Significance of 3rd Party Publishers: Overrated?

[Mistwell]

I like 3rd party products. I buy the, try to read them, and enjoy them.

But the overwhelming majority of them I've never even had the opportunity to use in a game. At best they serve as good reading and inspiration for something. At worst, they sit on a shelf and collect dust without ever being read by anyone. And sadly, too many fall into that later category.

So I do not think they are particularly significant to the game, from my perspective, since they rarely ever find their way into a game.

The only exception to that, in our gaming group, were some products by Monte Cook (Arcana Evolved and Ptolus and a couple of other books). And, some non-D&D products, like Mutants and Masterminds, and Stargate d20. Though still, I'd like to think if there had never been a d20 game or license, we would have played some sort of good superhero game from Green Ronin and some sort of Stargate game from AEG, had they published them in that alternate universe where d20 3e was a closed system.

Aside from that, WOTC has always published enough modules and supplements and magazine articles, along with fan created stuff from folks here, that we've never felt the need for 3rd party products. And hence, they are not significant.

And yet, I still buy them, and try to read, them, and enjoy them.

 

[Victim]

Many of the most notable 3pp were successful at producing their own d20/OGL variants (MnM, True20, Spycraft, etc) rather than DnD products. That's neat, and it does make it easier to switch games when there are many of the same underlying mechanics.

However, it doesn't really mean that they're particularly significant in the success of DnD - basically, I think those games were usually drawing more on DnD's strength than DnD was benefiting from them.

 

[delericho]

Maybe slightly over-rated.

There have been (and continue to be) a significant number of really excellent 3rd party products, including many that WotC would simply never have produced. And I think that contributed a great deal to 3e's popularity and longevity.

That said, if the 3rd party publishers disappeared completely tomorrow, it would almost certainly hurt WotC not at all, and might actually help them (no competition, no matter how small, from Pathfinder).

However, I'm very glad we saw the 3rd party support we did, and consider the problems with the GSL a massive weakness of 4e.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I think its vastly underrated, but that's starting to change. If my predictions for the next couple years pan out, the 3PPs are where the future of the hobby lies.

 

[Mark]

A lot of fast voting in this poll. It'd be interesting to redo it with the option turned on to find out who is voting, maybe to see if only 3pps are voting for underrated or perhaps to find if one or two people are pumping up the overrated option. I would think that more would have voted underrated during 3e days than during 4e times when there really is very little 3pp activity supporting 4e anyway, as well as plenty of new 4e stuff coming directly from WotC.

 

[Serendipity]

I went with just about right. If it weren't for 3rd party materials, I never would have come back to D&D in the first place. It was really things like Necromancer's early products, the Scarred Lands, and Malhavoc Press that got me interested enough to start picking it up again after eight years.

 

[NN]

Underrated.

A bunch of different people with different ideas in competition are going to produce a better product range overall for the consumer than a monopoly.

 

[drothgery]

Underrated by the general gamer population, but overrated by most people who even know they exist.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Underrated by the general gamer population, but overrated by most people who even know they exist.

I like this answer. Most people are barely know they exist, and they deserve better than that. On the other hand, the people who do know they exist tend to put far more significance into them then they deserve.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Overrated. A lot of third-party publishers are pushing out rehashed material that they produced with major companies previously, or are simply republishing revised ideas with new editions.

In my belief, innovation has been slim in the RPG market. Although I will say this - 3pp's tend to push more "high risk, high reward" material more so than major publishers.