I agree with Morrus insofar that "real publisher" is not useful, and can be used as a judgemental way of appearing elitist.
Still, Jester has a point. After all, game design
IS elitist insofar that not many people do a truly good job of it.
I mean, I don't think Morrus is intentionally trying to compare his outfit's products to Joe Schmoe the Rabid Fan's heartbreak DMs Guild offerings.
If Dms Guild mostly offered adventures, stories, and campaign material it would be a different story. But that's not what people make money on. Its the crunchy bits that are the hard bits to get right.
So any term y'all deem acceptable that puts EN5ider and Kobold Press and Paizo etc on one side, and Joe Schmoe on the other, would be a good one.
I agree in principle with Morrus' position regarding a writer/publisher, etc. This isn't really any different from the way the music industry is evolving, among others.
But people do differentiate between official and licensed. However, what I think is blurring the line more is the business model of WotC, and it's been happening for some time, as former WotC authors release material on their own. From my perspective it's all irrelevant in terms of the sources I go for new rules, adventures (or ideas anyway), etc.
However, it
does matter in regards to things like Adventurer's League. No matter how good a licensed product may be, it will not be considered as useable in "official" events like Adventurer's League. The other area where it matters (at least to a certain group) is canon. Now that anybody can release Forgotten Realms content in DMsGuild, there is a lot of material that I don't think anybody would consider canon. On the other hand, George Krashos has published quite a bit, and while most of it is updated material from earlier editions, that doesn't have to be the case. With the announcement that Ed Greenwood is planning on releasing material via DMsGuild will further muddy those waters.
So is an Ed Greenwood DMsGuild release canon? Groups like Candlekeep and the FR Wiki classify Ed Greenwood published (including forum postings) as canon. But with WoTC also releasing FR material, there's probably a good chance that they might diverge a bit. Does it really matter?
I don't particularly care. Material by Ed, George, Eric L. Boyd and others are far more likely to find a home in my campaign than that written by other authors that have not been officially tied to the Forgotten Realms, but there is some other interesting material from authors not tied to any prior official FR publications.
What does matter in publishing is the quality of the content, including things like editing and art. This was painfully evident in the original era of licensed publishers, like Judges Guild, Role Aids, Bard Press, and a great number of other publishers in the late '70s to early '80s. There was certainly some interesting material released, but the quality varied greatly, even within a given publishing house, and compatibility with the existing rules could vary as well. There's no doubt that TSR had its share of junk as well, but it had a certain minimum level of quality, a standard presentation, and usually didn't stray too far from the actual rules.
So I think that even without being elitist, pointing out that En5ider (for example) has a more consistent quality than DMsGuild because they are operating more like a traditional publisher in approving submissions and editorial oversight is reasonable and has value to the customer.
But yes, If I write something and make it publicly available, for a price or free, I'm a author and a publisher, and assuming I follow the rules of the OGL, I'm official too.
