WotC No new DMs Guild Adept titles since mid-December?

[Jaspor]

Depressing numbers for both sides of the fence, honestly. A 92% chance of fewer than 500 people reading what you've written is grim.

Obviously, industries vary, as do motivations for publishing.

I participated in the RPG Workshop last year and will be finally cranking out a module this year (2020 was crazy, as it was for a lot of folks). But that's mostly just to check a box and say "I did it."

As Burnside said earlier in the thread, DMs Guild is very saturated. Also throw in the fact that production value has gone WAY up across the board there (it's not unusual for creators to have budgets in the hundreds of dollars, maybe even approaching 4 figures), it makes it hard to make a splash and get attention. But you also hit a separate important note. Some people do it just to say they did it, some people are happy to be able to publish things from their own brains or home campaigns to the public, and some people are happy if just a single other person reads their stuff. From a, "Hey, I want to publish something amazing and professional looking and reach a wide audience and make decent money," point of view, those numbers are depressing. But not everybody putting stuff out has that as their goal.

 

[darjr]

Here is his initial post. He talks about the arms race and the IP ownership and also more robust tools. The tools part seems odd? Why not give that to DMsGuild authors?

A Publishing Experiment — M.T. Black Games

A change of publishing direction

www.mtblackgames.com

 

[Jaspor]

M.T. Black is not going to be your typical creator making the jump from DMs Guild to DTRPG. He was one of the first regular contributors on DMs Guild, has been a Guild Adept since the program was introduced, has written on official D&D hardcovers, has a popular blog, and has almost 20k followers on Twitter. It's going to take that kind of history and following to successfully switch over.

 

[darjr]

M.T. Black is not going to be your typical creator

Absolutely agree, however I’d still be interested in his insight and maybe he could spill a little light on the topic of the thread.

 

[Burnside]

Here is his initial post. He talks about the arms race and the IP ownership and also more robust tools. The tools part seems odd? Why not give that to DMsGuild authors?

A Publishing Experiment — M.T. Black Games

A change of publishing direction

www.mtblackgames.com

Because WotC has to get a cut of everything you publish to DMsGuild, and anything you publish on DMsGuild has to be exclusive to DMsGuild. So you can't give your product to backers in exchange for their funding, because how would WotC get a cut of that?

 

[darjr]

Because WotC has to get a cut of everything you publish to DMsGuild, and anything you publish on DMsGuild has to be exclusive to DMsGuild. So you can't give your product to backers in exchange for their funding, because how would WotC get a cut of that?

Yes, and it’s in his blog.
Or is this in answer to the tools question? Cause if so it still doesn’t make sense. The tools access in no way substantially changes the economics.

 

[Burnside]

Yes, and it’s in his blog.
Or is this in answer to the tools question? Cause if so it still doesn’t make sense. The tools access in no way substantially changes the economics.

Sorry, I was confused. I thought that by "tools" you meant third party fundraising tools. You mean the communications and analytics tools available on DriveThru but not DMsGuild; I think the reason is purely technical. When you put products on DriveThru, you the creator are considered the publisher and given access to the site's suite of "publisher tools." But when you put something on DMsGuild, you are NOT the publisher - WotC is the publisher for EVERY product on DMsGuild, so only WotC has access to those tools on that site.

 

[Weiley31]

Shame not much has been happening: when it comes to material that isn't released in an official DND book, I considered the Adept content to be at least considered "official" material. Currently at the moment, the only one I really want is the Tavern one that expands on running a Tavern.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Depressing numbers for both sides of the fence, honestly. A 92% chance of fewer than 500 people reading what you've written is grim.

Obviously, industries vary, as do motivations for publishing.

I participated in the RPG Workshop last year and will be finally cranking out a module this year (2020 was crazy, as it was for a lot of folks). But that's mostly just to check a box and say "I did it."

Wow, that few? On one level that's kind of shocking, but then I look at my friends who play/run RPGs, and I think I'm the only one who regularly gets stuff from DTRPG. The others still tend to either go for physical books or stuff from Kickstarter - the latter always seems a little worrying to me because in a lot of cases there doesn't seem to be any easy way to find out it even exists, let alone get it if you missed the original KS.

 

[Alzrius]

I've been told a couple of times by DTRPG staff that DMsG sellers sell more than regular DTRPG publishers on the platform.

Can you expound more on this? Is that an average figure, an aggregate of total sales on one platform versus the other, or something else? Does it take into account that (insofar as I know) all products on the DMs Guild can be found on DriveThruRPG, but the reverse isn't true? Given that there's surely a broad range of sales for companies/individuals on both platforms, I'm very curious about how this breaks down.