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

[dave2008]

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

I agree that this is very important. There are many different ways as sub-system could be handled and it is best to see how WotC is going to handle it first. I personally wouldn't but something fan-made that I am pretty sure WotC will address in the near future (like psionics). Conversly, I don't need WotC conversion of campaign settings and would be fine with 3-party items there.

2) official means much more usage, much more discussion, much higher confidence of quality and balance

I'm not sure about the quality and balance part, but I agree that you will find a lot more discussion about official content. And that really helps you have an idea of what your getting into.

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.

I agree it lessons the market risks and provides somewhat of a "play test" that they get for free. However, the OGL does allow you to make content for other settings and they have already expanded the material allowable (Ravenloft) on the Guild and claim to intend to open it up even more. I feel that the OGL, SRD, and DMsGuild is a fairly amazing amount of openness for an industry leader with so much at stake. Heck, we already have 5e support for LotR and other non-D&D settings because of the general 5e "openness." Frankly, I am amazed Hasbro (if they have say) let them do it.

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

Hm. I don't think that is there attitude. I think it is clear the plan to release psionics and other settings. They are just taking their time, either out of need (staff) or for strategic reasons. Both of which I am fine with.

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

Yes it is a win for WotC, but I think it is also a win for consumers. Maybe not as much, but a win nonetheless. I think everyone's mileage may very on this. Now I think it could be more of a win for consumers with an improved website - better origination, better search options, etc.

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...

This seems like an overly cynical view of the DMsGuild to me. I seriously doubt they are delaying system or setting support because of the DMsGuild. There could be a correlation, but I find that even remote. I find it more likely, that when they get around to athas, eberron, pscioncis, epic levels, etc. they will look around the DMsGuild and see if they can mine it for some gold. If they find something they like, they will bring into the system and provide the official support for the community driven content you want, basically what they said they were going to do. Since 5e I feel that WotC has pretty much delivered on everything they said they would, with the one exception being modularity (and that is debatable), so I imagine this will continue. To be clear, that does not mean I think everything about 5e and WotC is great - I'm talking about a very narrow reading of my statement, i.e what they said they were going to provide they either have or have attempted too.

Look, there are some really interesting and popular products on the DMsGuild that would probably not have gotten any notice without it. So, for those few platinum and gold products alone I think DMsGuild is a success. Can it be improved - heck ya. But I am glad we have it as it stands now too.

P.S. I'm not trying to stalk you Capn, I just generally find your comments interesting and insightful so I tend to click on a thread when I see you have responded.

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D sells millions of books. The best selling products on the DMs Guild - all 34 of them - have only a bit over 1000 sales each.

In 40 years, it has - heck, in the fad years it did. But the best-selling single D&D product of all time (one of the basic sets in the 80s, IIRC) sold something like 1.2 million copies over it's whole run. WotCs professed goal is to publish books they expect to sell 100k copies each, not millions.

1000 is low by any standard, but by RPG standards it's not as insignificant as it might seem.

That of over 7,300 products...

DMsG does feel kinda like a slush pile that the publisher allows customers to pay to sift through instead of using unpaid interns to do so.
;P

 

[Jester David]

DMsG does feel kinda like a slush pile that the publisher allows customers to pay to sift through instead of using unpaid interns to do so.
;P

Interns?
Back in the TSR days they got fans to volunteer for the task. Not even college credit.

 

[Greg K]

With regards to third party products on DMs Guild, at this point, I will purchase several products from the DM's Guild over what WOTC released. This continues a trend that began for me with Third Edition However, if I were playing 1e today, I would have allowed more unofficial third party products beginning with the Bard's Games products Compleat Adventurer and Compleat Spellcaster.

For 3e, the non-core WOTC material that I allowed/used for players were primarily specific material from Unearthed Arcana, the non spellcasting Paladin and Ranger variants from Complete Champion, the Cityscape web enhancement I: Urban/Wilderness skill swap, and a few spells and feats from other sources. As a DM, I also made use of Stormwrack, Hordes of the Abyss, Book of Vile Darkness, Monster Manual Manual 2, and Fiend Folio. In contrast, there are many third party offerings directed at players and DM directed products of which I made use and, if go back to 3e, about a dozen or more third party products I would still purchase.

With regards to official fifth edition, there has been nothing outside of the core books for me. First, the last adventure module I purchased was back in AD&D 1e. I understand their usefulness for both new players and many time impaired experienced players, but I have no interest in purchasing nor, as a player, participating in "canned" adventures. Modules/Adventure Paths and a "shared" experience hold no appeal to me. Second, I have found the non-adventure supplement material (including UA previews) disappointing. Volo Guide and SCAG were both almost 98% worthless to me (this is similar to my experience with the majority of WOTC's third edition supplements).

While I have found WOTC support disappointing, it is the third party material that is raising my interest in 5e (much as was the situation with 3e). I have found plenty of interesting third party products of interest. Leaving aside larger companies like Kobold Press, there are several small products on DM's Guild both free and for purchase that cater to my interests. Part of their appeal is that they are smaller more focused products that cost less. I am not "required" to spend $30 or $40 for a book that is most useless to me to get a few pages of material that is of use to me. For the stuff that I find interesting, they are also more to my preferred style than what WOTC offers. Yes, DMsG is not perfect. I have to sift through a lot of material that is not appealing to my playstyle/taste and the DMsG can use some improvement, but I have found it useful.

 

[jayoungr]

DMsG does feel kinda like a slush pile that the publisher allows customers to pay to sift through instead of using unpaid interns to do so.

That's the way publishing is going nowadays, even for novels. It's considered much easier and safer to offer a contract to whatever seems popular among the self-publishers on Kindle or the like than to read your own slush pile. It's been that way for several years now; see these old-ish but very interesting analyses:

http://superversive.livejournal.com/111526.html
And its follow-up: http://superversive.livejournal.com/111979.html
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2012/04/50-shades-of-publishing-part-i.html
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2012/04/50-shades-of-fandom-writing-part-iia.html
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2012/05/50-shades-of-fandom-publishing-part-iib.html

 

[JeffB]

I was quite excited a year ago, but if it went away, I wouln't miss the DMsG at all. Ive downloaded probably 2 dozen items, paid for half a dozen and utilized absolutely nothing.

It's starting to make the 3.0 glut of 2001-2002 look like the good old days!

That said, I haven't found the other 3pp high dollar items I have purchased for 5e (Goodman, Frog God, Kobold, Sasquatch, etc) all that inspiring either. I see Goodman is looking to hire published 5e authors for a big push of materials in 2017, Hopefully it will be better than the blandness they have put out so far.

It seems most of the really creative D&D/esque materials are being produced by the OSR and Indy-style segments, and that is where my gaming budget goes these days. I've used more Castles & Crusades, AS&SoH, and DW material for 5e games than I've used for the systems they were written in.

 

[Kabouter Games]

Overall maybe 1% of downloads are actual sales. I'm not sure if or how much sales would change if I went from PWYW to just a 1.00$. Some of the actual sales are 1 penny, which I think are more to go to the total sales of the product as free sales do not count for metal sales. I even had a few sales much higher than the suggested 1.00, being 5.00-7.00 for a product. Total profit from last year was around $120.00. from around 120 pages worth of material.

I made more in the last 5 days than I did in the last quarter of 2016.

I dropped PWYW on 1 Jan. One of my titles is Copper, and I am convinced it's entirely due to PWYW. But out of all those "sales" I made less than $3 on that title since I put it up. Three. Dollars. And it's still moving after I upped it to $0.99 - though not nearly as much.

People can pony up less than $2 for things like adventures and DM resources. My experience thus far is justifying that opinion, I think.

DMsG is not a major revenue stream in my life, but I dislike the appearance that the sweat of my brow is worth nothing (even if they are merely low-level adventures and resources for DMs starting a new campaign). There's a lot of time and effort in my work, and I work hard to improve it on a daily basis. That's worth something.