tome of Horrors offers me a plethora (had a "3 Amigos" flashback there! ) of classic monsters. Nyambe offers me a ready made African continent/world to explore, etc.

I don't really need products that offer me more of the same, I like unique stuff that fills a niche WotC doesn't already have covered. I also find the quality of 3rd party products fairly inconsistent. I have found that I like pretty much every WotC book I have purchased and find their quality pretty consistent so they have become my standard.

 

[barsoomcore]

The majority of books I own are WotC. But I have a reasonably large selection of third-party books as well.

I make up nearly as many rules as I steal from other source, and my campaigns definitely count as "Radical" -- just don't think my bookshelf does.

I'm starting up a Skull & Bones game, for example, but of course I had to convert it to d20 Modern, add Sanity rules and convert the S&B classes to Modern "Advanced Classes". Because, um, well, you see, what I wanted was, er, actually it was more like, if you know what I mean.

...

Hi. My name is barsoomcore, and I'm a Kitbashing Addict.

 

[Desdichado]

Hi. My name is barsoomcore, and I'm a Kitbashing Addict.

I'm with you there...

 

[Ranger REG]

I consider myself a d20 gamer, which is not to be confused with d20-label gamers (those that buy only product that have the logo), basically because I embrace the Open Gaming approach, not really a new idea, but it is getting a big boost thanks to Ryan Dancey and D&D 3e.

I try to help other D&D gamers (as well as Star Wars gamers) who wants new and/or better rules that they can find them in other books, but sometimes I am largely ignored. Probably they (albeit not all of them) prefer Wizards of the Coast to do it, not trusting third-party sources, or fear that it will destroy the distinct feel of Dungeons & Dragons (i.e., they don't want it to become a generic game). For me, personally, it only enhance the game by allowing you to personalize it to your gaming preference and flavor.

 

[Razuur]

Wow, the responses to this post really surprised me. I expected a lot more DnD purists, where things seem to be more in the middle or leaning towards the D20/OGL side.

As I mentioned, I consider myself pretty much D20/OGL. My shelves hold 20 times the D20/OGL products vs WOTC prods. UA is the first D20 product I have purchased since the Menace Manual, and then D20 Modern before that.

I own a slew of pdfs, some of which I think are amazing, and others - lacking. More often than not,PDFs I have found are a real good buy.

I think it has been amazing how good D20/OGL companies have gotten from the beginning. i look at some of the first D20 stuff and then compare it to the stuff coming out now, and it is just crazy. A lot of companies that started out good are just awesome now (GRR, Atlas, and MEG to name only three). And a lot of companies I merely thought o.k. (like the aforementioned Mongoose) have really come around (Babylon 5, Conan, OGL books, etc).


I wholehertedly agree that we are in a Golden Age. The products coming out now are so great, I have trouble affording all that I want. We are so lucky!

Thanks for the great and honest responses.

Any others out there?

Razuur

 

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Hmmm...

For all three hardbound editions I resolved to buy the three corebooks and let homebrewing and houserules do the rest.

Never works out that way, eh?

Before the internet we had to go to the Friendly-but-in-my-case-not-so-Local-Game-Shop and skim through what was on hand. Most stuff was not as good as the Big Guys and was hard to find.

Now, we can read reviews galore online and order online and UPS puts a box in your hands at your front door. And it is the Golden Age - there is a whole bunch of good stuff being published!

So, my answer is "all of the above, to heck with the contradiction, long live the golden age!"

 

[Desdichado]

Wow, the responses to this post really surprised me. I expected a lot more DnD purists, where things seem to be more in the middle or leaning towards the D20/OGL side.

Well, you're in the wrong spot for that. ENWorld is somewhat notorious for being a hangout of d20-o-philes. Most of the "purists" probably aren't coming here; they're hanging out on the Wizards message boards (or not hanging out on messageboards at all...)

So, I think your sample here is probably a bit skewed.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

In fact, the game I'm gearing up to run <CLIP>I'd call d20 Fantasy, not D&D at all.

Welcome to the club, dear chap.

Actually, I pretty much stopped calling my game D&D after dealing with the "official patrol" a few times on other boards. (To quote: "That's not D&D... It's some twisted, unrecognizable parody of D&D.")

On top, because I'm (yet again) putting my stuff online, and adhering to the OGL, I pretty much avoid non-OGL books, which means WotC stuff. My wife bought me MM2 and FF last year as gifts, and I've yet to flip through them more than once, having only actually read the introductory crunch material and none of the actual critters (some pretty pictures, IIRC). UA will be my first WotC purchase since Vile Darkness.

And that's with an average gaming allowance of $50-$150 a month (the kids come first, but the mortgage comes third ).

 

[Olive]

I'm more or less a purist. Not be cause I care about officialness, although given that I buy WotC books most, it's nice when they work together.

I buy them because WotC and I share a design aesthetic. I like core DnD, and things that work with in it's basic assumptions. I have a fair amount of 3rd party stuff, but little of it have I enjoyed as much as most of the WotC stuff I've bought.

People keep sayng that Ua is going to have stuff that other people have done better. In some cases that's true, but I haven't seen much in the way of cloistered clerics or varient wizard speicialists. Alot of the other stuff was done ofr games I don't play which would require a lot more work to make suitable for DnD (eg. sanity), and I don't have time! So if WotC do it so that it does work with DnD, then I'm in to it.

That said I really like some rules from 3rd party peeps: the whole MSS: WE book I loved, the ritual magic rules in R&R, Hammer and Helm etc.

However I don't agree that WotC do it worse than 3rd party. I genunely think that BoVD does what it sets out to do better than the others who have tried to similar things. I genuinely thought FF kicked ToH's butt. I genuinely think that most of the BoEM is way more 'high magic' in tone that Magic of Faerun.

Basically I don't have a whole heap of time. WotC stuff fits together better than trying to work all the 3rd party stuff in, and so it aves me time.

 

[Desdichado]

Welcome to the club, dear chap.

I think we've been called the "d20 latte set" by someone in the past.

On top, because I'm (yet again) putting my stuff online, and adhering to the OGL, I pretty much avoid non-OGL books, which means WotC stuff.

Really? Cool! Where is it? Mine's sitting right here at the moment. That campaign should be starting within a week or two -- I've finally got everything ready.

My wife bought me MM2 and FF last year as gifts, and I've yet to flip through them more than once, having only actually read the introductory crunch material and none of the actual critters (some pretty pictures, IIRC). UA will be my first WotC purchase since Vile Darkness.

Ironically, though, it sounds like monster books would be one of the few types of books that you could use completely as is; it doesn't matter much for your game if that's OGC or not, since you're probably unlikely to put monsters up on your campaign website.