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.

 

[Acr0ssTh3P0nd]

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

It's at times like this that I thank my lucky stars that I can do my own art. Yeah, it's even more work, but at least I don't have pay myself.

As for sharing, I've got one PWYW product that's made 74 sales so far and pulled in $86.50 USD over the last week and a half (so $43.25 for me - almost enough to replace my Xbox's power supply!), and is actually floating around the mid-to-high twenties on Hottest DM's Guild content, which is both surprising (since it's my first-ever semi-professional release and contains almost no mechanical crunch) and rewarding (coz I put in a tonne of effort with making it look purty and read good-like).

I have no illusions about being able to make any truly significant amount of money from the DM's Guild right now, what with university coursework, but it's nice to have a platform where I feel challenged to improve my writing and artwork in order to stand out.

 

[Miladoon]

That paragraph is kinda hard to parse. Are you saying you know of such syndicates? Who are deliberately downrating other products?

I edited my post.

No, I do not have that kind of evidence. I am predicting that there will be some people staking claims to portions of FR and there is a possibility of rating hits happening to keep people from getting too close to their honey hole.

 

[Morrus]

I edited my post.

No, I do not have that kind of evidence. I am predicting that there will be some people staking claims to portions of FR and there is a possibility of rating hits happening to keep people from getting too close to their honey hole.

Yes, I know you were predicting that. I was asking why you were predicting it, not asking you to repeat your prediction. I'm interested in your reasoning. I already know your conclusion.

 

[Sacrosanct]

One thing I'm still trying to figure out is all the complaints about lack of adventures on DMs Guild. Folks know that DTRPG/RPGNow exists, right? There are tons of adventures there, many 5e SRD compatible.

 

[Morrus]

One thing I'm still trying to figure out is all the complaints about lack of adventures on DMs Guild. Folks know that DTRPG/RPGNow exists, right? There are tons of adventures there, many 5e SRD compatible.

I think the marketing has the potential to make 5E stuff on DTRPG a little-known secret. I've already noticed a drop in sales. I hope not, especially if OBS is one of the architects of that marketing.

OBS is poised at the position where they hoover up all homebrew stuff on the Internet and then works with larger corporations on rules for that material. I'm a little concerned about the overall centralisation aspects. I hope it works out OK. I might put a piece up there to see what it's like.

 

[Miladoon]

Reason 1 - Less Lebensraum - a historical proven aggressive model.

Reason 2 - Community Content Agreement - Two authors, A and B, share work but A makes claim that B has come too close to A's work. OBS finds for B and A writes a poor rating on B's work establishing A's own justice.

Enter A's 30 friends.

Has it happened in 16 years, maybe not. But now is the 17th year.

 

[Morrus]

Reason 1 - Less Lebensraum - a historical proven aggressive model.

Reason 2 - Community Content Agreement - Two authors, A and B, share work but A makes claim that B has come too close to A's work. OBS finds for B and A writes a poor rating on B's work establishing A's own justice.

Enter A's 30 friends.

Has it happened in 16 years, maybe not. But now is the 17th year.

No, you're just repeating the prediction again. I know what your prediction is. I understand what your prediction is. You don't need to repeat it.

It's the working I'm curious about, not the answer. You've told me the answer three times now.

 

[Miladoon]

Good, you now have less chance of forgetting the prediction when it starts to happen.

or,

I obviously don't know what you are asking me to say to you.

 

[Morrus]

Good, you now have less chance of forgetting the prediction when it starts to happen.

or,

I obviously don't know what you are asking me to say to you.

I'm asking you to stop describing what you think is going to happen suddenly after 16 years, and explain why you think it's going to happen suddenly after 16 years. What, in your mind, has changed to create this new behaviour in our little industry? The best explanation you've given so far is "focused content", which explains nothing at all, any more than "blue logo" or "new font" does.

I'm not disagreeing with you (or agreeing with you). I'm just curious what the reasoning behind this fairly strong assertion are, given that we've not seen this behaviour in the same storefronts up until now.

 

[Reynard]

It reads to me that Miladoon is suggesting that it is the presence of the Realms as a workspace that might be the cause of this new behavior. In other words, in order to protect their interest in one particular corner of the Realms from interloping fellow pro-am designers, some might be motivated to down vote any other who create products that touch their "turf."
[MENTION=6801438]Miladoon[/MENTION] can correct me if I am wrong.

Also, for the record, I don't see it happening. I don't think we will see the kind of community cooperation necessary for such a conspiracy.