D&D General The Importance of "Official"

[EzekielRaiden]

So, "customization" = 2nd-party?

More or less, but at least in the context of "products," "second-party" would usually at least imply something a bit more significant than just tweaking things. That is, "customization" implies to me something like "putting bumper stickers on a car," rather than "modifying the engine so it has better performance."

When Matt Mercer created the Witch Hunter class for Vin Diesel, that was (initially) a "2PP" thing, because he was creating something new, custom, and (in some sense) "feature complete" for use in his own game. But if anyone else were to use that "product," it would instead be 3PP. For exactly the same reason that if I am talking to Bob, I will call Bob "you" (second-person) and myself as "I" (first-person), while referring to Jane as "Jane" or "she" (third-person). If I then stop talking to Bob and start talking to Jane, Jane becomes "you" and Bob becomes "Bob" or "he." In exactly the same way, if you provide your "2nd-party product" to anyone outside your group, for them it is third-party.

 

[Mezuka]

I used only official D&D material printed in books. I never allowed UA material.

 

[Laurefindel]

I pretty much go by official material only, plus my own houserules (or players), but without good reasons. Obviously, when a third-party product is used as main material (i.e. a 3rd-party 5e setting), everything it contains or published in relation to it is "official" material.

I'm hoping to use many of the wilderness and travel rules from LEVEL-UP however. That'd be one of my first 3rd party purchase in a long while.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Official doesn't guarantee quality, but it often tends to in comparison. One bonus of official is that most gamers I run into are aware of it. That makes using and getting buy in for games easier and more successful. Im open to unofficial too.

I see no indication that WotC's material is qualitatively any better than any other professional content creator. Sadly, I do have to agree with you on the awareness issue.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Second parties are the people using the first-party product directly. In other words...the DM and/or players. So formally, second-party products would be anything custom made by either you as DM or made by your players.

No, Second Party are the companies that have licenses, or some other way to access the restricted IP, to make products for a game, but who do not work directly for the company. The first couple of adventures for 5E were 2nd Party because they were not done in-house (1st Party) or done with no input at all from the company (3rd Party).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have a 300+ page document of house rules I use (not all of them in every game, of course). A lot of it is third party from a variety of sources, some of it is homebrew. I made a formatted document so I had something I could easily present to my players. When it's finished I plan to have it printed.

 

[Weiley31]

I mean, tables can do what they want, but clearly, they miss out on some things by sticking to official all the time. For me personally, I am all for a mix of Official and Unofficial/3PP to accomplish things that normally the official stuff wouldn't let ya do.

Example: In 3.0/3.5, if I wanted to play an Awakened Canadian Goose paladin whose main objective in life was to slay the evil Red Dragon that was plaguing the valley it lived in, I'd have to find stats for Canadian Geese and then deal with the appropriate stat modifiers and all that crap while contending if it wasn't absolutely useless. For 5E though, all I need to do to accomplish such a goal is to use 3PP setting material, such as Humblewood, and some refluffage later, BOOM: I have a Canadian Goose Paladin that is awakened. Without having to jump through a crapton of hoops or worry about being absolutely useless to play as. Going by the official 5E route, I really don't have a "Goose" stat block to use in the monster section.

If I wanted to play 5E DOOM: Then I just combine the use of the 3PP settings of Carbon 2185(5E cyberpunk) and Return to Planet Apocalypse(Fantasy DOOM 5E.). Now I have Hackers blinding demons by overloading their optics with a crapton of Spamware/Ads/Malware as they sic their Drone pet to carpet bomb them as a Sniper from the rooftop is providing covering fire against a Cacodemon.

Sure I could use both the official cat stat block and the wolf stat block along with the Tasha's Sidekick rules, but with the use of Animal Adventures, which again is 3PP rules for playing as Cats and Dog pcs in 5E, I just don't have a Sidekick character. I have a Black Cat Warlock eldritch blasting devils/demons back to hell, or a Rune Knight Grey Wolf that allows me to play out my Dark Souls dream of playing as Great Wolf Sif. Heck the 5E Blue Rose Adventurer Guide can even let me make a Giant Centipede Battle Master if I wanted.

I can play as a Drider which is something that is not officially supported by WoTC and doesn't require me to somehow reverse engineer the stat block. Win Win! (Although I kinda chuckle at the absurd dancing around the subject answer it gives for Drider sizes for the playable race version.)

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

I don't have much experience with Homebrewing. So a great number of unofficial/3PP that's out there for 5E really helps for that. If tables/DMs want to Homebrew stuff and work together to make something, there's nothing wrong with that too and I can see how fun it can be. I'm just saying that strictly adhereing to Official/Adventure League only can make some players/dms miss out on some great stuff.

 

[CleverNickName]

I voted for the "mostly unofficial" option, but I would like to clarify: I house-rule just about everything, so that "unofficial" stuff is a result of my houseruling stuff, not third-party sources.

EDIT: changed my vote.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I mostly use official stuff as a player if it does what I need for the character I want - and if it doesn't I ask for more.

As a dm I'll consider non-official stuff form anywhere (hence voting for option 3) but I rarely get asked about it.

I find that until you get to very high-level play the official stuff is able to cover a significant majority of concepts well enough to satisfy a significant majority of players.

 

[Reynard]

I mean, tables can do what they want, but clearly, they miss out on some things by sticking to official all the time. For me personally, I am all for a mix of Official and Unofficial/3PP to accomplish things that normally the official stuff wouldn't let ya do.

Example: In 3.0/3.5, if I wanted to play an Awakened Canadian Goose paladin whose main objective in life was to slay the evil Red Dragon that was plaguing the valley it lived in, I'd have to find stats for Canadian Geese and then deal with the appropriate stat modifiers and all that crap while contending if it wasn't absolutely useless. For 5E though, all I need to do to accomplish such a goal is to use 3PP setting material, such as Humblewood, and some refluffage later, BOOM: I have a Canadian Goose Paladin that is awakened. Without having to jump through a crapton of hoops or worry about being absolutely useless to play as. Going by the official 5E route, I really don't have a "Goose" stat block to use in the monster section.

If I wanted to play 5E DOOM: Then I just combine the use of the 3PP settings of Carbon 2185(5E cyberpunk) and Return to Planet Apocalypse(Fantasy DOOM 5E.). Now I have Hackers blinding demons by overloading their optics with a crapton of Spamware/Ads/Malware as they sic their Drone pet to carpet bomb them as a Sniper from the rooftop is providing covering fire against a Cacodemon.

Sure I could use both the official cat stat block and the wolf stat block along with the Tasha's Sidekick rules, but with the use of Animal Adventures, which again is 3PP rules for playing as Cats and Dog pcs in 5E, I just don't have a Sidekick character. I have a Black Cat Warlock eldritch blasting devils/demons back to hell, or a Rune Knight Grey Wolf that allows me to play out my Dark Souls dream of playing as Great Wolf Sif. Heck the 5E Blue Rose Adventurer Guide can even let me make a Giant Centipede Battle Master if I wanted.

I can play as a Drider which is something that is not officially supported by WoTC and doesn't require me to somehow reverse engineer the stat block. Win Win! (Although I kinda chuckle at the absurd dancing around the subject answer it gives for Drider sizes for the playable race version.)

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

I don't have much experience with Homebrewing. So a great number of unofficial/3PP that's out there for 5E really helps for that. If tables/DMs want to Homebrew stuff and work together to make something, there's nothing wrong with that too and I can see how fun it can be. I'm just saying that strictly adhereing to Official/Adventure League only can make some players/dms miss out on some great stuff.

I would venture that 3.x had FAR more material available than 5E does.