Quality of WotC and 3rd party D&D books

[Acid_crash]

The only books from WotC that I have seen lately that seem any good are books for Eberron and Forgotten Realms. The Races books are lame, so are the Complete books, and I felt the environment books a waste since other companies have done some of them already, and have done them better. The Draconomicom is a cool book, but I don't use dragons so it's useless to me.

WotC has grown stagnant and seem not to want to press the bubble. They are the writers of D&D, and to give them credit, they are only writing books for JUST D&D. They don't care about the d20 system as a whole, or the OGL, and are just fine and willing to go along with supporting ONLY D&D, and for many players who do not frequent these boards, that is more than enough.

Case in point... when complete divine came out, I saw six player buy it without even looking at it... now it's just a collection of classes and feats with just enough fluff towards the back to warrant mention, but what did those six players look at first..... anybody take care to guess. Prestige classes and feats.

It took my FLGS until last week to finally sell their tenth world of darkness book, but in the same period they sold double that in complete arcane, so go figure.

We know on here that there are a whole lot better material out there, sitting right next to Complete Divine and Arcane on the shelves... But that stuff isn't D&D, and therefore by the majority of gamers (at least, where I live) it gets ignored.

 

[ptolemy18]

I haven't bought books by nearly all the third-party publishers out there, but my impression based on what I have bought is that Green Ronin and Atlas Games are really good. Mythic Vistas and African Adventures...YES!!! Atlas' Penumbra series is also okay. I haven't bought "Midnight" yet, but what I've heard is so good that my impression of Fantasy Flight games is high too.

I try not to buy games from most random companies, but I'd say that the absolute lamest-LOOKING products, at least, are from those guys who used to put the big-breasted T&A models on all their covers. I don't remember their names. Too embarrassed to ever actually open any of their books.

Jason

 

[ptolemy18]

WotC has grown stagnant and seem not to want to press the bubble. They are the writers of D&D, and to give them credit, they are only writing books for JUST D&D. They don't care about the d20 system as a whole, or the OGL, and are just fine and willing to go along with supporting ONLY D&D, and for many players who do not frequent these boards, that is more than enough.

As I'm sure has been pointed out many times, the "open gaming license" is both a blessing and a burden for Wizards. They've established that anyone can make modules, and they themselves don't even try to make modules any more. So they're forced to either (1) try to publicize & advertise the core books and expand the existing audience for D&D, which is really hard, or (2) make expansion books of feats and prestige classes and new rules, to try to sell to the core group of fans. They're choosing (2). I'd like to think (1) is possible, but I don't work in Wizard's advertising and P.R. department, and they probably know better than me... :/

Unfortunately, I'm still burned from the switch to 3.5 (yeah, get over it, I know), so I'm not buying many new game-system expansion books at the moment. I'm not particularly interested in Wizards' current settings. I hate mixtures of magic and high-tech (they remind me of "Shadowrun"), so I'm not interested in Eberron. I might be more interested in it if it really *were* "Final Fantasy: The Official RPG."

Still, I might pick up some of their new monster books (whose names I forget... uh... the undead one and the aberrations one!). And what's the one immediate Wizards book I *am* looking forward to? SANDSTORM!!! Just because I'm running a campaign set in the desert.

 

[ptolemy18]

The reality is that some of the 3rd party books are excellent and more than a few push D20 in directions in WoTC has been unwilling (or unable) to tread.

Here's one of the things that I like getting from 3rd-party publishers that I don't get at all from Wizards at the moment: games based (even in the loosest sense) on historical or "real-world" stuff.

The 2nd-edition settings RAVENLOFT and AL-QADIM were cool in this way (since they were explicitly based on European Gothic and Arabic mythology). In 3rd edition, the only setting of this type which Wizards has even remotely supported is ORIENTAL ADVENTURES. Companies like Green Ronin and Atlas Games have been left to do "mythological" settings: AFRICAN ADVENTURES, EGYPTIAN ADVENTURES, and, for the even more realistically inclined, TESTAMENT and SKULL AND BONES.

All the setting which Wizards is currently supporting are the most explicitly fantastic, "most D&D-est" settings, the ones in which you can most easily stuff everything: all the standard races, all the standard classes, etc. etc. This "everything they can squeeze in" approach is fine for D&D's "product identity", I guess -- the weirder the setting is, the easier it is for them to copyright and trademark the new weird monsters and things they put into it -- but not very interesting to me personally as a DM.

 

[JoeGKushner]

As with everything, your mileage my vary.

Take Monte's books for a moment. He openly admits that he's deviated from the norm. His take on things is often very public. Heck, he designed an alternative Player's Handbook to address some of the issuues he saw with the system.

Some love it, some hate it, some like me take what we like and ignore the rest.

Take the Quintessential Line from Mongoose. Some outlaw it without reading it, some take it at face value, and some, like Psion and I, check the authors before buying and decide on a case by case basis.

Some of my friends have a collection that exceeds mine. They have access to material I don't. Some of it fits my campaign vision, some of it doesn't. I handle it on a case by case basis.

Some books I can recommend without blinking an eye. Stuff like Advanced Bestiary, Book of Fiends, Complete Book of Eldritch Might, Conan (Atlantian Edition), Black Company, Mutants & Masterminds, etc... Some I'd be a little more hesistant like Swashbuckling Adventurers (overpowered for most campaigns), Advanced Player's Manual (a book with potential but for me, very 'meh'.), etc...

It's a lot of work to decide what works for your campaign. This is why so many GMs I think just go, "Only WoTC books". It saves the the time and effort and allows them to just enjoy the game.

 

[diaglo]

i'm only buying the WotC stuff to complete my collection.

in the words of Fat Bastard: the Races, Environment, and Complete lines of hardbacks are just that Complete and Utter Crap.

WotC has lost a step. while the third party d02 publishers that have survived over the last 4 years have either merged with each other(and thus shared the good while ditching the bad) or picked up their game.

Bastion Press, Green Ronin, and Malhavoc in particular are rather good.

 

[Nellisir]

Bastion is having a similar sale

Yes, and I feel badly for not mentioning it, because I like Bastion Press. But I have most of their books, so I didn't partake in the sale.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[woodelph]

(Inspired by the "Favorite Hardbacks" thread)

I noticed a lot of non-WotC books got mentioned in that thread, and frankly I was a bit surprised. I bought a few 3rd party books in the early days of 3.0 and was so thoroughly discusted by the amount of hopeless errors I soon dubbed every one of them "useless" and gave up on 3rd party publishers entirely.

Have things got as much better as the "Favorite Hardbacks" thread seems to suggest? I know WotC's proof reading has deteriorated quite badly, though they've never yet published anything as terrible as my old non-WotC books! To my eyes those books appeared to have been written by someone who had only had D&D explained to them at a party! (Ok, maybe they had tried a quick session once... ) Oops, nearly forgot: I've got the various "Might" books from Malhavoc! I figured that after having written the DMG, Monte was a safe bet (and he was).

So have 3rd party publishers really gotten that much better? Or are all those guys on the "Favorite Hardbacks" thread just plugging books written by themselves or their friends?

Yes, and no. That is, some companies have improved drastically. Other companies were always that good. Atlas Games, to take one example, has consistently-awesome products, and that goes for their D20 System stuff. and they were the first publisher of D20 System stuff, after WotC. So, there've been quality 3rd-party books out there right from the start. And, there are still companies out there producing poor-quality stuff (probably some crap, too, but i won't point fingers).

And some of this is a matter of opinion, and depends on what elements you care about. From my POV, the graphic design of the WotC books is middling at best, actively detracting at worst, frex. And, honestly, when i read through a WotC D20 System book, it just leaves me cold--nothing excites me, or makes me think "ooh! i've got to figure out how to fit one of these into the game." I consider WotC's D20 System books to be consistently workmanlike--not bad, but not great, either. So, from that POV, there's plenty of room to better them--i just don't think that WotC is setting the bar all that high, and there're a number of companies that regularly exceed WotC on the quality of their books. And huge numbers that occasionally do so.

If people that wrote the games are a safe bet, you've got at least two other companies out there (besides Malhavoc): The Game Mechanics, and Sean Reynolds new company. If people who wrote for WotC are good enough, you've got tons of options--most of WotC's writing is done by people who write other stuff for other people. To take one example that jumped out at me recently: Before Eberron won the setting contest, Keith Baker wrote a number of things for Atlas, such as several of the alternate magic systems in Occult Lore.

Now, on to specific recommendations. These are all products that i think are at least as good as, and in most cases noticably better than, anything WotC has produced for D20 System:

• most books by Atlas Games
• most books by Sword & Sorcery Studios
• most books by Fantasy Flight Games--especially the New Horizon and Midnight lines
• Testament, Mutants & Masterminds, Psychic's Handbook, and a number of others by Green Ronin
• Mongoose is hit-or-miss. There good stuff is better than WotC. Their bad stuff is sometimes middling, sometimes pretty bad. In general, their proofreading needs work, but it's usually just typos and stuff that is annoying, not stuff that makes it hard to figure out what the rules are supposed to mean.
• The whole Spycraft line is great--despite the nominal genre focus, i think it's better than D20 Modern for a baseline technological RPG. I don't enjoy combat in RPGs, generally, and the action/espionage genre leaves me cold. And i still want to play this game.
• Malhavoc Press. Specifically the Arcana Unearthed line. I'm not nearly as impressed by the Books of Might as others--but those are generally well-acclaimed, so i'll defer to consensus.
• Phil Reed. Sometimes a little *too* light, but generally, great content, and at awesome prices.
• Goodman Games. As near as i can tell, all there stuff is good, it's just that most of it doesn't interest me for topical reasons.

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others. Also, keep in mind that i'm pretty fussy about my RPGs. I own a few dozen D20 System books, and not a single thing from WotC (not even the D&D3[.5]E PH) has passed the test. Of course, some of that is taste--the sorts of content included--but some of that is more-universal matters: proofreading, editing, originality, writing.

 

[woodelph]

IMHO, the complete series are no better than the old splats, which they are mostly reprints of anyway. The Races of... series has not impressed me the least. Planar Handbook was nothing compared to Manual of the Planes...

And, to continue the point: IMHO, at least, Manual of the Planes pales in comparison to Beyond Countless Doorways, and, apparently Portals & planes, too.

And, as others have said, with a bit of judicious shopping you can find splat books that best anything WotC has to offer.

 

[Psion]

Sure, I too have higher expectations of WotC than of other companies. It's "their game" so to speak, and they have more to win and more to loose than any other company.

True, but they also pretty much cut their experienced design staff to the bone, most of whom are now... you guessed it... writing third party material.