How do you prefer a game system to be supported?   Do you prefer the support to come from the publisher, an active game community or just DIY?

Publisher.

I've seen too many times what a total fuck-up fan support can become.

Failing that. The core game should have enough for the DM to make more adventures at least with what is there. Most RPGs do. Some force it by having no predefined setting.

I've come to appreciate the fixed nature of dead games. No new setting "canon" to invalidate your interpretations, no new editions to awkwardly square with your home rules or debate with your group, often no remaining fanboys to criticize you for "not doing it right".

I grab whatever is good. I have seen both wonderful and both terrible official material, fan material, and DIY stuff of my own.

Official publisher material has the advantage that it is... duh, official, and you can expect it to be generally accepted when forming new groups or playing with strangers at conventions, especially if you go for current and popular games with a steady stream of official material (D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowrun...).
Of course the flip side of the coin are the dangers of power creep, metaplot and "everything is core", and we all have seen it happening often enough.

Quote from: Omega;807779Publisher.

I've seen too many times what a total fuck-up fan support can become.

I don't know about that, I've seen some publishers completely fuck up settings. Maybe leave the support in the hands of the creator of the game/setting themselves.

All three can be good or bad. The fan community can/has totally put me off a game in the past but other times it's been the main draw.
Publisher content is always a bit suspect to me because I assume the primary motivation is profit, with enthusiasm and creative energy being secondary or worse.

Over the years I think I've gotten more overall value from non-publisher sources than I have 'official' ones.

More the merrier.

I generally prefer fan support stuff because its often developed at the table whereas publisher support is often just freelancers cramming page counts.

DIY is a different hobby, now, imo.
And, yeah, it is superior in every way.

Full court press on all three.

People who don't want to sort through the fan created material can just limit themselves to what been created by the publisher.

Quote from: jeff37923;807814I don't know about that, I've seen some publishers completely fuck up settings. Maybe leave the support in the hands of the creator of the game/setting themselves.

Oh I've seen publishers screw things over royally too. Just usually not with the amount of venom that the "fans" can devolve into.

As for creators. ugh! Seen some of them implode spectacularly.

With the fans, what seems to happen is you end up with a single "gatekeeper" who is keeping the gate while adding his own "fixes" to things under cover of his great insight into the game. Sometimes with a clique of bootlickers to fawn on his every word. Star Frontiers and Spelljammer come to mind off the bat to one degree or another.

With publishers it seems to be they get sold on the idea of the edition treadmill and the 5 year plan. Even when it is obviously loosing them more players each time and often fractioning the playerbase at the same time. As opposed to supplements with updates and fixes. Sometimes they just seem to hate the fans really. WOTC is made of this, SJG progressively feels like this.

With designers all bets are off on whats going to go out the window. Doesnt happen often. But when it does it tends to escalate from there. Sometimes though it is a combo of the designer and publisher both getting a potentially terminal case of the stupid.

generally official products i may use a few items and sometimes even the occasional spell from a 3rd party source (although with how bad i am at telling if things are balanced i tend to only use joke items and spells) but i have a strict no homebrew policy on both base and prestige classes.

that said i do use an alternate version of the reaping mauler but that is the version that the designer originally submitted but it was cut down to uselessness for some reason so it does not really count.

besides i allow pretty much anything from official books only real exceptions are quite a bit of exalted deeds content (although i do houserule a lot of it to make the things that should be evil evil) and i will never allow the elemental warrior because the mechanics in no way fit the theme.

that said i will run adventures from any source.

Quote from: Omega;807920Oh I've seen publishers screw things over royally too. Just usually not with the amount of venom that the "fans" can devolve into.

As for creators. ugh! Seen some of them implode spectacularly.

With the fans, what seems to happen is you end up with a single "gatekeeper" who is keeping the gate while adding his own "fixes" to things under cover of his great insight into the game. Sometimes with a clique of bootlickers to fawn on his every word. Star Frontiers and Spelljammer come to mind off the bat to one degree or another.

With publishers it seems to be they get sold on the idea of the edition treadmill and the 5 year plan. Even when it is obviously loosing them more players each time and often fractioning the playerbase at the same time. As opposed to supplements with updates and fixes. Sometimes they just seem to hate the fans really. WOTC is made of this, SJG progressively feels like this.

With designers all bets are off on whats going to go out the window. Doesnt happen often. But when it does it tends to escalate from there. Sometimes though it is a combo of the designer and publisher both getting a potentially terminal case of the stupid.

i would not say that wotc hates there fans and besides i would think most of there fuckups are due to pressure from hasbro or maybe just hasbros aura of stupid

even then i think we can all agree that we would take wotc over Lorraine Williams era tsr anyday

although from what i have found that gatekeeper thing sounds a lot like pathfinder

Quote from: tuypo1;807936i would not say that wotc hates there fans and besides i would think most of there fuckups are due to pressure from hasbro or maybe just hasbros aura of stupid

even then i think we can all agree that we would take wotc over Lorraine Williams era tsr anyday

although from what i have found that gatekeeper thing sounds a lot like pathfinder

Oh, aheh, no. Meant that WOTC is too in love with the 5 year plan.

oh yeah i can agree with that.

im torn on the matter though on the one hand new editions bring in new blood on the other hand it would be nice to still get official content for your favourite edition.

the ideal would be to have new editions but continue to support the old ones but there are many reasons thats never going to happen

I'm primarily interested in quality adventures due to having very little time to prepare, or alternatively I would play a low-prep game but in my experience of those types of game don't tend to have enough mechanical crunch to satisfy the rest of my gaming group.

DnD is the default game for my group, and since 5e PHB is really quite expansive in terms of the character concepts it can cover I'm not feeling any need for additional character options at the moment.

And as DnD (of any stripe) is the best supported RPG from a module perspective this is a happy coincidence...