D&D 5E Free5e on Kickstarter

[Morrus]

I think they may be going on the axiom "free as in free speech, not free beer".

No, the game is free. As in you don’t have to buy it. That’s why it’s not one of the Kickstarter rewards.

 

[WyrmworksDale]

Hi everyone. Thanks, Mike, for posting this here. (You all need to know what a fantastic person Mike is. This project couldn't have happened without both his CC-BY contributions and his advice throughout this process. And Morrus, I echo Mike's thanks to you for making much of A5E available for this. I'll be singing your praises loud and long to everyone.) Also, a big thanks to those who chose to support this.

I think the questions have been answered here, but just to clarify:

• Free5e is a play on words, because it's both free as in free to roam and free as in beer — the digital end and the physical as much as possible (The PoD will be avasilable at cost, and we've been working hard to keep even that as low as possible by using B/W artwork and keeping page counts as low as we can while still keeping it accessible, rewriting a lot to reduce the word count by making the language more efficient while still clear, and creating and using content that provides the best value, like the template system in A5E, which we expanded.
• As noted, there will be no discount codes for the PoD, because we can't dicount something that's already at-cost. That said, we'll do whatever we can to give backers some kind of benefit when it comes to the PoD, like early access or a printer who's cheaper than DriveThru. Still working on that, and it will depend on the final numbers for the campaign. But yeah, if you have a cheaper way to print it, you can do that.
• Yes, most of it already CC-BY, but we've spent a lot of time organizing and sorting it to make it playable in the sense that SRDs are really designed for designers, not players. Yes, you can use them as-is, but there's a reason people buy books or illustrated PDFs — the experience is better. We want to give that experience to those who can't afford other books. (e.g. The kids at the local library where I volunteer GM can't afford the books. They share the library's collection. This will allow them to own their own.)
• There's a lot of new content: a whole bunch of artwork, including the 3 full-color covers. We've also added original content throughout and reworked existing content — we wanted those who bring a Free5e book to the table to be able to bring something new. And all of that art will also be CC-BY so other developers can use it for their products.
• It's mentioned in the Campaign FAQ, but 5e is sort of free already, but sort of not. Although A5e.tools is pretty fantastic as a free option for those with reliable internet. We didn't want people to feel like they have to settle for Temu5e because of finances.

I'm happy to answer any other questions.

 

[WyrmworksDale]

And…because you requested it, we just found a way to give a discount code to backers off of the at-cost price. (Currently US-only, but we're working on global options.) Yes, that sounds like an oxymoron, but it's explained in the link.

(OK, not actually because you requested it. We've been working on this ever since DriveThru announced the price hikes. But you can back at any level and save roughly $3 per book.)

 

[WyrmworksDale]

And…we figured it out. We will have PoD discounts for all other backers, too. (We estimate that non-US backers will save about £5 per book.) Available to all tiers.

 

[rhythmsoundmotion]

So close!!!