Will lack of 3rd party support affect your 4E play?

[JeffB]

Figured there would be too many "ifs" to post a poll.

For me it would- I'm very much counting on things like Necro and Goodman's planned products for 4E. I'm a single dad without much time to prep/write material. 3P adventures with no statblocks won't get me to crack my wallet open. The Necro APG and it's premise was something else I look(ed) very much forward to and felt is/was needed for my own personal tastes.

I don't see myself giving 4E much play time without the products I need (and sorry , but WOTC hasn't "delivered" the goods since 2002-ish AFAIC).


How about you?

 

[hong]

I bought a bunch of 3rd party products during the 3/3.5E days, but ended up almost never using them.

I figure I'll save my money this time round. Nobody else in my group ever bought a 3rd party product, AFAIK.

 

[redcard]

I bought a few 3pp, mostly full games. Spycraft, etc. Much of it went completely and totally unused though. The modules were decent, but we never played any because by the time I rewrote them for our campaign, I'd changed so much, and spent so much time on it, I might as well had written from scratch. I continued to use them for one off demos, though, but didn't buy many beyond the first few.

 

[delericho]

The loss of Pathfinder is a big blow, but we've known about that for quite some time.

The loss of other support will have some impact, but probably not much.

 

[Malk]

I bought exactly two third party products in the 3.X days, and found exactly 0 groups interested in running anything other than wotc products in what...eight years of gaming. Of course that included games that I myself ran.

 

[Cadfan]

Since this appears to be a poll, I'll chime in.

No.

I rarely like 3rd party products. A lot of the time, it seems like they're taking the game architecture from D&D and then mutilating it in an effort to get it to do something for which it is fundamentally unsuited. Even when they do a good job at reconstructing the system after they rip it apart, its still a frankenstein monster. I often think that most games would be much, much better off writing their rules from the ground up.

When I buy non D&D role playing games, I buy games that stand alone under their own rules. I've found 3rd party games that I've wanted to like, but never one that could close the deal.

And I homebrew adventures.

 

[Umbran]

With a brand new system, I prefer to play close to the core for quite a while before branching out, so I don't need a whole lot of 3rd party product soon. Perhaps never - as I may not adopt 4e as my default at all.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Will it affect my play? Too soon to tell. I'm kind of at the mercy of the DM to some extent. I'm pretty sure I won't be pressuring him to include third-party stuff player-oriented stuff though.

Will it affect my spending? Certainly. As a matter of principle and preference, I'll be buying much less D&D stuff, especially from WotC. The direction they've taken 4e is at the limits of my preferred style, and I was counting on 3rd party stuff to allow me to nudge it back in my direction. As it looks like that won't be happening, I'm much less likely to buy 4e stuff.

 

[WhatGravitas]

...but ended up almost never using them.

Why don't you love Iron Heroes? Why!?

Erm, aside from that: It will affect me, as primary DM, a bit. It means probably less adventures, less stuff for my gearhead genes. I'll get less enjoyment out of 4E. I will miss stuff like Ptolus, Pathfinder, and so on.

Direct effects: Not so much, as most people like to have "official" stuff.

Cheers, LT.

 

[JDJblatherings]

I really enjoyed the third party suport and ogl compatible games. It made D&D more fun for me and d20 purchases were a wise decission on the mean.

Played D&D for a couple of months with just the PHB and the Creature Collection.

4E looks like a no-go for me for the next couple of years. I have yet to play-out the dozens of 3pp products and wotc products I own.