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My group and I enjoy having a ton of options when it comes to D&D 5e, be it new (sub)races, new (sub)classes, new feats, or other additional addons/features/variants. It is easy to determine which products WotC officially released. But we don't restrict ourselves to those. We also resort to more "experimental" sources (e.g. Unearthed Arcanas), as long as we know that WotC supports or endorses the product/author.

For example, everybody can put a product on dmsguild, even if it is bad or not (really) in line with the principles of D&D. But there are also some (ten?) special authors, called Guild Adepts, that were announced by WotC. My group and I assume, that the content these people create is therefore “approved” by WotC. It’s not quite an Unearthed Arcana, but similar enough. (Especially, Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else is really good).

Another example would be the content of Matt Mercer. Although his Blood Hunter Class is not listed under “official” on DnDBeyond, it’s neither listed under “homebrew”. It has it’s own little category called “additional”. So, we decided that Mercer’s stuff is obviously not on par with products officially released by WotC, but similar to the content produced by Guild Adepts.

I’m always looking for more D&D 5e content. So my question is:

Are there any 3rd party products for D&D 5e endorsed by WotC?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Related: How official is the Blood Hunter class? \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Commented Sep 14, 2018 at 12:59
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    \$\begingroup\$ RE: "My group and I assume, that the content these people create is therefore 'approved' by WotC. " I hope an answer addresses this. I'm interested—as an industry outsider—if Wizards of the Coast vets these writers' materials — maybe even communicating to them insider information — or if these are just Wizards' employees' family members and friends or whatever. \$\endgroup\$
    – Hey I Can Chan
    Commented Sep 14, 2018 at 16:20

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Your question can be restated: "Is there any 3rd party content that Wizards of the Coast secretly loves and wants people to use, but (nearly) no one has heard of it?"

WotC has been, and continues to be, wildly enthusiastic about promoting a vast range of third parties who endorse D&D 5E, probably more so than any previous edition.

Given the great commercial success of 5E, there's no reason to imagine WotC's communications team was incompetent and let something good fall through the cracks. If WotC likes a 5E product, then they're not shy about saying so, and plenty of people hear it (ref 1 & ref 2).

As of 2018, the list of "unofficially official" 3rd party material given special recognition is:

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    \$\begingroup\$ You're making a pretty big claim here about unofficially official support. Can you provide examples of this support in their marketing communication for each of the guild adept and critic role sources? \$\endgroup\$
    – NotArch
    Commented Oct 1, 2018 at 12:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ links added to both WotC marketing and non-WotC mentions. IMO, the notion of concealed endorsements is a bigger, more speculative claim. Why would such a thing ever exist? \$\endgroup\$
    – Foo Bar
    Commented Oct 6, 2018 at 14:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ Guild Adept in particular is pretty darn close to official endorsement. \$\endgroup\$
    – Roger
    Commented Nov 21, 2018 at 15:33

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