Free DM's Guild Five-Star Freebies

Xethreau · Feb 2, 2016

Giant2005 said:
Yeah it got the ban hammer. I'm not sure what you mean by the outcome to me? It is gone, that is the outcome.

I loved the ELH both for what it meant to me previously and your representation; I was also green with envy of your success with it, which I hope came through. I hope you will rejoin me in this conversation in this thread.

Giant2005 · Feb 2, 2016

Xethreau said:
I loved the ELH both for what it meant to me previously and your representation; I was also green with envy of your success with it, which I hope came through. I hope you will rejoin me in this conversation in this thread.

That is very kind of you to say.
I'll take a look at that thread now.

Inconnunom · Feb 2, 2016

Xethreau said:
Recipe Crafting for Consumables
Description: A crafting mod for 5e!
Positive: This impressive libram introduces us to a crafting system that is simple to learn but considerable to master. I actually got excited about crafting! The items presented here took no small amount of time to stat-out, and we are very fortunate to get this article for free!
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars!

Anybody else have articles to share?

Thanks for the review and exposure! This is a work I am pretty proud of that took quite a bit of hours writing and months to balance to the satisfaction of about half a dozen play test groups. I'm not the best editer but I hope that DM's will be able to use it in some way.

MwaO · Feb 2, 2016

Giant2005 said:
Yeah it got the ban hammer. I'm not sure what you mean by the outcome to me? It is gone, that is the outcome.

Well, it was doing reasonably well in total sales, so presumably you made some money off of what they considered a violation. Did they try to claw it back or just said, "Don't do that again."

Again just curious - I don't see myself as going near the potential problem areas.

Giant2005 · Feb 2, 2016

MwaO said:
Well, it was doing reasonably well in total sales, so presumably you made some money off of what they considered a violation. Did they try to claw it back or just said, "Don't do that again."

Again just curious - I don't see myself as going near the potential problem areas.

They just said the equivalent of "Don't do that again" they even suggested re-writing the book and publishing it again but that suggestion was kind of pointless considering they didn't tell me what went wrong the first time. I'd likely make the same mistake again.

This is the last I will speak of it in this thread though - Xethreau doesn't want things going off topic here and we should respect that.

RealAlHazred · Feb 3, 2016

jayoungr said:
That may be your attitude, and I appreciate that! But I've also seen blog posts from creators who lament the fact that a miniscule percentage actually pays for their stuff, and I recently listened to a podcast where the host was good-naturedly trying to guilt listeners into not taking PWYW stuff for free: "C'mon, people! Pay for those supplements!" So there's a wide range of opinions about what the correct behavior is, and I have no way of knowing the attitude of whoever put up a particular PWYW item.

I suppose the real "problem" (to the degree that there is one, and not just my own hang-ups) is that PWYW is a pretty new model and there isn't an accepted community standard yet as to what the expectations should be. The proponents of "Creators shouldn't expect the average downloader to pay" and "Responsible consumers should pay" are both fairly vocal. And you could say that they're not mutually exclusive, but I want to be a responsible consumer, so that gets me right back to "If I download a PWYW item, I should be prepared to pay for it"--and that's exactly why I want to know what's truly free.

(Whew, I feel like I've talked myself into a pretzel here, but hopefully it makes some kind of sense.)

I'm with [MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION] on this. My first entry is a simple 1-page Clerical domain. If you download it and you love it and you make a Cleric with it, and come back later and give me a quarter, I'll be happy, but I will also be happy if you do all those things and don't give me the quarter.

People have paid about $3.50, for which I am extremely grateful! Also stunned, and a little awed. I've made tons of free content for my players at my FLGS, for which I have never been reimbursed; this has let me provide people with content, and some have chosen to reward me, I hope based on what they think it's worth. It's made me decide to produce more, so the system seems to work!

RealAlHazred · Feb 3, 2016

Xethreau said:
I just looked at a bunch of content--unfortunately not a lot of gems in this last batch. But here they are!

Cleric Domain - Community
Description: A conversion of a classic option.
Positive: Professionally formatted, flavorful, and very unique! Reminds me of what you would expect New England colonists to have employed to improve their chances of survival. The cleric who takes this domain will stand out for encouraging group activity, which is just perfect. Content by our very own [MENTION=25818]Liane the Wayfarer[/MENTION]!
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars!

Thank you for the kind words!

zoroaster100 · Feb 4, 2016

I am really excited about how much new great content is getting added practically every day to DMs Guild. This week I downloaded a bunch of Pay What You Want and free things and a couple of fixed price things. I will only have time to get to a few more reviews though, as I slowly try to get through all the material.
Here is the first I will highlight which is exactly what I was looking for from this type of product and is Pay What you Want:

Adversaries & Allies, by Dan Layman-Kennedy. Five out of five stars.
It is a 37 page PDF full of combat stats for NPCs similar to those found in the Appendices of the Monster Manual, but filling in many niches not covered by the Monster Manual. For example, it contains clerics, wizards of various schools, sorcerers and warlocks of various power levels, warriors and rogues of various power levels, and other types of NPCs such as fortune teller, entertainer, bard jester, etc. I have not analyzed the stats to make sure everything is correct or that the Challenge rating is accurate, but at first glance through the whole PDF, I am very happy with this product and expect it will get A LOT of use in my games.

ProgBard · Feb 4, 2016

Hey, [MENTION=8538]zoroaster100[/MENTION] - thanks for your kind words! I'm thrilled at the attention and good feedback my little document of NPCs has been getting since I posted it, and I'm glad to hear it's as useful to some folks as I intended it to be. Thanks for picking it up, and even more for taking the time to share your thoughts!