D&D General Ray Winninger on 5e’s success, product cadence, the OGL, and more.

[SlyFlourish]

With that in mind, what kind of profit are writers/designers making the way you outline, forgoing the connection to WotC IP?

The potential is way higher. We can almost exactly calculate the most a product on the DMs Guild can make but the potential for a non-DMs guild product? $20 million?

Who knows what the median is, and its possible the median is higher for the DMs Guild than it is for other platforms. But you're still losing the ability to use that product in all the other ways I mentioned even if the money isn't there – newsletter driver, Patreon product, Kickstarter back catalog product, etc.

 

[TiQuinn]

The potential is way higher. We can almost exactly calculate the most a product on the DMs Guild can make but the potential for a non-DMs guild product? $20 million?

Who knows what the median is, and its possible the median is higher for the DMs Guild than it is for other platforms. But you're still losing the ability to use that product in all the other ways I mentioned even if the money isn't there – newsletter driver, Patreon product, Kickstarter back catalog product, etc.

Absolutely agree. Still, I'm seeing designers do both so there is some sort of calculation being made for when it's worth it to them to design for DMSGuild versus a fully independent product.

 

[WinningerR]

I'm hoping @WinningerR or @SlyFlourish can respond to this, but anyone is welcome ofc.

I'll try.

First, be careful about using the final total raised by a Kickstarter to judge its success; you also have to look at the rewards they're offering. Some Kickstarters juice up their numbers by throwing in custom minis, tchotchkes, additional books, and the like. The number of multi-million dollar Kickstarters that return thin profits (or lose money) might surprise you. (This isn't necessarily a comment on any of the specific Kickstarters you mentioned, just a general caution).

That said, as best as I can determine, the four attributes of 3P D&D products that maximize their commercial appeal are:

Mechanical Content: Players are always hungry for new Subclasses and systems. WotC has good reasons for producing a relatively limited amount of new mechanical content each year, leaving plenty of unmet demand in the market.

High Concept: How quickly can potential buyers understand exactly what you're selling? Ideally, just a single sentence and one or two images tells buyers almost everything they need to know. We like to laugh at Hollywood-style pitches, but they work: Spelljammer is "D&D in space." Curse of Strahd is "D&D vs Dracula," etc.

Broad Usefulness: Every DM can use more monsters and spells. How easily can your content be incorporated into a typical campaign? A non-trivial number of customers who purchase setting books, for instance, have no intention to play in the setting; they're looking for inspiration and mechanical components they can graft into their own campaigns.

Professional Sheen: A lot of 3P content looks amateurish. Quality graphic design doesn't have to be expensive.

I'll again note that, IMO, if you're creating something that doesn't use WotC's IP, you're better off using the OGL or CC than publishing through the DM's Guild. Theoretically, something like the DM's Guild should be visited so often, by so many D&D players, that its expanded audience more than makes up for the extra royalties, but I don't believe that's true at present. Looking ahead, I won't be surprised to see WotC merge D&DB with DM'sG to change that.

 

[mamba]

And my thought is that I know there is some segment of the supplement/adventure buying public that wants stuff they can put directly into their Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, etc campaign, and are not necessarily interested in putting in the work to take something generic and use that instead.

most of the generic stuff can be easily slotted into a WotC setting however.

Unless you create additional content intended for a specific WotC adventure path, I see no real advantage for a FR adventure over a generic one. You can have jungles, icy wastes, extensive caverns, etc. populated with many D&D monsters either way

There are designers who have sold their stuff on multiple platforms including stuff they've written separately for DMsGuild, and based on the dates they were added to the catalog, they were writing for products for both. My assumption is that there has to be some value for these designers to write stuff for the DMsGuild. I don't know if that's a difference between they write early products for DMsGuild for the name recognition, and then migrate away when they can sustain completely independent products under their own banner or what.

I am mostly aware of making a name in DMsG first (or trying it long enough to see that not having to pay WotC 20% is the better option) and then leaving it behind, not aware of anyone doing the opposite

 

[TiQuinn]

most of the generic stuff can be easily slotted into a WotC setting however.

Unless you create additional content intended for a specific WotC adventure path, I see no real advantage for a FR adventure over a generic one. You can have jungles, icy wastes, extensive caverns, etc. populated with many D&D monsters either way

Well, as I said, there's people who don't really care that it's easy to do. For whatever reason, they want the Forgotten Realms or Spelljammer or whatever in the name.

I am mostly aware of making a name in DMsG first (or trying it long enough to see that not having to pay WotC 20% is the better option) and then leaving it behind, not aware of anyone doing the opposite

More like I've seen people doing both simultaneously.

 

[Staffan]

Just as an idle thought, is there any point in doing "loss leader" products on DMsG and use those as advertisements for your main body of work over at DTRPG? As in, "Here's my Caves of Chaos tie-in adventure. If you like that, go that-a-way for more."

 

[DEFCON 1]

If people really wanted generic material, we wouldn't see so many complaints by people on the boards here that settings like Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and Mystera are not yet opened on it.

People want to buy specific IP material, not material with the serial numbers filed off... like it or not. And with exception of a select few... I suspect a relatively new creator will get more eyeballs onto an IP-specific product of theirs through DMs Guild than they would if they just made some generic material on DriveThru or their own personal blog.

Now granted... at the end of the day it ends up being like the gaming equivalent of "being paid in exposure" if you post a lot of your stuff to DMs Guild... but if someone doesn't have much choice in the matter? That's the conundrum-- make more of a name but less of a paycheck through DMs Guild (and hope that can translate to other products outside the sphere later), or publish elsewhere to start and just hope against hope that people will find you. At the end of the day... a person might have to take the Matt Colville route and get their name out there into the D&D ether first (via social media or wherever), and then try and sell material. At least then there's hopefully a built-in audience for at least some of it.

 

[mamba]

If people really wanted generic material, we wouldn't see so many complaints by people on the boards here that settings like Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and Mystera are not yet opened on it.

People want to buy specific IP material

there are a lot of people out there, I would not read too much into it

At the end of the day... a person might have to take the Matt Colville route and get their name out there into the D&D ether first, and then try and sell material.

if you just put stuff out there, not a lot of people will generally come, having some channel to get the word out is always better

Just look at what some YTer KS brings in vs an established game designer without a YT channel

 

[M.T. Black]

What an excellent discussion, and I look forward to listening to the interview when I have a few moments.

There has been a lot of discussion about the DMs Guild. Given my history with the platform, I have thoughts. Mike Shea and I have discussed this endlessly in other forums.

For an aspiring game designer, I think the DMs Guild makes for a good breakfast, an indifferent lunch, and a miserable dinner. That is, it's a good place to make a start, but you need to move on pretty soon. Quite a few people now working fulltime in the industry honed their craft on the DMs Guild in the early days: Justice Arman, James Introcaso, Hannah Rose, Emmet Byrne, Celeste Conowitch, Joe Rasso, Lysa Penrose, come to mind. Countless others have picked up freelance writing gigs with first tier RPG companies.

Mike highlighted two big complaints with the Guild, and I agree they are problems.

The first is the 50% cut, which is very rough. I think it's wrong to compare this to a bricks and mortar store taking 60%, since they are providing things like physical shelf-space. The better comparison is other digital marketplaces (like the Apple app store), which typically take about 30% of the sale. The real reason the cut on the DMs Guild is 50% is because the hosting company (Roll20) takes 30% and WOTC takes 20%. If WOTC open their own marketplace in the future, such as on D&D Beyond or on their long-awaited VTT, I hope and suspect they will take 30%.

The other issue is that your IP is locked onto the DMs Guild perpetually. This became a real problem once the industry shifted to crowdfunding as the main source of income. Everyone understands that you can't take something about Drizzt and publish that elsewhere - obviously! It would be good if there were more flexibility to use non-WOTC IP that you may have published there. For example, in a hypothetical book "Drizzt's Guide to the Underdark", you might have created a dozen new spells which have no relation to WOTC exclusive IP. But I understand the tightrope this would require from a legal perspective.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Just as an idle thought, is there any point in doing "loss leader" products on DMsG and use those as advertisements for your main body of work over at DTRPG? As in, "Here's my Caves of Chaos tie-in adventure. If you like that, go that-a-way for more."

I don't know of anyone who's tried it, but I eventually intend to do something like that, probably something simple but useful for Heroes of the Borderlands.