Zardnaar
Legend
Back in the day I was a hard core TSR loyalist. I did not even know about other companies that had tried to make D&D or about things like judges guild material. I did try other RPGs from other companies but I did not really like any of them with the exception of the Star Wars D6 RPG.
In the 3E days I did start dipping my toe in the water. I picked up a few 3pp books because I found them very very cheap on ebay ($8) or at the local store ($5-10). I only actively sought out 1 though (Seafarers Handbook) and impulse bought another one (d20 Dragonlords of Melinbone PoS book). I bought maybe 8 3pp books during 3E which was around 10%. At the time I did not regard Dragon and Dungeon magazine as 3pp as such it was a licensed product (2pp?) and to me it was just Dragon and Dungeon I did not care to much who made it.
I was a big Dragon and Dungeon fan, had been since the mid 90's. And WoTC killed them in the lead up to 4E. Less than happy camper. Paizo decided to make Pathfinder hronicles and they did not interest me that much as they were now purely 3pp and I did not expect them to last long with the arrival of 4E. I avoided most of the hype/negativity of 4E and bought the 4E books on release blind. And by that I mean I did not read them 1st. Oops. The local gamestore closed and we decided to stick with 3.5 for a bit longer and I downloaded the free Pathfinder alpha and beta Pathfinder rules as 3pp was looking a lot more appealing now and I kept buying the Star Wars Saga books.
Then WotC stopped making them as well. 2010, I still had DDI but let that lapse and now I had no more RPG books to buy. We used Pathfinder as errata to 3.5. No more D&D books to buy. No more RPG books to buy. Around this time I also stopped playing Magic the Gathering after 12 years. That automatic brand loyalty to WotC had been destroyed.
We eventually made the decision to switch to Pathfinder and a quick trip to Amazon had the PFRPG book and Ultimate Magic/Combat, Inner Sea Guide+primer and Advanced Players Guide on the way along with 2 extra copies of the Bestiary and PFRPG for other members in the group.
Now in 2011 I found these books to be great. For those of you who do not know Pathfinder or Paizo I had some good will towards them due to the Dungeon/Dragon tenure and these books knocked it out f the park. Inner Sea guide quality wise was up there with FRCS and Eberron books, the Pathfinder splats were better than say the Complete series WotC made and I liked them better than the 4E stuff. So automatic brand loyalty to WotC gone and ignoring the rules if you do not like 3.x games I thought Paizo had beaten WotC at their own game and made some very good books.
My sister also dropped off my 2E books in 2012 and I was kind of sick of Pathfinder and 3.x and was not playing 4E. I caught my wife pawing through them one day and she had been reading them when I got home. I asked my group and before I knew it we played 2E. An even bigger surprise was my 3.x players enjoyed the 2E session we had but where struggling with THAC0. SOme quick research and various PDFs from RPGnow were bought and I dipped my toe into the OSR material. That toe resulted in another trip to Amazon and before I knew it I had around 5 copies of the Castles and Crusades PHB (3 real+2 print outs), several adventures and I acquired some more off the local auction site and I bought a hard copy of Adventurer Conqueror King. To me it was like playing AD&D 3rd edition or an evolution of B/X I had when I was younger. When WotC started selling PDFs again of older material I started buying them and WotC got money out of me for the 1st time in 3 years.
5E landed and it quickly became apparent that there would not be a lot of material for it and I thought HotDQ was rubbish. Overall I liked 5E that adventure was pant though IMHO. So if you are less than happy with WoTC I had learned this new trick- take your money elsewhere. There was this company called Frog God Games, I was not familiar with their work but I knew the Pathfinder fans liked them and they had a reputation for quality. I bought a PDF from their main site called Quests of Doom which was 12 smaller adventures on can complete in 1-3 sessions. Quests of Doom is sold 5E rules 1E feel and it is in black and white and uses the old AD&D font. I do not B&W art and it was $20 so $170 or somehting like that per adventure and it reminded me of early Dungeon Magazine a lot.
None of the adventures were bad though and some of them were very very good. Quests of Doom Volume 2 followed along with Quests of Doom 2 and 3. QoD 3 was the only kickstarter I have ever supported. These books have a lot of level 5 and 6 adventures in them which is very useful if you have just competed Lost Mines of Phandelver. Most of the adventures are in the level 5-10 range. There are Egyptian themed adventures in them and jungle type exploration which were common in AD&D days.
ENworld here also launched ENsider and I did not sign up for the first few months. I thought I would take a punt around EN5ider 38 or so and the are now past 100 and I am still signed up. These articles remind me a lot of Dragon magazine and there are a lot of PC type options. Some of the feats are a bit silly but I have been impressed with a lot of the archetypes and some of them fix issues from the PHB such as the Druid heavily favouring the Moon Druid or TWF kind of sucking. The new classes I have been underwhelmed with (Noble and Feywalker look decent the rest not so much) and the adventures are a mixed bag. None of the adventures are outright bad IMHO and some are very good so its no worse than say Dungeon Magazine. EN5ider however is really really cheap and overall the quality is quite good (ok the art is not WotC/Paizo standard) but you can get the PC options for $2 a month. Not all of it is good/great but then again I can say the same thing about WotC or Paizo as well.
Kobold Press has made some good stuff and has converted some of their Pathfinder stuff to 5E. I bought Midland and Southland Heroes PDFs off them mostly for the races and back grounds along with an adventure called Tomb of Tiberesh.
And finally the 3rd source I have used is the DM guild although I have not bought that much and I read the reviews before I buy. If it doesn't have 4 or 5 star rating I do not buy. I bought the Gunslinger and Blood Hunter classes along with a few adventures such as the Triboar trilogy. I have spent probably around $20 and the Triboar trilogy is currently $2.
So over the years I have learned that the 3pp survivors of the 3E era glut have upped their game and there are several companies you should check out. My recommendations are.
Frog God Game/Necromancer Games.
https://www.froggodgames.com/5th-edition
Quests of Doom Volume 1 (12 adventures, various level 1-15)
Quests of Doom Volume 2 (6 adventures mostly mid level
Quests of Doom 2 (6 adventures mostly low-mid level)
Quests of Doom 3 (mostly mid to high level)
Troll Lord Games A series (Castles and Crusades A series 5E conversions)
http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?ke...ers_id=86&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
Kobold Press 5E stuff
http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?ke...s_id=2189&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
DMGuild
https://www.dmsguild.com/
In the 3E days I did start dipping my toe in the water. I picked up a few 3pp books because I found them very very cheap on ebay ($8) or at the local store ($5-10). I only actively sought out 1 though (Seafarers Handbook) and impulse bought another one (d20 Dragonlords of Melinbone PoS book). I bought maybe 8 3pp books during 3E which was around 10%. At the time I did not regard Dragon and Dungeon magazine as 3pp as such it was a licensed product (2pp?) and to me it was just Dragon and Dungeon I did not care to much who made it.
I was a big Dragon and Dungeon fan, had been since the mid 90's. And WoTC killed them in the lead up to 4E. Less than happy camper. Paizo decided to make Pathfinder hronicles and they did not interest me that much as they were now purely 3pp and I did not expect them to last long with the arrival of 4E. I avoided most of the hype/negativity of 4E and bought the 4E books on release blind. And by that I mean I did not read them 1st. Oops. The local gamestore closed and we decided to stick with 3.5 for a bit longer and I downloaded the free Pathfinder alpha and beta Pathfinder rules as 3pp was looking a lot more appealing now and I kept buying the Star Wars Saga books.
Then WotC stopped making them as well. 2010, I still had DDI but let that lapse and now I had no more RPG books to buy. We used Pathfinder as errata to 3.5. No more D&D books to buy. No more RPG books to buy. Around this time I also stopped playing Magic the Gathering after 12 years. That automatic brand loyalty to WotC had been destroyed.
We eventually made the decision to switch to Pathfinder and a quick trip to Amazon had the PFRPG book and Ultimate Magic/Combat, Inner Sea Guide+primer and Advanced Players Guide on the way along with 2 extra copies of the Bestiary and PFRPG for other members in the group.
Now in 2011 I found these books to be great. For those of you who do not know Pathfinder or Paizo I had some good will towards them due to the Dungeon/Dragon tenure and these books knocked it out f the park. Inner Sea guide quality wise was up there with FRCS and Eberron books, the Pathfinder splats were better than say the Complete series WotC made and I liked them better than the 4E stuff. So automatic brand loyalty to WotC gone and ignoring the rules if you do not like 3.x games I thought Paizo had beaten WotC at their own game and made some very good books.
My sister also dropped off my 2E books in 2012 and I was kind of sick of Pathfinder and 3.x and was not playing 4E. I caught my wife pawing through them one day and she had been reading them when I got home. I asked my group and before I knew it we played 2E. An even bigger surprise was my 3.x players enjoyed the 2E session we had but where struggling with THAC0. SOme quick research and various PDFs from RPGnow were bought and I dipped my toe into the OSR material. That toe resulted in another trip to Amazon and before I knew it I had around 5 copies of the Castles and Crusades PHB (3 real+2 print outs), several adventures and I acquired some more off the local auction site and I bought a hard copy of Adventurer Conqueror King. To me it was like playing AD&D 3rd edition or an evolution of B/X I had when I was younger. When WotC started selling PDFs again of older material I started buying them and WotC got money out of me for the 1st time in 3 years.
5E landed and it quickly became apparent that there would not be a lot of material for it and I thought HotDQ was rubbish. Overall I liked 5E that adventure was pant though IMHO. So if you are less than happy with WoTC I had learned this new trick- take your money elsewhere. There was this company called Frog God Games, I was not familiar with their work but I knew the Pathfinder fans liked them and they had a reputation for quality. I bought a PDF from their main site called Quests of Doom which was 12 smaller adventures on can complete in 1-3 sessions. Quests of Doom is sold 5E rules 1E feel and it is in black and white and uses the old AD&D font. I do not B&W art and it was $20 so $170 or somehting like that per adventure and it reminded me of early Dungeon Magazine a lot.
None of the adventures were bad though and some of them were very very good. Quests of Doom Volume 2 followed along with Quests of Doom 2 and 3. QoD 3 was the only kickstarter I have ever supported. These books have a lot of level 5 and 6 adventures in them which is very useful if you have just competed Lost Mines of Phandelver. Most of the adventures are in the level 5-10 range. There are Egyptian themed adventures in them and jungle type exploration which were common in AD&D days.
ENworld here also launched ENsider and I did not sign up for the first few months. I thought I would take a punt around EN5ider 38 or so and the are now past 100 and I am still signed up. These articles remind me a lot of Dragon magazine and there are a lot of PC type options. Some of the feats are a bit silly but I have been impressed with a lot of the archetypes and some of them fix issues from the PHB such as the Druid heavily favouring the Moon Druid or TWF kind of sucking. The new classes I have been underwhelmed with (Noble and Feywalker look decent the rest not so much) and the adventures are a mixed bag. None of the adventures are outright bad IMHO and some are very good so its no worse than say Dungeon Magazine. EN5ider however is really really cheap and overall the quality is quite good (ok the art is not WotC/Paizo standard) but you can get the PC options for $2 a month. Not all of it is good/great but then again I can say the same thing about WotC or Paizo as well.
Kobold Press has made some good stuff and has converted some of their Pathfinder stuff to 5E. I bought Midland and Southland Heroes PDFs off them mostly for the races and back grounds along with an adventure called Tomb of Tiberesh.
And finally the 3rd source I have used is the DM guild although I have not bought that much and I read the reviews before I buy. If it doesn't have 4 or 5 star rating I do not buy. I bought the Gunslinger and Blood Hunter classes along with a few adventures such as the Triboar trilogy. I have spent probably around $20 and the Triboar trilogy is currently $2.
So over the years I have learned that the 3pp survivors of the 3E era glut have upped their game and there are several companies you should check out. My recommendations are.
Frog God Game/Necromancer Games.
https://www.froggodgames.com/5th-edition
Quests of Doom Volume 1 (12 adventures, various level 1-15)
Quests of Doom Volume 2 (6 adventures mostly mid level
Quests of Doom 2 (6 adventures mostly low-mid level)
Quests of Doom 3 (mostly mid to high level)
Troll Lord Games A series (Castles and Crusades A series 5E conversions)
http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?ke...ers_id=86&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
Kobold Press 5E stuff
http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?ke...s_id=2189&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
DMGuild
https://www.dmsguild.com/
