Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 2506525" data-attributes="member: 3087">No. Though I appreciate that it could be taken as an unfair way to remove otherwise excellent products. A lot of people post saying that non-WotC books are just as good in all ways. I wanted to dig at this.Why am I focused on this? see the next postAnd I would ask if you've seen the Iron Kingdoms books? I've only purchased one but I used the art from it extensively in my games (to the point of using it for pictures for different monsters from other books).I didn't. I know this isn't an either/or thing but when I get the time I pick up Manga (Japanese comics, which have shading but no colors per se) and I find the art to be extremely evocative.OK. So the products people have listed as being good without the qualifiers (i.e. my favorite /the best non-WotC etc etc) are listed below. (Sorry if I missed something let me know and I'll add it in).Setting stuff is -NOT- here as a claim that the world is super or awesome. The idea is that the ideas, writing, production and rules are top notch. Nothing more, nothing less.Finally non-DnD books (Arcana Evolved, etc.) are not what I'm talking about. Maybe somebody wants to talk about whether the two game systems are better or worse or neater or cooler but I'm not that person.I've also ignored pimping posts. I understand wanting to sell more of your own books but non-biased parties are generally the best.Finally I feel compelled to not list books in posts where the person has said they don't care about appearance. SettingsDragonlanceFull Metal Fantasy 1 & 2World of WarcraftNon-Monster booksFrost and FurArms & Armor 3.5Fields of BloodBook of Erotic Fantasy (as a value neutral ruleset)Redhurst, Academy of MagicMonsternomicanChaositechBook of TemplatesShackled City Adventure PathSpells & Magic Beyond Monks 3.5Hammer & HelmMonster books (seperate catagory since they're mostly what people are mentioning)Denizens of Avadnu (Inner Circle Press) (mentioned by two or three people)Tome of Horrors II (mentioned by two or three people)Creature Collection 3Book of FiendsI'm also going to come out and say it but either at least some people's expectations are lower for non-wotc products (or their estimation of the quality of WotC's work is significantly lower than mine). I'm going to pick a specific example of something I worked on(the only thing I've ever had published in case you're wondering if I'm grinding some kind of professional ax).I created a monster for the CCIII (through their fan submission thing). Now I'm sure the monster had problems that required rectifying; SS, apparently felt that it needed to traditional style attack melee attack combo. The solution for the hired gun who re-wrote the monster (a lawful outsider) was to give it lots of monk powers (it had six arms, having lots of open handed strikes was a cool image maybe). But it has six hands because it has six magic soul eating lanterns that it carries in them.So the flavor text reads that its always carrying six lanterns but the combat stat block suggests it has lots of open handed attacks.When you're trying to use a monster and you have to either say "despite what the stat block says it attacks with the lanterns but they function like unarmed monk strikes" or else "the lanterns go -some-where else when its fighting" (which would be fine but since it's major attack is stealing the souls of people being able to attack and disarm the lanterns is a big deal).Now if that were the only issue that might be OK (monster books are hard to discuss) but I felt like the other work on the book was done at a similar level.So no... frankly I think CCIII was a great 3rd party book, but I don't think it was as good as the Monster Manual in the sense that a lot of stuff required the DM too work through it and change things to make them fit.(I"m not saying that its anyone' fault. I should probably have made the monster a traditionally claw/claw/bite kinda thing. SS could have spent more time rectifying my mistakes, etc. All I'm saying is that the BOOK is not as good as the MM in terms of following the rules and being useful to the DM without editing. And a fair chunk of the art wasn't at the same level as WotC.)</blockquote>

Verification