In your favourite RPGs, are fan-made sourcebook-style works something you will consider using in the game? Will you give it the same weight as you would a published sourcebook?

I'm sure for most people, the answer is "depends on the quality"; but what I'm really asking is whether you begin with an inherent prejudice that free, net-published work by fans is going to be inferior to company-published books for sale? Do they have to work harder to get your attention? Is the opposite true: do you give published "official" material more benefit of the doubt by default?

Does it make a difference if said product is authorized by the company? Or if its a free netbook but made by the company/game authors?

RPGPundit

I freely admit that something put up for free online likely won't get the attention that a hard-backed product that costs me cash money will.  JimBob's written about that before.

There's a lot to be said for having a professional-type layout with art and fluff to massage the eye.  It makes things like typos and internal inconsistency much more palatable.

At the same time, I think my gaming's been influence by fan websites since I discovered BlackJack's Shadowrun page in the mid-late nineties.

Absolutely. One of the best game supplements/products Iive ever seen was called "1001 science fiction weapons" and it was mostly a fan/very small biz product.

Also note that there was a really great adventure for gurps traveller called "flare star" that was mostly a fan effort as I recall.

The lines I've bought into in a big way are the Gloranthan stuff (RQ and HQ) and Pendragon. I made the decision at some point that I would concentrate on the professional stuff just to save myself money, time and sanity (have you seen the minutiae you can collect for Glorantha? Insane.)

That said, I do look at fan stuff on the net, if only to see how other people have done it. Sometimes you find a cool idea, like some stuff I found for the Balazar region in Glorantha (by a guy called Oliver Bernuetz), which set me on a new line of thinking.

Nope. It's sometimes hard to cut the wheat from the chaff when looking for new game systems, let alone new addons. Heck, I don't even use 3rd party professionally done stuff in a D&D game. I used to, and have a few books that made the cut, but so much of it was just plain bad, so I quit looking beyond WotC (not that their stuff is inherently good or anything).

I'm certainly more critical of fan-made content, given the fact some of it is "hurhurhurhur POWAH!" stuff that will throw my game to hell and back. That said, the Blackhammer Cyberpunk Archive is possibly the best collection of free fan-made content I've ever seen, and is in fact better than a lot of the content released for money. So I consider it, but I think a lot more about it first.

WFRP has some fabulous fan-made stuff so I not only consider it I actively hunt it out.

I used to liberally pillage netbooks for my AD&D campaigns about six-eight years ago.  Found a few really good ones back then that I wish I still had, and was actually 2/3 of the way done with one of my own that re-vamped kits.

I'll look at anything anyone has written for a game I'm running (or even for a game I'm not if I think I can shoehorn it in somehow).  The fact that some guy typed it up in his bedroom doesn't concern me; most of the older RPGs I play were pretty much the same thing when they were originally released.  The only books (net- or otherwise) I won't read are the ones with so many spelling or grammar errors that it becomes work to parse a sentence.  It literally gives me major headaches and makes me think the writer doesn't care enough for his material to make it presentable.

Absolutely. The table is where the boys and I decide whether or not it's any good.

Quote from: laffingboyAbsolutely. The table is where the boys and I decide whether or not it's any good.

What he said.

I have to admit that I have a slightly negative prejudice toward anything that is either a netbook or fan-made, or both.  This is due to the vast vast percentage of utter crap that constitutes so much of the "free RPG stuff" you find online.

That said, I don't think I am "favourably prejudiced" toward printed stuff. I don't assume that printed stuff will be good just because its printed, I just don't assume it will be bad. Whereas with netstuff, the first assumption is that it will be inferior, and if it is even mediocre it will surprise me.

That said, there are a lot of netbooks out there that are absolutely amazing.  That one Against the Shadow that came out for Midnight; or the Liber Fanatica for WFRP, are just two examples.

RPGPundit

In general, I tend to find fan made netbooks to be crap, but there are always exceptions (as the OP points out).

For companies like WOTC and White Wolf I expect a certain degree of quality based on past experiences with those companies, the paid status of the writers, and the experienced design teams.  A big problem with a lot of netbooks, and in many cases self published works generally, is that there's no past experience on which to help a person judge the quality of the product before diving in.

A lot depends on whether or not the game in question doesn't have a lot of printed support (such as for my upcoming C&C game), or if it's out of print (such as when I've run V&V in the past).  In either case, online sources become pretty much a neccessity if you're looking for new material for your game.

Quote from: RPGPunditIn your favourite RPGs, are fan-made sourcebook-style works something you will consider using in the game? Will you give it the same weight as you would a published sourcebook?

I'm sure for most people, the answer is "depends on the quality"; but what I'm really asking is whether you begin with an inherent prejudice that free, net-published work by fans is going to be inferior to company-published books for sale? Do they have to work harder to get your attention? Is the opposite true: do you give published "official" material more benefit of the doubt by default?

Does it make a difference if said product is authorized by the company? Or if its a free netbook but made by the company/game authors?

RPGPundit

I'll look at either and use what I find there if I like it. In general, I have higher quality expectations for books, because there's usually a large up-front cost to print them, and most publisher's know that horrible material won't help them recoup their investment.

That being said, I'll only pay for an actual book. If you want me to look at your PDF, give it away. I'm very old-fashioned in that I reserve my cash for things I can touch.

depends (yeah I know). First it depends on the game itself, as mentioned above Blackhammers for CP2020 is one of the best, and a lot of stuff was crafted by its fans (myself included)... most of it good.

From my observation, If the game has enough structure then homebrews work well. Im not taking ironclad sturcture like HERO or GURPS where everything is laid out for you, or games like Palladium, where there is no structure.

another thing I look at is background material, rule tweeks are fun, but its world information that I really dive into.