Wizards killing products?

[tetsujin28]

Iron Heroes, Mutants & Masterminds 2e, and Spycraft 2.0 rock the pants of what WotC is putting out these days, Eberron excepted. C'mon, WotC, get with it: people want the cool old settings back, and you don't have to invest an arm and a leg. Just put out one core book (frex Dark Sun), and if it ends up a hit like Eberron, you can put out more stuff.

 

[Nightfall]

Beyond Countless Doorways is in all ways better than Manual of the Planes.

I take SLIGHT exception to that, as MotP was a good book for exploring the planes 3e style and introducting it to new players. BCD, in my mind, is what would have been the best for older and/or more experienced players in a planar game. I'll also add that if you were to compare the 3.5 planar WotC book, Planar Handbook, with BCD, then yes, BCD wins hands down.

 

[Turjan]

Except, the majority of the mistakes are in statblocks. If the corrections hadn't been printed, i never would've known the mistakes are there. So, IMHO, they are non-issues.

Most of them are typos, superfluous words and stuff like that. The table of contents and the index are both wrong. Of course, stat blocks and class progression tables are the most important. As I said, I like the book, but 19 pages of errata are no sign of a thorough production process. Which is very sad, because it's a nice book .

I take SLIGHT exception to that, as MotP was a good book for exploring the planes 3e style and introducting it to new players. BCD, in my mind, is what would have been the best for older and/or more experienced players in a planar game.

I agree. The MotP is an excellent WotC book, one of my favourite D&D/d20 books at all. I prefer it over BCD, but this is not really a good comparison. The only thing both books have in common is the use of the word "planes".

 

[Victor]

Anything from Sovereign Press, while Swords and Sorcery's art might not be the greatest. When you bite it crunches in all the right places(come back to me Scarred Lands).

 

[Kanegrundar]

Spycraft better than D20 Modern? Meh. Not IMO. Don't get me wrong, Spycraft is a fine game, but I simply prefer how Modern handles characters better. I like the talent trees, the advanced classes, everything. There are some things it doesn't do as well as Spycraft (autofire), but I've enjoyed my games of Modern more than Spycraft. Just goes to show how much tastes can differ.

I do want to check out SC2 though...

Kane

 

[Pants]

Beyond Countless Doorways is in all ways better than Manual of the Planes.

I also happen to think that Sharn: City of Towers is a much better work than Cityworks by FFG... Oh wait, the comparison doesn't quite hold up, sorry.

I don't think that MotP and BCD are really very ummm... comparable. MotP provides info on the Core Cosmology, while BCD provides a few ideas that you can plug into an existing cosmology. It's kinda like comparing Portals and Planes to BCD. It just doesn't work, no matter how good either book may be.

 

[Nightfall]

Pants,

I agree. Comparing BCD with MotP is just asking for trouble. Though I don't see how you couldn't compare Portals and Planes with BCD, since they are both about planar stuff. I like both but I feel BCD was the better product in many ways.

Turjan,

Well it's not hard to be good when you originated (at least TSR and Gygax did) a vast majority of stuff about planes.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Ok. I tried.

I'm getting the impression that this thread isn't really going to stick to the point that I was interested in looking at. (Usually this happens when the thread topic is pedantic or boring so there you go).

No that's not it, as far as I can tell.

which non-Wizards DnD 3.5 products do you think are equal to the quality of (good) WotC books. The kind of product where you felt that "if this had a WotC stamp on it it would be on every DMs bookshelf".

There are no "non-Wizards DnD 3.5 products" out there, with the possible exception of a couple of things, like Kingdoms of Kalamar (?) and. . . er. . . Dungeon Magazines perhaps? What I mean to say is, things seem to very quickly get into the territory of 'd20' or 'OGL', as soon as even small details are changed. And really, the only books that are going to be on (nearly) "every DM's bookshelf" are the ones with a "WotC stamp" on them, apparently. And that 'stamp' seems to be the overriding factor in why that is so, if you see what I mean.

nothing broken, nothing introducing disruptive new systems for doing things)

So nothing like Unearthed Arcana (which is full of "disruptive new systems for doing things" ), no PrC's that are in any way reminiscent of, say, the Cleric++ ('broken'). . . ? (etc.)

I would exclude non-DnD games (Arcana Unearthed, the new WFR, etc).

WFRP2? Sure. It's not even OGL, obviously. But AU/AE? Uh... a well done, fairly balanced (or so I've seen and heard thus far) d20 book that is fully compatible with D&D.. um.. why exclude products like that?

books with Wayne Reynolds/ Todd Lockwood level art

Personally, I don't always like Wayne Reynolds' style of art - nothing against the guy or his artistic ability whatsoever, just a matter of taste. Tood Lockwood: one of my favourite d20 artists. So, for me (and maybe other people) your setting of this 'level' just so, might not make much sense.

books which are mechanically seamless to DnDbut do creative new stuff with the rules that fills out holes, etc.

What exactly do you mean by "mechanically seamless"? I know what my interpretation would be, but I guess it might differ from your own definition. I'm curious to know, either way.


I think the main problem with the OP was the whole "non-Wizards DnD 3.5 products" requirement, with the unclear (IMO) supporting restrictions that followed. Correct me if I'm wrong though - for example, if there has been any significant amount of (purely, perhaps officially) D&D 3.5 supplements put out by companies other than WotC.

 

[Yeoman]

I did forget one thing. If a d20 company had Rebecca Guay do illustrations for their work, I'd give them the better artwork nod without hesistation. I'm not a real fan of Wayne Reynolds, but Guay's d&d (and Magic) artwork is absolutely great.

 

[Pants]

Pants,

I agree. Comparing BCD with MotP is just asking for trouble. Though I don't see how you couldn't compare Portals and Planes with BCD, since they are both about planar stuff. I like both but I feel BCD was the better product in many ways.

Here's how I categorize them:
MotP - The Great Wheel
BCD - Sample Planes to Plug-in to your Cosmology
P&P - Building your own cosmology

Not really comparable, I think.