WotC Names 10 "Adepts" On Their DMs Guild Store

LordEntrails · Aug 9, 2017

Peter Saumur said:
This. I know Paizo regularly cultivates new talent via their RPG Superstar series. Was hoping Adept was that but it ends up being people who are already doing well...?

So it seems. But maybe that is ok? It is the first group after all and it is important that they get the a group that actually delivers on time and with quality. I think they've missed their community cooperation goal they stated, but we will have to see how this project develops.

Von Ether · Aug 9, 2017

Peter Saumur said:
This. I know Paizo regularly cultivates new talent via their RPG Superstar series. Was hoping Adept was that but it ends up being people who are already doing well...?

Chatting with one of the guys who sells on DMG, it turns out that even if you are doing well, it's hard to stand out in the sheer volume of work being produced. You might see your PDF on the "New Releases" for a day and then it's gone.

As a Cypher creator, I'm more interested to see if other companies will follow this Guild example. Five companies started when DTRPG opened the program up and now it's eight.

Enevhar Aldarion · Aug 9, 2017

Peter Saumur said:
This. I know Paizo regularly cultivates new talent via their RPG Superstar series. Was hoping Adept was that but it ends up being people who are already doing well...?

For this one it is already known people, and probably the next batch in about six months will be too, just because of the short lead time. But everyone else is now on notice about this and has about a year to put in the hard work and get the sales needed to make the third or fourth batch or Adepts.

Jester David · Aug 9, 2017

Peter Saumur said:
This. I know Paizo regularly cultivates new talent via their RPG Superstar series. Was hoping Adept was that but it ends up being people who are already doing well...?

I'm with [MENTION=6804070]LordEntrails[/MENTION] that this would work well as a two step process.
The first step is get the program and the icon recognized. Raise awareness. And focusing on people who can spread the world - such as via Organized Play, podcasts, and the Maze Arcana stream(s). Then, for the following Storyline, they can do a greater mix of DMsGuild others and other creatives...

Von Ether said:
As a Cypher creator, I'm more interested to see if other companies will follow this Guild example. Five companies started when DTRPG opened the program up and now it's eight.

Vampire is the big one IMHO. A few others have opened their rules (Cortex) but that's little more than an OGL. Cypher picked an odd setting, not going with a central one. 7th Sea seems to be the only one letting their core setting be open.

I wouldn't mind more settings and rules being open. I spent much of July designing homebrew for Star Trek Adventures and just giving it away, earning nothing but praise and the thanks of my fellow gamers. Pfft. Like I can spend that on minis.

doctorhook · Aug 9, 2017

Dire Bare said:
It is. As others have mentioned, it's a stage name she chose when working in the adult industry after a career in programming. I wouldn't say it's obvious, however. As a teacher, I come across some names that stray far from traditional naming conventions. If a kid entered my classroom with the name Satine Phoenix, I wouldn't bat an eye.

Besides, it's a pretty damn cool pseudonym, and I'm not surprised she's essentially adopted it as her nom de guerre, or name of choice. She IS Satine, it's become more than just a pseudonym or stage name. Anyway, IMO, she's pretty cool beans and I'm happy to see her on the list of DM's Guild Adepts.

Huh, no kidding. Jester David replied to me first, but I legit thought "it's her stripper/porn name" was a joke until this conversation turned decidedly unfunny. Not sure what I expected, but it wasn't that.

Anyway, I don't think I really care about Satine's career, so that's moot to me; I can think of a few semi-notorious writers whose behaviour has turned me off of their work, but I'm not feeling that in this case. Will I read her stuff? To be honest, I've been pretty cold to 3PP stuff in the past, but I've warmed over the years. Recommendations are helpful to me, so if WotC is giving these "Adepts" a stamp of approval, then yeah, there's a better than average chance that I'll consider it.

doctorhook · Aug 9, 2017

Just popped by the DMs Guild and discovered something cool that I'm considering purchasing, when I recognized the author's name from this very thread. [MENTION=17913]neuronphaser[/MENTION], are you the same one behind Old School Hacks?

Kite474 · Aug 9, 2017

So this is all really cool!

Thought is it slightly odd to anyone else that for most of the adepts their bodies of work are surprisingly small? I know that Quality comes first but it still feels like they dont have much to show for their work.

Though from what I am getting they are very big community members, not just publishers so that might have something to do with that.

M.T. Black · Aug 9, 2017

I'm really pleased with this program. I'm familiar with most of the Adepts chosen in the first round, and I'm genuinely excited to see what they come up with!

I think it makes good sense for WOTC to start off with a group of people who are well known beyond the Guild itself - that is certainly a way to grow the audience. In fact, when the Guild first launched, it did so with a couple of titles from Matt Mercer, so there is a good precedent there. Some folk may have forgotten that.

Overall, another smart move from WOTC. The company is certainly making a lot of good strategic calls since 5e came out. I was amazed to hear that D&D sales were up by 50% over the previous years sales. Long may it continue!

Eminence_Grise · Aug 9, 2017

I don't understand the intent behind this or how it benefits either Wizards or the Community. I would probably prefer some kind of spotlight on new talents.

DEFCON 1 · Aug 9, 2017

Eminence_Grise said:
I don't understand the intent behind this or how it benefits either Wizards or the Community. I would probably prefer some kind of spotlight on new talents.

That's all well and good... but the next question you'd need to ask is 'What processes are we going to use to determine who is a "new talent" and what do they have to do to be worthy of selection in this program?' Because at some point, if they have done enough stuff to be worthy of getting this stamp... doesn't that mean there's a good chance they aren't a "new talent" after all?

Are the writers who are used for a lot of the convention-used Adventurers League modules "new talent"? I mean, they've done enough good work in the past to warrant getting hired to write these adventures and thus have the skills and success to be considered worthy of this Adept program and many certainly aren't so well known that I wouldn't recognize their names if you paid me... but if they're already at this point where's they've been hired by AL/WotC, can we call them "new talent"?

Likewise... the writers who have multiple Platinum sellers on DMs Guild. That would seem to indicate they have produced the type of quality worthy of given the Adept shout-out... but if we already know they are Platinum sellers, are they also considered the "new talent" you think needs a further push?

How exactly do we come to this conclusion? Someone who is "new talent" and thus needs the highlight of being put in this Adept program... but also has done enough stuff to make they worthy of receiving this badge in the first place? I can't speak for anyone else... but if someone lucked out and wrote a single DMs Guild item that hit Platinum (when they other three or four things they wrote didn't even hit Copper), I wouldn't want them set up as this "new talent" of the DMs Guild worthy of they time and effort WotC would put forth pushing them as an Adept. Yeah, sure, they'd certainly fall under the category of "new" (cause they'd done nothing of note prior to that one lucky article)... but I don't see them necessarily being an actual "talent" yet.

We really can't have it both ways. We can't desire complete unknowns spotlighted just because they are new faces to the DMs Guild / Adventurers League audience while at the same time wanting to promote people who do quality work on a consistent basis that make them actually worthy of that promotion. We have to lean in one of those two directions... and I think leaning towards the people who have done good work consistently in the community over the past several years even if we recognize their names already from their past accomplishments is a much better way to promote DMs Guild and the community in general than just randomly choosing someone with like two credits, one of which happened to hit-- all because they were "new!"