I made them public when I thought they were potentially useful to other CoS DMs and shared them on Reddit to give back to the community & get feedback on them. At the time I thought this was a super useful feature, I didn't have to do extra work to share my homebrew beyond my table and get feedback to help refine future versions.
Some folks have reached out because the links are broken & it turns out the mods unpublicized them.
Given the feats are all related to the dark powers in the amber temple - I assumed it was a issue with the IP not being firmly in the SRD.
Turns out ... Not So
Rejected for: Other - See Additional Notes for more details. (Moderator's Note: Do not submit feats that are not actually feats. If your items are meant to replicate blessings, curses, race features, class features, etc. You are welcome to use these privately, but they will not be allowed as published feats.)
So how are these not acceptable feats if there is no publication guideline for what is or is not a feat?
I get the need to enforce some standards and keep the signal to noise ratio down on public homebrew, but this seems arbitrary and discourages current users from using dndbeyond in a way that actively drives valuable potential customer traffic (DM eyeballs) to the site.
Firstly, you should not publish content that isn't your own original creation
Secondly, Dark Gifts are not feats, ergo you should not publish them as feats
Finally, you do not need to (and should not) publish homebrew content that is for personal campaigns. Homebrew content is automatically shared through your campaign.
It sounds like the mods move to unpublish the feats was on based on IP concerns and NOT that the content wasn't a feat. So unless there is some clear & unambiguous guidance on what a Feat is that mod community is using - it's arbitrary. I'm ok with that - lets just admit that upfront.
In my mind, a feat is whatever dndbeyond will let me define as a feat. That should be considered a feature ... it lets you hack all kind of things onto character sheets that make things just work better at the table. Not being able to share that with the rest of the dndbeyond community seems short-sighted as a policy and greatly reduces the utility of custom content - again this is about empowering creative DMs to build out valuable content for other DMs - which adds value to the DM experience - making the DMs who pay for subs and content more likely to stay and keep subscribing.
Next - why in the hell would anyone publish completely original homebrew on dndbeyond that they aren't also going to use in their own campaign? The whole point creating your own homebrew is to make it easy for your players to use on their dnd beyond character sheets. The point of publishing it is to make it easy for other DMs to do less work to make it simple for their players to use in their games. That's a virtuous circle of user value created by users for users - for free - that makes paying DM's more likely to keep paying for the product.
tl;dr I hope the dndbeyond product team realizes that their current mod policies are actively harming user-generated value
If folks can use licensed content on DM's guild ... why couldn't homebrew also be tagged to licensed content? Want to see homebrew that uses CoS IP - cool - you have to buy the CoS content in the marketplace. #1 doing so would actually help DMs find relevant homebrew germain to whatever campaign they are running #2 it would help drive additional sales of licensed content - seems like a win-win.
I agree that it makes no sense to not be able to share homebrew content on the site. I mean places like Steam and Nexus were designed around allowing people to create and put their mods out for anyone else to use because it generates more interest and use. The D&D Beyond team are not terribly organized or have any rhyme or reason to most of what they do, the site is buggy and broken in a lot of ways and any time someone brings it up, there's always vague assurances it'll be fixed (and never is)
A feat is a specific game option and not just 'any feature that lets you attach functionality to a character sheet' (that's what the general feature system will hopefully soon deliver). A feat is defined in the Player's Handbook
A feat represents a talent or an area of expertise that gives a character special capabilities. It embodies training, experience, and abilities beyond what a class provides.
It can be ambiguous in some regards, but a feat (that you wish to publish) cannot reproduce another game element. This includes but isn't limited to:
Temporary effects of spells or class features such as bless, rage, guidance etc
Dark Gifts such as those found in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft
Supernatural Gifts such as Hollow One from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
Blessings and Boons
Marks of Prestige
Epic Boons
Titles and Deeds
Charms
If there is any ambiguity, the discretion falls to the moderation team to decide what suitably qualifies as a feat for the purpose of legitimate homebrew publications
As for "why would anyone publish completely original homebrew that they aren't going to use in their own campaign?" Because people often just like making and sharing homebrew, no other reason. If it is only for your own game, you do not need to publish; it appears to your players within your campaign automatically.
Also important note: publishing licensed third party content is also against homebrew rules.
A while back I rolled a bunch of custom feats for my CoS campaign
example:https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/195078-the-dark-gift-of-dahlver-nar-he-of-the-many-teeth
I made them public when I thought they were potentially useful to other CoS DMs and shared them on Reddit to give back to the community & get feedback on them. At the time I thought this was a super useful feature, I didn't have to do extra work to share my homebrew beyond my table and get feedback to help refine future versions.
Some folks have reached out because the links are broken & it turns out the mods unpublicized them.
Given the feats are all related to the dark powers in the amber temple - I assumed it was a issue with the IP not being firmly in the SRD.
Turns out ... Not So
Rejected for: Other - See Additional Notes for more details. (Moderator's Note: Do not submit feats that are not actually feats. If your items are meant to replicate blessings, curses, race features, class features, etc. You are welcome to use these privately, but they will not be allowed as published feats.)
AND YET THE PLOT THICKENS!
The Current guidelines don't cover feats https://www.dndbeyond.com/homebrew-rules-guidelines
So how are these not acceptable feats if there is no publication guideline for what is or is not a feat?
I get the need to enforce some standards and keep the signal to noise ratio down on public homebrew, but this seems arbitrary and discourages current users from using dndbeyond in a way that actively drives valuable potential customer traffic (DM eyeballs) to the site.
Firstly, you should not publish content that isn't your own original creation
Secondly, Dark Gifts are not feats, ergo you should not publish them as feats
Finally, you do not need to (and should not) publish homebrew content that is for personal campaigns. Homebrew content is automatically shared through your campaign.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
It sounds like the mods move to unpublish the feats was on based on IP concerns and NOT that the content wasn't a feat. So unless there is some clear & unambiguous guidance on what a Feat is that mod community is using - it's arbitrary. I'm ok with that - lets just admit that upfront.
In my mind, a feat is whatever dndbeyond will let me define as a feat. That should be considered a feature ... it lets you hack all kind of things onto character sheets that make things just work better at the table. Not being able to share that with the rest of the dndbeyond community seems short-sighted as a policy and greatly reduces the utility of custom content - again this is about empowering creative DMs to build out valuable content for other DMs - which adds value to the DM experience - making the DMs who pay for subs and content more likely to stay and keep subscribing.
Next - why in the hell would anyone publish completely original homebrew on dndbeyond that they aren't also going to use in their own campaign? The whole point creating your own homebrew is to make it easy for your players to use on their dnd beyond character sheets. The point of publishing it is to make it easy for other DMs to do less work to make it simple for their players to use in their games. That's a virtuous circle of user value created by users for users - for free - that makes paying DM's more likely to keep paying for the product.
tl;dr I hope the dndbeyond product team realizes that their current mod policies are actively harming user-generated value
If folks can use licensed content on DM's guild ... why couldn't homebrew also be tagged to licensed content? Want to see homebrew that uses CoS IP - cool - you have to buy the CoS content in the marketplace. #1 doing so would actually help DMs find relevant homebrew germain to whatever campaign they are running #2 it would help drive additional sales of licensed content - seems like a win-win.
I agree that it makes no sense to not be able to share homebrew content on the site. I mean places like Steam and Nexus were designed around allowing people to create and put their mods out for anyone else to use because it generates more interest and use. The D&D Beyond team are not terribly organized or have any rhyme or reason to most of what they do, the site is buggy and broken in a lot of ways and any time someone brings it up, there's always vague assurances it'll be fixed (and never is)
A feat is a specific game option and not just 'any feature that lets you attach functionality to a character sheet' (that's what the general feature system will hopefully soon deliver). A feat is defined in the Player's Handbook
It can be ambiguous in some regards, but a feat (that you wish to publish) cannot reproduce another game element. This includes but isn't limited to:
If there is any ambiguity, the discretion falls to the moderation team to decide what suitably qualifies as a feat for the purpose of legitimate homebrew publications
As for "why would anyone publish completely original homebrew that they aren't going to use in their own campaign?" Because people often just like making and sharing homebrew, no other reason. If it is only for your own game, you do not need to publish; it appears to your players within your campaign automatically.
Also important note: publishing licensed third party content is also against homebrew rules.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here