D&D 5E Dungeon Master's Guild: The Long Term

jgsugden said:

There is a point when you cross over from community development into business. Something like this makes sense when you're making professional level content, although giving up half your revenue to your distribution channel is more than a bit steep, especially given the availability of other distribution routes.

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To your licensor and distribution provider, you mean.

jgsugden said:

There is a point when you cross over from community development into business. Something like this makes sense when you're making professional level content, although giving up half your revenue to your distribution channel is more than a bit steep, especially given the availability of other distribution routes.

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Tell that to traditional publishers that keep a fifth of the money of each say, with 20% going to manufacturer, 20% going to the distributor, and 40% going to the retailer. (Selling directly to the fans via an e-store means getting an extra 60% of the pie.)
Getting half is pretty good.

Dndungeoneer said:

Indeed. I'm not concerned in the least. I do, however, hope that people review much more for the DM'S Guild so that we can more easily wade through some of the inevitable chaff.

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There are two key things I think need to be done. From the purchaser, please submit a review. It helps everyone, and hardly anyone ever does. From the creator, please utilize the preview options. Let the customer get at least a glance of what your product looks like. Saves everyone a bunch of time.

Jester Canuck said:

Tell that to traditional publishers that keep a fifth of the money of each say, with 20% going to manufacturer, 20% going to the distributor, and 40% going to the retailer. (Selling directly to the fans via an e-store means getting an extra 60% of the pie.)
Getting half is pretty good.

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Indeed. Back when I had Compact Heroes in the main distribution channel, between cost to manufacture, customs and shipping, distribution cut, and FLGS discount, my cut was like 20% of MSRP.

Besides, 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

Who gets what money and why they get it wasn't my point... but the focus on it does demonstrate part of my point. People that would have freely shared their materials before now will look to make money off it, reducing the number of people that benefit from their creation.

Have you ever heard of the free exchange of ideas? The phrase has a naturally positive connotation. We contribute ideas to our community to make it stronger. Our return on our contribution is the ideas we get back and the strengthening of the community itself. The typical opportunity cost of monitizing things that previously would have been free to share are reduced distribution, less community development and less capitalization upon the benefits derived from the previously free materials (for example, if you build an awesome Agazazi class, but I never pay to see it, it can't inspire me to incorporate an awesome Agazazi NPC into my game, to build Agazazi specific magic items or spells, etc...

And finally, there is a 100% certain reason why designing a sanctioned and licensed significantly pay for play distribution / restyriction channel is a horrible idea... and I'll share it with you for the mere cost of $5 ($2.50 will go to WotC).

Sacrosanct said:

There are two key things I think need to be done. From the purchaser, please submit a review. It helps everyone, and hardly anyone ever does.

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it's really hard to get reviews on DTRPG etc. EN Publishing has some 300 products on the sites, and sells hundreds of items a month, and the last person to leave a comment was in October 2015. I think we average maybe a comment every two months, and that only because Endzeitgeist leaves reviews there for our ZEITGEIST adventure path. I'm not sure why that is - I know DTRPG actively sends emails to folks asking them to review stuff they downloaded recently - but customers don't tend to comment unless you've annoyed them in some way.

Sacrosanct said:

... Besides, 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

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Is 50% of a bill better than 100% of no bill? Selling is a zero sum game. Every dollar earned is a dollar spent. You benefit at the cost of another. Now, they do benefit from your generation of a sellable product that they then get your permission to use - and that is worth more to them than what they paid (unless your product is not as good as it appeared to them), but you and your consumer are not the only impacted parties when you monitize things that were previously to be exchanged freely. The people unwilling (or unable) to pay are cut out, and anyone that would have benefited from their acquisition of the previously free materials is also hampered (their gaming groups, the people that would have benefitted from the future materials that they would have generated from your insipration, etc...)

The more we extract value from an environment the more efficient we make it to the extent that there is clear value to benefit understanding in the consumer base. However, when customers have no proof of quality or are hesitant to pay an appropriate amount of money for the benefit they derive, the monitization chokeholds the environment.

There are a lot of people that would shell out $60 for Fallout 4 so that they can play a hundred hours of fun game play. However, those same people will not pay $0.99 for an app game on their phone that they'd play back on forth on their 1 hour commute every day for several weeks, perhaps months...

People that believe they'll make money off the new DM Guild are going to defend it. MOney is enticing. What I'm saying is that moving things that would previously have been free to this channel is going to have negative opportunity costs to the community, and Idon't think that cost is worth the individual benefits and WotC's profiting. One of the reasons that D&D has been a success over the years is that you can get many hours of fun from every dollar spent. The more we monitize and pull value here, there and everywhere, the more we hurt that strength of the game.

I gotta say, I'm still not following. The model has been out there for years already. We know what to expect because it's already there and we have mountains of data to look at. None of your assumptions or fears have played out. So I'm confused. People who want to share their ideas for free can, and are, doing that. I haven't heard one person who thought, "I would normally give this away, but now I'm gonna charge for it." It's usually the opposite. With the introduction of Pay what you want, I've seen a lot MORE free products.

I have a hard time seeing where the seller is benefiting at the cost of the consumer. Presumably it's a win win, like any other product or service in existence. No one is forcing customers to spend money, last time I checked. You're also making the biggest flaw I hear in arguments like this (usually in the context of music sharing). That is, things should be free because it's all about sharing. That is fundamentally flawed because creating products is not free. You basically want something for free and me to foot the bill because "sharing is good for the community." Gotta call bullocks to that. I don't create things to make money (because there isn't much to be made in this hobby), but I do like to recoup as much of the costs as I can. Even if I completely discount the hundreds of hours of what my time is worth to create something, there are still a lot of other costs. I just released my superdungeon Felk Mor yesterday. The art commissions alone were over $1500. That's not counting costs for things like Adobe CS, editing, etc.

Basically, we have about a decade's worth of data to evaluate using this model. All evidence seems to point to your worries being largely unfounded, yet you insist on keeping with these assumptions. Do you have any evidence based on this data that supports your claims? You seem to think that there was this big deluge of free stuff out there that will disappear now. Seeing as how OneBookShelf has been in operation for over a decade, I need some hard evidence that supports that claim, because everything else seems to point otherwise.

Morrus said:

it's really hard to get reviews on DTRPG etc. EN Publishing has some 300 products on the sites, and sells hundreds of items a month, and the last person to leave a comment was in October 2015. I think we average maybe a comment every two months, and that only because Endzeitgeist leaves reviews there for our ZEITGEIST adventure path. I'm not sure why that is - I know DTRPG actively sends emails to folks asking them to review stuff they downloaded recently - but customers don't tend to comment unless you've annoyed them in some way.

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Probably needs some gamification? Just two more reviews to unlock the master reviewer badge

It's hard to right a proper review without thoroughly reading a product. Unless I really love a product, more often than not I'm just skimming though it to see if it's worth using, or if it's the right fit for my gaming needs.

5 Star Reviews of "It's Great" may benefit the author but they do little for those reading the reviews.

There should also be a special place in Hell for people who leave 1 star reviews because they have some idiotic agenda, or axe to grind.

Amazon Reviews are an amazing example of reviews done right, done poorly, and crazy people who shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard. There is a 1 star Review for Toy Story 3 from a woman who was upset because her kid found the Teddy Bear Villain Scary. There are hundreds of 1 star reviews for DVDs that come with Ultraviolet Digital Download of the movie, that completely ignore how good the movie is, but are on a rampage because they would prefer an easier to pirate digital download than the ultraviolet format.