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Message: <blockquote data-quote="UngeheuerLich" data-source="post: 5508065" data-attributes="member: 59057">I know there were good 3rd party products out there. But the first one i had in hand was opened, browsed through and closed, never to be opened again. And 3rd party products were banned before i even got a single splatbook.I was more open to completely different games that used d20. But I really did not want any unofficial crap in my game. Ok, later I also did not want official crap in my game. The best days of 3rd edition were those shortly after 3.0 came out (with sword and fist like books) and then again, when i got 3.5 with all "complete" books and banned all 3.0 stuff. DM books however were more or less backwards compatible. And this was the selling point in the 3.0 ->  3.5 transition.Too much options can destroy a game. And if those options are terribly unbalanced, it happens faster.I guess Pathfinder is doing well right now. As was 3.0 and 3.5 after that. I wish them all luck, that they retain their success. I believe it is easier for them, because they don´t really need to compete with companies that churn out crap for their edition. And if they can keep the game more or ess compact with a reasonable number of balanced options, they are doing well.And 4e is doing well enough, as they are more or less confine themselves. They however recognized, that they were running their train into the wall however, as the game, with all those feats and powers was getting really unwieldy. Bad dragon articles with too specialized feats were one of the reasons. Tying more abilities into the class structure, and not trying to give alternatives to class defining higher level powers is a way to limit this process of overloading with seless options.Ok, I am maybe i am diverging a bit. But what I want to say:To keep a game alife, you need to:- give new, interesting options- Keep those options tight enough, that a new player can overlook them- Keep all options balancedThose three principles are competing with each other. If a third party mingles with that, a game can become overloaded and ubalanced fast.4e and Pathfinder are both doing quite a good job at it.</blockquote>

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