Without checking your bookshelf or googling, how many 3e-era D20 books by 3rd party publishers can you really remember?

And even among those, how many of them do you remember as bad?

Because I don't see how this won't be prescient of what will become of all the 5e D&D 3rd party stuff coming out now.

I agree. But is that a bad thing?

It's capitalism at its best. The cream rises to the top. Competition creates a healthy market (aka pricing, availability, etc.). The good writers are being shepherded by WOTC into collaboration projects by "Gold" creators.

I can remember quite a few, but I'm an industry groupie, so that hardly counts. Most of the heavy hitters moved on to house systems and personal projects... OR worked for WOTC for a bit.

The difference this time is in the model. The creators get to use official IP, Branding and assets and have access to a shared marketplace. You're probably not going to see the same drop-out rate for WOTC 5e DM's Guild as you did in the free-for-all market of the original d20 OGL boom.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1071628Without checking your bookshelf or googling, how many 3e-era D20 books by 3rd party publishers can you really remember?

And even among those, how many of them do you remember as bad?

Because I don't see how this won't be prescient of what will become of all the 5e D&D 3rd party stuff coming out now.

Off the top of my head? At least 10. And 5 were bad. One was amazingly awful (Fast Forward Entertainment) and in a category unto itself for terribleness. Most of the rest were OK-to-good (Fantasy Flight, AEG, Green Ronin, to name a few, again off the top of my head) at their D20 stuff and I still use some of that today. Then there were a few that were top-notch: Sword & Sorcery Studios, Malhavoc Press, Necromancer Games.

That last one is still making some good stuff for 5E, but it's Frog God Games now, I believe.

All mine are for Pathfinder. So Ultimate Psionics (great book), Sphere's of Power, Sphere's of Might, and Path of War

As to 5e, I've heard Tome of Beast is just a better monster manual.

I'm not really the target audience, I only bought well received d20 products and they were all pretty good despite being for a system I'm only luke warm about.

Call of Cthulhu d20

Traveller T20

Weird War 2 (and all the supplements)

Hollistic Designs real life roleplaying series (d20 Modern source books for Afghanistan, Somalia, Columbia and the FBI)

Mongoose Conan d20

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1071654One was amazingly awful (Fast Forward Entertainment)

Yeah, that name rings some unpleasant bells.

D20 Elric of Melnibone...because it was suckass and made me sad. Such utter failure.

D20 Fading Suns...because I ran a dozen one-shots and a short campaign arc with it. Not great, but it was good enough.

D20 SpyCraft 1e...the agony and the ecstasy, but mostly agony. How we wanted to have kickass spy/action fun...but then the system nonsense ate the fun.

D20 Conan...meh. I've never been happy with a Conan RPG.

D20 Iron Kingdoms...hell fucking yeah!!!  I'd love to play that again.

D20 Dawnforge...I really enjoyed this setting. It's LotR in the First Age. I would totally play this again...with a different system.

D20 Midnight....I was cool with this setting. It's LotR if Sauron wins. I would totally play this again...with a different system.

Warcraft. Wheel of Time. White Wolf Swords & Sorcery.

Didn't play any of these, but I know they exist and have read them at some point.

Thank you Asron819! Totally forgot about White Wolf!

Their Creature Collection for the Scarred Lands setting was excellent. Far better than the WotC Monster Manual.

Definitely enjoyed the Scarred Lands setting. It's post-God War fantasy. Would make a great setting for Godbound!

Hmm, Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved, of course.  I had a lot of the Monte Cook things.  So Banewarren.  Book of Eldritch Might.  Don't remember if that was only 1 book or 2, but I used all of that and enjoyed it.  Ptolus might not count, since it was practically a 3.5 thing.  

Besides that, I had "City Works" and the whole set of books in that series, because I got them for $5 each on a going out of business sale.  The only thing I definitely remember about them is that it is the first place where I first noticed Mearls' formulaic writing style that now infects so many WotC books.

I had 10-20 other books of which I remember nothing, because they were long ago tossed as a waste of shelf-space.  That includes a fair amount of WotC 3E books, too.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1071664Their Creature Collection for the Scarred Lands setting was excellent. Far better than the WotC Monster Manual.

Definitely enjoyed the Scarred Lands setting. It's post-God War fantasy. Would make a great setting for Godbound!

I have Creature Collection and one other from that series.  Forgot about them because they were good books doing something I didn't particular care to run.

A whole pile of Necromancer Games stuff.

Rappan Athuk 1 & 2
Lost City of Barakus
The Vault of Larin Karr
Crucible of Freya
Tomb of Abysthor
Wilderlands boxed set
City State of the Invincible Overlord
Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia

Certainly more than I had WotC adventures, which were mostly shit during the 3E era.

You know, I misread this. I thought he wrote producers / publishers, not products. So my mistake.

When it comes to PRODUCTs, I can remember about 50-80. MOST of them quite fondly.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1071696I have Creature Collection and one other from that series.  Forgot about them because they were good books doing something I didn't particular care to run.

Creature Collection 1 was a hot mess... but still fun. Creature Collection Revised fixed so much of that. (Creature Collections 2 and 3 were vastly better in terms of rules consistency, while Lost Tribes included the remnants of Creature Collection 4.)

Off the top of my head, maybe ten? There's one I remember vividly called The Foundation which was some sort of superhero book. I think I bought it the same day the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms book was released...absolutely terrible. An obvious attempt to cash in on the d20 glut. I really can't blame any for all those books because I attempted to purchase EVERYTHING 3rd party for D&D 3.0 when it was released and quickly gave up after a couple years because it was impossible. I probably have 100+ d20 sourcebooks, and most are crap. The AEG books are good in general, I'll admit; got a lot of use out of the Dungeons, Evil, and Magic books.