Wizards killing products?

[The Sigil]

I'll try to give my opinions on stuff by pulling a Gandalf - "I am Saruman - or rather, Saruman as he should have been." I'll list the WotC Product that I feel has a much better third-party replacement(s) and then follow it with the third-party products that are what WotC's product should have been.

WotC Product: Tome & Blood/Complete Arcane
What it Should have Been: Book of Eldritch Might I and II (Malhavoc) plus the "Arcane Nexus" rules from Quint. Wizard (Mongoose) plus the Familiars section from Spells & Spellcraft (FFG, reprinted in their Masterwork Anthology) plus the "Alternative Magics" sections from Spells & Magic (Bastion Press), Heroes of High Favor: Elves (Bad Axe Games)

WotC Product: Defenders of the Faith/Complete Divine
What it Should have Been: Call of Duty (Chainmail Bikini Games, PDF, Out of Print), Forgotten Heroes: Paladin (Maladin's Gate Press, PDF), Path of Faith (FFG) plus the "Small Gods" section from Spells & Spellcraft (FFG) plus the Avatar's Handbook (Green Ronin)

WotC Product: Song & Silence/Complete Adventurer
What it Should have Been: Sneak Attack Combat Options from Heroes of High Favor: Halflings (Bad Axe Games), the Enchiridion of Mystic Music* (S.T. Cooley Publishing, PDF), Quintessential Rogue (Mongoose), Player's Advantage: Rogue (Mystic Eye Games), Traps & Treachery (FFG), Alternate art forms like magic sculptures, etc. from Quint. Bard (Mongoose)

WotC Product: Sword & Fist/Complete Warrior
What it Should have Been: Heroes of High Favor: Dwarves and Half-Orcs (Bad Axe Games), Fighting Styles from the Quintessential Fighter (Mongoose), Masters of Arms (Second World Simulations), Book of Iron Might (Malhavoc), Beyond Monks: Art of the Fight (Chainmail Bikini), Librum Equitis, Vol. I & II (E.N. Publishing)

WotC Product: Complete Equipment Handbook (or whatever it is called)
What it Should have Been: Arms & Armor (Bastion Press), Alchemy & Herbalists (Bastion Press), Elven quasi-magical objects from Quintessential Elf II (Mongoose), object creation rules from the Enchiridion of Treasures & Objects d'Art* (S.T. Cooley Publishing, PDF), a million and one Ronin Arts products, notably 101 Mundane Treasures and the Athaeneum Arcane (sp)? series

* Full disclosure - I wrote products marked with asterisks.

Those are the ones that immediately jump to mind, anyway.

 

[DaveMage]

Those that are equal or better (IMO):
Shackled City Adventure Path (Paizo)

Those that come very close:
Denizens of Avadnu (Inner Circle)
Spells & Magic (Bastion Press)

Now, if you take out production values (which I take to mean great color art and full color), then I would add:

Arms & Armor v3.5 (Bastion Press)
Black Company Campaign Setting (Green Ronin)
Midnight 2E (Fantasy Flight Games) (Actually, this one would have made it up there with Shackled City if they had done the whole book in color rather than only the first 32 pages.)
Oathbound Campaign Setting (Bastion Press)
Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary (Atlas)
Tomb of Abysthor (Necromancer Games)
World's Largest Dungeon (AEG)

Those that I'm looking forward to that might also make this list:
Wilderlands of High Fantasy Box Set (Necromancer Games)
Rappan Athuk Reloaded (Necromancer Games)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'll agree with you on this. With a few exceptions, I am not a fan of WotC's art at all.

Hmm....

Well, nearly any 3rd-party book for artwork (over WotC's). In my opinion, that is.

Not an opinion that's widely shared perhaps, but still, there it is.

 

[Ranger REG]

I'll agree with you on this. With a few exceptions, I am not a fan of WotC's art at all.

Not even Wayne Reynold's?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Not even Wayne Reynold's?

I was going to suggest Ron Spencer, an artists whose done stuff for Werewolf, Talislanta and a host of others, or perhaps Wayne England or Doug Griffin or any of a number of artists that WoTC use that other do as well.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I don't mind his work; certainly, he's one of the better artists WotC uses.

But really, the work I've seen in a lot of the third party products is so far above and beyond what WotC does. Yes, there's plenty of junk art in third party products. But the best pieces in third party art are far superior to WotC's best artwork. For being such a big company, their art has been a real disappointment to me. I would've thought that they could afford better.

Not even Wayne Reynold's?

 

[DMH]

I would include: Appearance (evocative images, cool layout), Creativity (interesting new ideas, well written and edited enough to be expressed), and Game Mechanics (nothing broken, nothing introducing disruptive new systems for doing things) as being essential.

Ignoring the first qualification (and settings), I would have to say just about everything from Ronin Arts, ST Cooley and Clockwork Golem Workshop is the very top. A few of Bastion's redspines (Into the Black, Alchemy and Herbalists, Arms and Armor v 3.5, Airships and Torn Asunder), Atlas' Occult Lore, Silverthorne's Template Troves, The Master Class series from Green Ronin and Atlas' Seven series are all just below those.

 

[Yeoman]

My votes would be for Bastion Press's Arms and Armor 3.5, and Chainmail Bikini's Beyond Monks 3.5, The art of the Fight. Both are excellent products, and the art is a bit lacking in the Arms and Armor book.

 

[Zweihänder]

DragonMech d20 (from Goodman Games) - This is a high-quality campaign setting. It's got several points on Greyhawk: (1) Mechs (this requires no qualification, ever); (2) The City-Mech adventure setting (this is distinct from point 1, since it's not a truly pilotable entity, more just a giant gear-filled playground); (3) Lunar Rain (The moon is so close, that parts of it have been pulled off by the Earth's gravity, causing meteors and monsters to fall at random during the night-time).

Hammer & Helm (from Green Ronin) - The single best racial information source I have ever encountered, ever.

 

[jmucchiello]

I'll try to give my opinions on stuff by pulling a Gandalf - "I am Saruman - or rather, Saruman as he should have been." I'll list the WotC Product that I feel has a much better third-party replacement(s) and then follow it with the third-party products that are what WotC's product should have been.

And with the OGL, there's no reason why these books could not have been kulled from the list source material. Oh well.