D&D 5E One Year of DM's Guild

LordEntrails · Jan 2, 2017

CapnZapp said:
I specifically suggested filtering on number of replies.

Merely filtering away threads with no replies (only the auto post) would go a long way.

The huge advantage is if you or I want to make a "comment", it would instantly rise to the top.

The reason people aren't commenting isn't because they're laze or ungrateful, it's because nobody will ever see their comment if the rest of us must 1) visit DMs Guild 2) happen upon the exact same product page.

Besides, DMs Guide isn't interested. For one thing, they don't want the hassle of a discussion board (which needs moderation etc).

My reply about nobody commenting was not about the DMsG comments, but the fact that the posts here on ENWorld about products get no replies or comments. Look at the latest DMsG product post htat was created on Dec 20th (Homeward Bound), it has ZERO replies and only 158 views.

So, my point is simply, why create threads here on ENWorld if no one is going to use them anyway?

ArwensDaughter · Jan 2, 2017

For those who say they would review but aren't good at it/don't know how, heres a simple structure for a review:

One sentence intro/general feeling about the product

Things I liked/pros
-thing 1
-thing 2
etc.

Things I didn't like/cons
-thing 1
-thing 2
etc.

[optional] concluding sentence (perhaps about value for money, usefulness)

That's the basic structure when I review, and it's what i'm looking for as a consumer when I read reviews. And the hope is that kind of feedback is helpful for the author/creator as well.

I've tried to review products I've purchased from DMsG that I've actually used. (Some pay-what-you want stuff I've purchased cheap and saved for future use and haven't used enough). The reminders on the enworld forums of the importance of reviews has encouraged me to do so.

I can echo the helpfulness of story-line related items, even though I haven't purchased any yet. Ravensloft as a setting is not to my taste, nor that of most of my primary group (hubby and kids), and we're still making our way out of LMOP. (The joys of family schedules!) But if we ever get to the point of doing another official storyline, I'll definitely be looking on DMsG for related products--especially in the "aid" and "DM kit" category, although additional encounters/adventures would be good, too.

So far most of my purchases have fallen into 2 categories: Adventures--usually oneshots or serial modules for the secondary games I run (me & kids only, me & kids & some combo of friends/cousins) and DM aids (wilderness encounters, inn descriptions, crafting rules, etc.) Aside from adventures, the single most useful item I've bought there has been spell charts, which is more of a player resource, I suppose.

Personally, I'm not interested in more player options. Our family has just touched the surface of the "official" options and don't feel the need to explore more. (And my son--who is the most passionate D&D person among us--is oddly resistant to 3rd party play options) The exception to this is the crafting rules, as in one of our games my daughter plays a character with an herbalism background and she wants to really make use of that.

But, that's just me. And that is the challenge of the market: there's a nearly infinite variety of what people want/need/are looking for from DMsG products. What is of great interest to me may be of little interest to most DMsG shoppers.

LordEntrails · Jan 2, 2017

Remathilis said:
I find the DMsG for me (as a buyer) has been hit-or-miss. I find its good when, Like IaaB said, it ties into the AP or storyline OR covers something in greater detail that WotC would (for example, Monsters of Ravenloft). That said, there is a lot of chaff product and its hard to always find the wheat.

...

I know you're not complaining, so I'm not trying to pick on you, I ask this in a general sense.

Have you rated and or reviewed any of the products you've gotten? Are you (as in the buyers) actually helping each other out or do you buy, read and then leave the next guy to have the same wonders you do?

If you/we want to sort the chaff from the wheat, the good from the bad, then the buyers (us) have to actually take the 30 seconds to go back and rate and review the products that we've bought.

You do know there is even a place on your account where you can go to rate all the products you've bought or downloaded right? Just go to Account link on the top right and then All Products Awaiting My Review.

guachi · Jan 2, 2017

Reviews aren't really the problem for me. The problem I have is effectively filtering the content. DMs Guild needs to add tags, or something, to the content so I can filter it to see something of interest to me and then I need to be able to sort it somehow.

I should be able to sort it by number of reviews or ratings (and this is where reviews become important, after I've filtered), or sort by sales rank, or sort by newest/oldest, or sort by price, or sort by author. You can sort of filter things, but not as effectively as i'd like. Or maybe it's that the filter results are in horizontal blocks and it's not user friendly.

In any event, I don't find the filtering and sorting functions to work in a manner I fine usable so I've bought nothing from DMs Guild. And I'm a person who has purchased 34 PDFs of old products from dndclassics/rpgnow.

Remathilis · Jan 2, 2017

LordEntrails said:
I know you're not complaining, so I'm not trying to pick on you, I ask this in a general sense.

Its okay. I'll answer it in a fairly constructive way.

No, the half-dozen DMsGuild Products I bought, I haven't reviewed. The reason is that for the vast majority of them, I haven't read them thoroughly enough to warrant a thoughtful review. I don't know of the modules are fun or balanced, I couldn't tell you if the new monsters are appropriate challenges for their CR, or if the new PC mechanics are appropriate. For example, I bought the Summoner class on DMsG. I looked at the class, but I can't tell you if the mechanics are strong, weak, broken, or if it even works in play. In short, I couldn't tell you if the damn thing does what its supposed to until someone plays it, and right now nobody in my group is willing to guinea pig it to do so.

I wager at some point, a few of the modules might get run (when I get PCs that are appropriate level again), or someone might want an obscure option not in any of WotC's offerings so far, but even the scant bit of material I've bought hasn't seen enough use for me warrant an opinion on it beyond "well, it doesn't look hideously broken on first glance."

I'm A Banana · Jan 2, 2017

On the topic of not using things, it's interesting. On many threads about how "anemic" or "slow" WotC's output is, I often point out that an individual table doesn't use more than half the stuff they put out. It's likely true that a lot of people who buy X, Y, or Z on the DM's Guild don't use them in actual games all that often (I'm sure there are counter-cases). I don't know if there's ~30 tables out there currently using the Shardminds from my Astral Races doc. I'd presume not. I'd be a little surprised to find that there were 10!

This also points to the value of compilations (and why WotC might not be enthusiastic about the splatbook model these days): more things, a broader audience, more likely for some small aspect of it to find use.

Of course, the counter-point goes that if you're just interested in one background, buying the other 7 won't do you much good....

Which is part of why I'm planning on a two-pronged approach in 2017. Small, individual products compiled into big collections.

Overall, as a producer, the no reviews/comments thing is notable, but it's not exactly a problem. If people want to buy my stuff and add it to their collection and experiment with it at their tables and don't care to tell me if it's any good, well, that's fine.

The nut I'd like to crack is just how to send more people over to DM's Guild more often to take a look at what's there. The WotC adventures seem to be the main drivers at the moment, which is solid, but infrequent. I might consider in 2017 making sure that any product that isn't specific to WotC IP or an adventure line goes into the "Submission to EN5IDER" category, which has a robust audience invested in the product and pays better to boot.

FormerlyHemlock · Jan 2, 2017

MerricB said:
You can go back and pay later.

But it's SUCH A HASSLE to do so that I always just pay up-front instead, grumbling to myself all the while that DMs Guild is doing it wrong.

Instead, they should give you a real Preview option (see as much of the product as you want in your web browser) and then pay-what-you-want to actually download it.

FormerlyHemlock · Jan 2, 2017

LordEntrails said:
I know you're not complaining, so I'm not trying to pick on you, I ask this in a general sense.

Have you rated and or reviewed any of the products you've gotten? Are you (as in the buyers) actually helping each other out or do you buy, read and then leave the next guy to have the same wonders you do?

I have rated and reviewed the products I've bought; but I find that lack of reviews isn't really my problem with DMs Guild anyway. My issues with DMs Guild are twofold:

(1) The horrible UI gives me a headache and discourages me from interacting with it;

(2) Low signal-to-noise ratio.

#2 is exacerbated by the horrible UI in #1. Even taking a peek at a product that looks potentially interesting involves going to multiple screens to download it (unless the product happens to have good previews).

In theory I can imagine finding useful and interesting materials on DMsGuild, something like this (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ages-of-Monster-Ecology-Lore-and-DM-Resources). In practice, nothing useful that I've found on the Internet has come from DMsGuild. [shrug] I don't know if that's because Google has a better search function, or because people that put lots of work into a quality product like the Monster Ecology thing (or even a quality small article) are more likely to release them on other mediums like blogs and rpgnow. (I have bought compilations of certain blogs off of rpgnow--I'm not at all averse to paying for quality content. It just happens not to be available on DMsGuild.)

Ancalagon · Jan 2, 2017

I have to admit I've been burned a few times by products that looked promising but turned to be deeply flawed :/

The glut of material also has discouraged me from turning a very deeply researched campaign into anything more than nice memories between me and my friends. Even if I took the time to polish it up (it would be a considerable effort) and publish it... so what? It would be lost in the noise.

LordEntrails · Jan 2, 2017

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION], [MENTION=50658]Rem[/MENTION]athils, [MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION],
I don't disagree with what any of you said. The UI and search capabilities are sorely lacking. Coming from a PDM database world, to me, any metadata that is there should be configurable for a search.

I don't know if it will help, or just get lost in the noise of another blog, but I have been toying with this idea for some months now, and decided to go ahead and start a blog and do my own product reviews. I've decided to just focus on products released in a Fantasy Grounds VTT format, as I felt trying to review any and everything was too broad.

For anyone interested, http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/entry.php?232-Virtual-Scribe-Reviews