Why don't you buy non-WoTC stuff?

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

I don't get it...

Why would you care who the publisher of a book was? I care much more about the author! For instance, Monte Cook's stuff is great (I'm a Monte Cook fanboy), and so I end up buying anything he writes, whether it's published by WotC, Fiery Dragon, or Malhavoc Press/S&S. I think the Mongoose "Slayer guides" and "Quintessential" stuff is crap and a travesty (excepting Mike Mearl's stuff, of course), but if Monte Cook were to write "The Quintessential Wizard", I'd eventually get around to it (though not without holding my nose!).

I refuse to buy any of the splat books (not good value for money for me), and regularly reject requests from players to go for one prestige class or another (I once gave in and regretted it!). I own Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk (the former because everyone praised it --- and it is good, the latter because I run a game in Greyhawk and play in it). I like Greyhawk. Whatever else you can say about it, gaming history began there, and it feels wrong to run classic campaigns like the Temple of Elemental Evil or the Slavers campaign in any other setting. I refuse to buy any more settings --- because I know I won't get to use any of the material.

I did buy a number of adventures (and will continue to buy them, though as my tenure in my Dungeon subscription grows, I'm no longer needing to buy low level dungeons!), and I will probably pick up the Tome of Horrors and the Monster Manual II eventually, but that's all she wrote. I don't need any more material to run/play my games.

 

[Bagpuss]

Ok, great but after the initial one purchase what made you come back for seconds...thirds etc.

Again not wanting to start any fights I am really curious and this thread is very interesting.

Hope you don't mind me picking up on this quote. Just joining the topic.

Lets see of the D20 products I've bought, and bought again...

Scarred Lands Setting stuff.
Creature Collection got me hooked. It came out first I liked it even with its problems the Monsters were interesting. I can't afford to get into to many settings and I liked this one so nothing has persuaded me to look outside this campaign world yet. Plus the strength of the other products I've bought have kept me hooked, particularly the main setting book and the Hollowfaust sourcebook. I've still not bought 'everything' for it just focus on the area my players are in.

Witchfire Trilogy
Bought the first one mainly for the cover and interior art work, having read it I liked the 'Steampunkish' setting and although I thought the adventure was too rigid (and "Dragonlance" like, IE. Too much story to little player input), I bought the rest again mainly for the art work and setting. Looking forward to Iron Kingdoms, can anyone tell me how it won the "2001 ENnie best setting" yet its now late 2002 and its still not been published?.

AEG's Tall and Thin one shot adventures
Hey they are cheap and just sitting on the counter by the till asking to be bought! They are like sweeties in the queues are supermarkets. Darn clever bit of marketing.

Monte Cook's stuff (also other PDF publishers)
Online purchasing of downloadable D20 products, there and then EVEN AT WORK! New sales method direct to your screen, no trip across the Mersey (tunnel fees), find somewhere to park (parking fees) only to find the game shop doesn't have it in stock. Also like AEG's "Tall & Thin" things they are cheap, you don't miss a few quid at a time, but you do think about £15 to £20.

Mongoose Publishing D20 Judge Dredd
Erm its Judge Dredd. He is the law, you know, it would be a crime not to buy it. Sorry British so I grew up with 2000AD, so Mongoose are going to just take my money with Dredd and Slaine. That reminds me Slaine is ment to be this month, where's my chequebook?

Dark Awakenings
Another new idea, bought it for the novelty value, hey its got a CD-ROM! Its main book has good production values as well, still haven't got round to reading it, let alone playing it. In fact I can probably safely say I will never play it.

Death in Freeport
Bought it because it was the first, and I seem to be the only person that didn't think it was up to much. Bad Call of Cthulhu rip off in a fantasy setting, as a 'module' it had too much setting info to use in anything but a Freeport campaign and personally I'd rather play real Call of Cthulhu not some D20 rip-off (and that goes for WotC version, why try and improve the best RPG of all time). [Rant mode off]

From experience I don't use a quarter of the stuff I buy, and that's probably true of things like the Monster Manual and DMG as well. So I rarely by things because I expect to use ALL the content.


So what can you learn from this....

1 - Make it available. If its not on a shelf I won't buy it, unless I can get is easily online, (EASY is not waiting for international delivery).

2 - It has to stand out. The extra money spent on cover art IS worth it. There are loads of products on the LGS shelves and I might spend all of 20 minutes in there each month. I'm usually going to buy a specific product, but I (like most customers) browse and shiney, pretty things catch my attention.

Compare Slaine cover art with say The Hunt: Rise of Evil I know which one would catch my eye.

3 - Have a gimmick! Its sort of a repeat of the 2nd point, it doesn't have to be a new format or a CD, have read about "The Hunt - Rise of Evil" (for the first time) its sparked my interest (the "nightmares and dreams manifest" bit) so I might look for it next time I'm in the LGS if I remember (see next point).

4 - Product awareness, everyone has heard of Coke, and Mars bars but it doesn't stop them advertising, its to keep them in your mind so that when you think you need a snack you'll think "hmm not had a Mars in a while". Advertising works (even on the people who say it doesn't work on them) otherwise they wouldn't spend millions on it. You best bet here is Dragon (about the only wide circulation gaming magazine there is) or this place, not the Forums the front page in the news.

5 - Quality - hmm maybe this shouldn't have been 5th. Then again looking at Wizards stuff that sells so well maybe it should be 8th. Decent interior art that sparks the imagination, and a great opening two pages, back two pages and middle few pages. Its all you normally look at in the shop. Darn I'm not talking about quality am I I'm back to point 2 again.

6 - Okay Quality, well written minimum of errors and if they are there make them unimportant ones. DON'T miss label maps. Make sure everything you need to run an adventure is there or point to where it is. (One thing I hate about Scarred Lands is when they give Prestige Class / Magic Item / Feat to NPC's but the thing isn't in that book and they don't mention where to find it.) Good binding, and a solid cover.

7 Content - You need at least 2 or 3, really useful things that most people will want. The rest can be filler. Now another persons content is my filler and visa versa so you are bound to get some cross over, but you will probably need 2 or 3 things that some leafing through the book will go "that's cool". Since there leafing through, you might want to have an illustration or big text to highlight your "cool thing" and mention it on the back cover, contents page (and even the front cover).

8 - Don't worry too much about online reviews if you can still get it on the shop shelves, most people still don't read them anyway. BUT If you do get an award or get a great review a sticker on you book to say so. This goes back to point 2.

9 - See Point 2.

10 - There is no 10.

This is all IMHO (although not only mine, advertisers and publishers seem to have the same ideas).

 

[Creamsteak]

I don't know what a lot of this conversation is about. I tried detect thoughts and scry, but it didn't work out.

In My Opinion, I don't but WOTC stuff. I do buy the new rules that they develop, because they are the "standards."

So I buy:

The Player's Handbook
The Dungeon Master's Guide

Then I buy the creative stuff. This is the stuff that everybody else publishes. I picked up those 2 WOTC books because they present all the standard rules to me. The Monster Manual is optional, nomatter how much WOTC thinks otherwise. I did buy it as well, and I picked up a number of other rule-books I like the systems from.

I like the ELH, Dieties, Planes, Psionics, and I did buy both Diablo books (bad purchase though). After that though, my money becomes up for grabs from whoever draws me in. Namely Call of Cthulu, but there are tons of splat books I would love to buy. Of course I'm on a super-limited income as of now...

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Re: I don't get it...

I think the Mongoose "Slayer guides" and "Quintessential" stuff is crap and a travesty

Since it seems quiet a few people are taking a chance to slam Mongoose, I want to join the few voices that have spoken up for the books- I like the Quintessential books and have used them to spice up my npc's.

Are they perfect? Nope, but I have yet to see a rpg book that is going to meet my needs perfectly- they are not designing for me personally, after all.

They have still found more use then many other books I have bought- including WOTC splat books.

FD

 

[Valmur_Dwur]

Hello everyone!

Hal i d/l good food and fine spirits and I love it As to what I buy I get mostly adventures and I bought most of the Wotc line so I had a base-line for my PbEM game. Everything else I've bought is 3rd party modules for the reasons others have given. I would like to take a look at Bluffside and see where I could fit it in in Greyhawk. I know the reviews are glowing but I live in an area where I must drive 2 hours to get to a LGS Then they don't have what I want so I buy on-line. Yet I want to know how I can use this product for my own world. I guess what I'm getting at is that in the reviews or at your site I need to know that you could place Bluffside in the Great Kingdom for example. Or that it is a medium sized city that needs to be situated on the coast of a warm sea with the possiblity of a trade route. I realize this is nothing but some rambling but before I plunck down my money I really need to see more than 1 section of Bluffside. I don't want to read it cover-to-cover, yet I want to see for myself if I should spend my money on it

 

[rounser]

Splat (feats, prestige classes, spells etc.) is a disincentive for me to buy d20 publisher's books....and almost all of them include it.

I'd rather see big adventures covering the non-monolithicmegadungeon, non-railroad territory that WotC isn't willing to cover, or more supplements like Bluffside or Freeport that focus on countryside with towns and villages and NPCs and encounters and dungeons - rather than a city. You know, low level campaign gruntwork that will support whatever little plots or story arcs a DM wants to spin. Good cities carry a bit too much campaign setting flavour with them to be truly easily adaptable, IMO.

As far as WotC's offerings go...see Eric's comments above, I agree with all that...

 

[Corinth]

Most of my D20 stuff is WotC stuff. The rest is mostly swag I got through reviewing products at RPG Net and the Open Game Exchange, but I keep my eye on things and when the money's free for spending (which it isn't right now) I intent to get more.

 

[Crothian]

I'd say now, I'm more likely to buy a non wizards book then a Wizards book. Wizards has great quality, but they don't seem to be all that creative. They give us bland stuff. I l;ike books that take chances and aren't neccissarily written for every gamer.

 

[Tratyn Runewind]

Hello!

Posted by THG Hal:
so why don't people buy non-WoTC stuff

Well, I do buy a fair bit of non-WotC stuff. What I do not buy is non-WotC d20 stuff. I put up with classes, levels, spell slots, and the hit point system largely for the sake of using my favorite classic campaign worlds, which are not supported under 3e by either WotC OR the non-WotC publishers. If I'm not going to be playing in a world tailored from the start around D&D assumptions, I'd sooner use one of the rules systems I prefer to d20. If a non-WotC company did decide to support one of my favorite worlds (Birthright and Mystara, for the record), and did a passably decent job of it (this also means paper, not just PDFs) for any kind of reasonable price, you can bet I would indeed start buying non-WotC d20 stuff.

Character portability is also a concern to some. Laying down the cash for a supplement can look less attractive when you have no idea whether you'll be able to use it in any campaign beyond the current one. And rewriting characters that use now-disallowed Classes, Feats, Skills, spells, or items can be a tedious and annoying process, and can result in a character bearing little resemblance to the original that the player enjoyed so much. It's particularly irritating when glorious actions that are entwined with the player's fondest memories of the character are impossible under the rewrite. This can be a problem with both WotC and non-WotC supplements, but the wider use and "official" status of the WotC stuff makes it more likely to be allowed by some hypothetical future DM, and thus safer to take. Now that I think about it, that also puts adventure modules among the non-WotC products I'm most likely to pick up, as they are less likely to offer character creation and advancement decisions that may need to be changed at a later date, and are often easily adaptable to fit into any campaign world.

Hope this helps!

 

[Gothmog]

Originally posted by Furn Darkside

Since it seems quiet a few people are taking a chance to slam Mongoose, I want to join the few voices that have spoken up for the books- I like the Quintessential books and have used them to spice up my npc's.

I have to agree with Furn, I have gotten tons of ideas and useful info from the Quintessential series. I especially like the rogue and cleric books- they have added greatly to my game, and are not at all overpowered. IMO, this series is MUCH more useful and well thought out than the WoTC class splatbooks.