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

[aco175]

Has Wizards/Hasbro added anything in terms of support since the site started? I'm talking in terms of layout, art, cover design, or anything like this that would assist people writing. I have not seen it, but checking if anyone else has and if you think that they have some sort of responsibility to add something.

 

[Greg Benage]

I agree it isn't the easiest site to use, but I'm glad it's there. I've purchased a few products -- a handful of adventures and some monster supplements. These have value because they save me time as a DM, and as long as they're generally well executed, they're easy for me to tweak. I mostly rely on Merric's reviews.

I'm not interested in any player-option homebrew, and I'm certainly not interested in paying for it.

 

[akr71]

I understand the value of the review, cuz I use them when I make purchases (DM's Guild or elsewhere). I have purchased a few Guild items, download a few more freebies. I have only reviewed those items that I have actually used and can offer something meaningful on. Its harder for adventures as I only have so many hours in the day for leisure reading and even then, I would like to play it before really reviewing it.

So, I'm heading over to the DM's Guild right now and update a few reviews...

 

[Jester David]

[MENTION=21556]Jester[/MENTION]David

Sorry, I accidentally pressed the laugh button.

I was a little confused, trying to find my joke....

 

[Jester David]

Has Wizards/Hasbro added anything in terms of support since the site started? I'm talking in terms of layout, art, cover design, or anything like this that would assist people writing. I have not seen it, but checking if anyone else has and if you think that they have some sort of responsibility to add something.

Hasbro isn't involved. They own WotC and take its profits but they're separate companies.

They added monster art packs. This art from 3e/4e and has an assortment of monsters.
But other than that, no. They're not sinking much resources into this. It's meant to make money, not cost money.

 

[jayoungr]

I started with Frozen Throne, it's kind of a DLC for tyranny of dragons. It was one of the best things I have run in my entire life. That is a great example of short adventure.

Psst, just in case someone reads this and gets inspired to check it out, it's actually called The Frozen Castle.

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/172527/Frozen-Castle--Expanding-Tyranny-of-Dragons

And there's a thread discussing it here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Into-The-Frozen-Castle-With-Kobold-Publishing

 

[guachi]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the UI frustrating. If you know what you want, the site isn't bad.

But when I buy online, I rate usability very highly on my list to determine whether I'll ever go back to your website.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think its ironic that, effectively, WotC gave the fans the keys to produce whatever content they felt they weren't but we wanted. And with this newfound freedom, we IMMEDIATELY fell into the same products that glutted the d20 market in 2001; PC options, new monsters, and low-level adventures.

That's because you need to take direction into account. As in showing the direction of the edition.

A fanmade psionic system is far less valuable to me than an official one for several reasons:
1) I WANT WotC to show us what their direction for psionics
2) official means much more usage, much more discussion, much higher confidence of quality and balance
Only as a distant third comes
3) I would probably not even find the fan made system on DMs Guild, unless it somehow creates so much buzz I can read about it here on ENWorld. (In which case it probably is so high quality that WotC should hire the author and make it official, leading back to 1 & 2).

It all boils down to WotC getting to eat the cake but still have it too.

The DMsG deflects the criticism that the system is closed while not meaningfully exposing WotC to either having to take market risks or any great competition. Note how the one thing we actually could do ourselves that would provide actual competition is support for other (official) campaign settings is not allowed.

They don't have to support psionics because we COULD create it ourselves. Yeah right.

DmsG is a win for WotC, but much less so for us consumers.

I would much rather the true nature of DMsG would be commonly known, so less people call it "giving us the keys" when we pay WotC to drive the bus for us.

"Giving us the keys" is much like a cab driver selling it as a huge win that you can now actually drive yourself to the airport...

It would be another thing entirely if WotC didn't use the existence of the DMsG to delay (or even outright not plan for) actual system support, and if they actually let us do what the community would do much better and faster: providing comprehensive officially supported community-driven 5E-era updated material for Athas, Cerilia, Eberron, and so on...

 

[dave2008]

Hasbro isn't involved. They own WotC and take its profits but they're separate companies.

They added monster art packs. This art from 3e/4e and has an assortment of monsters.
But other than that, no. They're not sinking much resources into this. It's meant to make money, not cost money.

Didn't they supply some basic templates as well? Yep, just looked on my flash drive - there is an adventure template for word. There are also some maps too. Not much, but a little support. It would be nice if they added some more for the 1 year anniversary.

 

[LordEntrails]

Didn't they supply some basic templates as well? Yep, just looked on my flash drive - there is an adventure template for word. There are also some maps too. Not much, but a little support. It would be nice if they added some more for the 1 year anniversary.

Yea, the provided basic templates. And you can tell they were produced by someone who knows next to nothing about Word and templates. I provided feedback shortly after they were released pointing out the errors and flaws, but they haven't made any corrections to them and seem completely uninterested in doing so.