DM's Guild: One Week In - The Best & The Worst

The Dungeon Master's Guild has been around for about a week now, and in that time nearly 500 player-created products have been uploaded to the website. It can't be denied that the thing is spurring a blast of creativity. Anyhow, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the most popular items on offer, as well as the highest rated items, which include new archetypes, an Epic Level Handbook, some Forgotten Realms background material, and various monsters and feats.

UPDATE: Three of the items listed below have been removed from the store. I've noted them accordingly.

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[h=4]Most Popular Items[/h]
The ten most popular items are as follows. I've listed the price in the last column, and where an item is Pay What You Want (PWYW), I've noted the average contribution. I've no idea what the actual sales figures of these items are, but it's interesting that the first two by Matthew Mercer have 40+ ratings, while the third drops to 7 ratings. Of course, Mercer's work was on there from launch.

1	Gunslinger Martial Archetype for Fighters	Matthew Mercer	PWYW ($1.64)
2	Blood Hunter Class	Matthew Mercer	PWYW ($1.57)
3	Extra Feats (5E)	Igor PhoenixRion	$1
4	DnD 5e Epic Level Handbook [since removed]	Gerard Shore, Mark Altfuldisch	PWYW ($1.63)
5	Blood Magic (5E)	Joshua Raynack	PWYW ($1.25)
6	New Feats	Andrew James Woodyard	$1
7	D&D Denizens: Drow & Driders	Scott Holden	$0.99
8	Swordmage Class	Juan Marcano	$0.99
9	D&D Citizens	Scott Holden	$2.95
10	D&D 5th Edition Spell Cards [since removed]	Matthew Perkins	PWYW ($2.30)

[h=4]Highest Rated Items[/h]
For highest rated items, I have not included items with fewer than 5 ratings. Most items only have 1-2 ratings, so that took some pecking and hunting!

1	The Food Fight - An Acquisitions Incorporated Sidetrek [since removed]	Daniel Sweatman
2	3 for 1$ DiBastests's Archetypes #04 - Druid	Diego Bastet
3	Troll Trouble	Gary Whicker
4	15 New Backgrounds - World Builder Blog Presents	James Introcaso
5	Adventure Template For OpenOffice/LibreOffice	Dale Robbins
6	Catastrophic Dragons - World Builder Blog Presents	James Introcaso
7	Gunslinger Martial Archetype for Fighters	Matthew Mercer
8	Kobold Triggerer - Fifth Edition Monsters #01	Igor Moreno
9	Races Revived: Slythe	Dylan Serra
10	The High History of Impiltur	George Krashos

[h=4]Lowest Rated Items[/h]
It'd be a bit mean to highlight the less well thought of items on the site (so I guess I lied a bit in the article title), but talking in general terms there are 10 1-star items there, and 33 2-star items. That's not too bad out of a selection of nearly 500 products, and implies that the quality on DM's Guild is reasonable. I count 171 items with more than 3-stars, which - when you consider that a lot have not been rated at all - puts the average item above average in quality.

One of WotC's stated aims for DMsG was to spot upcoming new writers. From the above lists, James Introcaso has two items in the top-10 rated list. I'm already aware of him from the excellent Round Table podcast, as well as some of the 5E articles he's written for EN5ider. Scott Holden has two of the most popular items on DMsG, and so could be worth following.

 

[jamesjhaeck]

I'm releasing a big adventure (50+ pages) on DMs Guild within the next two weeks, and the cost of it is a little daunting. I'm resigned to not making money off of it... and that's okay for right now. It's the biggest single project I've ever been involved in—EN5ider notwithstanding—and I want my first foot forward to be my best foot forward.

 

[Sir Brennen]

To be frank, I love seeing PWYW items in the shop. Creator-owned content is ALWAYS a crapshoot[...]

Yeah, due to the nature of this being a mix of inexperienced fan material to products from professional game designers and everywhere between, it's hard to shell out money for something that might be total crap and unusable. So far the PWYW products I've gotten I've been fairly confident would be worth while due to their reviews/discussion, well-done product description in the store, or from an author I've already purchased from and liked. Fortunately, the only item so far I gave a one star review to was free.

But if I wanted to be more adventurous in checking out PWYW products, is there a way to go back and throw money at the author later if I really like his stuff? (PWYWL?)

 

[JeffB]

I don't think the average person would be interested in wading through hundreds of mediocre to poor products looking for the handful of gems. I hope the rating system begins to work better as time passes. I routinely pay nothing for pay what you want products. If the publisher can't put a value on it, I won't.

I'm one who is not willing to wade through. It helps that so far almost all the Guild content is player crunch I have less than zero interest in. I hope there will be more DM type content.

I tend to be the kind of customer on Drive thru who will download a pwyw product for free first, and see if it something is worth a buck or two for, and if so, I purchased again. I imagine that would be commonplace.

Fwiw, the one Guild product I downloaded I didn't feel was worth a buck or two. So far this has been deja vu of 3.0. Lots of meh (to put it nicely). I also hope the rating system will "kick in" and help sifting through things.

 

[dave2008]

What I find really interesting though is that a lot of the popular PWYW items have high quality artwork. That's kind of suspicious.

I could be wrong, but I would guess (or hope) they are using the free art provided by WotC through the DM's Guild. I know this was the route the Epic Handbook used.

Unless your an artist, art is expensive (as it should be imho). I am making a little 7 creature monster collection and the quotes I got for the art (7 pieces) ranged from $500 - $3,500. I'm going with the $500 artist, but it is unlikely as a first time publisher I will ever make that back.

 

[warfteiner]

But if I wanted to be more adventurous in checking out PWYW products, is there a way to go back and throw money at the author later if I really like his stuff? (PWYWL?)

Yes, you can go back to the item listing and submit your desired payment later on.

 

[timbannock]

What I find really interesting though is that a lot of the popular PWYW items have high quality artwork. That's kind of suspicious.

I found an artist willing to do some work especially cheap -- I mean CHEAP!!! -- and I fully expect to *still* make no money off the product. But here's the thing: I too am new to publishing, so I'm happy to offer the first few things PWYW and an upcoming adventure for a couple bucks even though it'll cost a lot of bucks to make, because it's all practice to me, and it gets my name out there.

At some point, if I want to make money off of this, I will...immediately stop doing this and get a real job ;-P #kiddingnotkidding. Gaming is a hobby, not a money farm, so PWYW and putting decent artwork into a product are really just a way of getting this stuff that I hope is cool out front of some people's faces. If they think it's cool, too, they can vote with their wallet, but honestly, I don't care about the money.

 

[timbannock]

Yes, you can go back to the item listing and submit your desired payment later on.

And as someone who's done exactly that, let me tell you that the content creators really appreciate it.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Can't see the spell cards there- maybe taken down due to conflict with printed ones?

 

[Reynard]

I could be wrong, but I would guess (or hope) they are using the free art provided by WotC through the DM's Guild. I know this was the route the Epic Handbook used.

Unless your an artist, art is expensive (as it should be imho). I am making a little 7 creature monster collection and the quotes I got for the art (7 pieces) ranged from $500 - $3,500. I'm going with the $500 artist, but it is unlikely as a first time publisher I will ever make that back.

Commissioned art is very expensive. There is tons of high quality, inexpensive royalty-free artwork on DTRPG.

 

[Awesome Adam]

If you shop around long enough on www.fiverr.com you'll find someone willing to draw what you want for $5.

Often royalty free, but you should make sure first. Sometimes they'll want an additional fee. I've seen as low as $10-$40.