It is not unreasonable to think that they could offer a service that cost more that bigger servers would pay for to gain extra slots for more players. That is all I am saying :)
It is not unreasonable to think that they could offer a service that cost more that bigger servers would pay for to gain extra slots for more players. That is all I am saying :)
Paying extra is already done - some players buy all the source books and share them in campaigns.
It is not unreasonable to think that they could offer a service that cost more that bigger servers would pay for to gain extra slots for more players. That is all I am saying :)
Paying extra is already done - some players buy all the source books and share them in campaigns.
I also would love to see the data behind your claim they are “one of the biggest platforms for introducing new players to the game.” This is not something I have ever heard of (despite avidly following these forums and D&D generally), and the first Reddit thread I found on the subject was filled with folks asking “what is this?” I think you are vastly overestimating the popularity and value of this style of campaign, and thus vastly overstating why there would be an ROI to Wizards.
its fairly big, but your right, unless your in the circles you wouldnt know so I definently wouldnt take it in as the biggest, especially because most servers dont go over 60 people max, and even if they do, usually everyone on one is on 1-4 others, so you end up with alot of repeat players on a huge amount of servers, there are servers with thousands but those are few and far between. the average server also doesnt last more then a single year, if it makes it to that, though that can vary on player base and stuff. so a 60 person campaign is actually usually just fine
I also would love to see the data behind your claim they are “one of the biggest platforms for introducing new players to the game.” This is not something I have ever heard of (despite avidly following these forums and D&D generally), and the first Reddit thread I found on the subject was filled with folks asking “what is this?” I think you are vastly overestimating the popularity and value of this style of campaign, and thus vastly overstating why there would be an ROI to Wizards.
its fairly big, but your right, unless your in the circles you wouldnt know so I definently wouldnt take it in as the biggest, especially because most servers dont go over 60 people max, and even if they do, usually everyone on one is on 1-4 others, so you end up with alot of repeat players on a huge amount of servers, there are servers with thousands but those are few and far between. the average server also doesnt last more then a single year, if it makes it to that, though that can vary on player base and stuff. so a 60 person campaign is actually usually just fine
In a way yes, I do get West Marches have a high turnover rate yet, running a community of 600+ for over two years has been a huge toll with us not able to provide campaigns for our player base. Like I was saying though a higher tier subscription would work since it is a monthly amount of money gained.
DMs for hire or Pro DMs or whatever the term of art is these days come around from time to time making a similar but smaller scale ask of expanding campaign allotment. I don't recall actual staff engaging the question, but I may be wrong. All I'm saying there is that the question for higher campaign amounts has been asked, but it doesn't seem to be answered to the askers' liking.
I'm ambivalent on the campaign limit. Let's still recognize though that the move from 3 campaigns to 5 was a move done out of COVID consideration for the D&D community, but seems to be done at a "cost/benefit" to DDB that's satisfactory as the measure was supposed to be temporary.
I'm a little confused as to why several hundred West Marches players need to be bannered under one DM. My understanding of West Marches (largely from Matt Coleville's video on them) is that they're not traditional "campaigns" but more akin to pick up games where, there is a standing (pre-populated with environs and encounters?) game world, often rendered as a hex map, a group of players grab a DM for a specific mission in that game world and they do it. If DDB was integral to that process it would just be the players adding their character to the DMs "campaign" invite and leaving that campaign when the mission's done. Also at a loss as to how hundreds of players marching the same west, so to speak, since I thought the players also had lasting impact on the Marches they march through (so if there's a TPK, for instance and to use a clean example, another party traveling through the same space will likely be able to recovered the TPK's stuff).
I'll also say the notion that West Marches are a great way of introducing players to D&D is a new one to me too. The nature of the play style seems to insist on players who know what they're doing so much as they're actually requesting the sort of adventures they're going to venture forth and do.
DMs for hire or Pro DMs or whatever the term of art is these days come around from time to time making a similar but smaller scale ask of expanding campaign allotment. I don't recall actual staff engaging the question, but I may be wrong. All I'm saying there is that the question for higher campaign amounts has been asked, but it doesn't seem to be answered to the askers' liking.
I'm ambivalent on the campaign limit. Let's still recognize though that the move from 3 campaigns to 5 was a move done out of COVID consideration for the D&D community, but seems to be done at a "cost/benefit" to DDB that's satisfactory as the measure was supposed to be temporary.
I'm a little confused as to why several hundred West Marches players need to be bannered under one DM. My understanding of West Marches (largely from Matt Coleville's video on them) is that they're not traditional "campaigns" but more akin to pick up games where, there is a standing (pre-populated with environs and encounters?) game world, often rendered as a hex map, a group of players grab a DM for a specific mission in that game world and they do it. If DDB was integral to that process it would just be the players adding their character to the DMs "campaign" invite and leaving that campaign when the mission's done. Also at a loss as to how hundreds of players marching the same west, so to speak, since I thought the players also had lasting impact on the Marches they march through (so if there's a TPK, for instance and to use a clean example, another party traveling through the same space will likely be able to recovered the TPK's stuff).
I'll also say the notion that West Marches are a great way of introducing players to D&D is a new one to me too. The nature of the play style seems to insist on players who know what they're doing so much as they're actually requesting the sort of adventures they're going to venture forth and do.
it depends on where you play, but usually in westmarches like that, level of impact is limited so others can come be adventurers, whether or not you were there in the first place, ie, you may not be able to kill orcus, but you could stop his first invasion into the pmp or something like that, though you usually cant pick others items up if theres a tpk, to prevent others from purposefully tanking games so their friends can get stuff, or their other characters
The reason for the bannered under one dm thing has more to do so with the most common dice roller used, avrea only linking to three different types of sheets, and being based off ddb stuff, so if your in a campaign, you can use all the stuff from ddb with near perfect symmetry, so its less about the dm and basically moreso about a mass amount of players able to get the content, as many of those same players will just hop into a new server, ask for a link, and never buy stuff themselves(ive been on roughly 30+ servers, and 90% of the playerbase hates beyond cuz of the needing to buy stuff, some will literally steal campaign links so they never have to buy.)
though usually in a westmarch its not the players requesting a quest, more as its dm posts quests when they are free, thats why its dry at times
I also would love to see the data behind your claim they are “one of the biggest platforms for introducing new players to the game.” This is not something I have ever heard of (despite avidly following these forums and D&D generally), and the first Reddit thread I found on the subject was filled with folks asking “what is this?” I think you are vastly overestimating the popularity and value of this style of campaign, and thus vastly overstating why there would be an ROI to Wizards.
its fairly big, but your right, unless your in the circles you wouldnt know so I definently wouldnt take it in as the biggest, especially because most servers dont go over 60 people max, and even if they do, usually everyone on one is on 1-4 others, so you end up with alot of repeat players on a huge amount of servers, there are servers with thousands but those are few and far between. the average server also doesnt last more then a single year, if it makes it to that, though that can vary on player base and stuff. so a 60 person campaign is actually usually just fine
In a way yes, I do get West Marches have a high turnover rate yet, running a community of 600+ for over two years has been a huge toll with us not able to provide campaigns for our player base. Like I was saying though a higher tier subscription would work since it is a monthly amount of money gained.
thing is, people basically join, wanting to use those and never buy stuff, ddb will probably never increase for that reason, especially because it eventually forces more people to join and buy stuff, as dicecloud has a harsh learning curve, and google docs has so many issues.
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
I manage a 600+ member server and have not had that problem at all, as stated it's cleared out quite often! However more space is always needed, which some servers like mine also clear them out on a weekly base.
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
I manage a 600+ member server and have not had that problem at all, as stated it's cleared out quite often! However more space is always needed, which some servers like mine also clear them out on a weekly base.
you stated its cleared out often of the people who arent using it or arent being .
im saying the people who are active, usually dont intend on buying any content themselves,just are using your content, so they themselves dont have to ever buy and thats the usual case, so ddb will probably never increase its size, or add an increased payment, for that very reason, as it ends up, costing them more money in the long run, then say what they have now, which eventually makes someone spend more, by creating the master tier account, and buying the books digitially
and yes, i know this is the case, i ran a 1k+ server several years ago which had a few of the same issues.
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
I manage a 600+ member server and have not had that problem at all, as stated it's cleared out quite often! However more space is always needed, which some servers like mine also clear them out on a weekly base.
you stated its cleared out often of the people who arent using it or arent being .
im saying the people who are active, usually dont intend on buying any content themselves,just are using your content, so they themselves dont have to ever buy and thats the usual case, so ddb will probably never increase its size, or add an increased payment, for that very reason, as it ends up, costing them more money in the long run, then say what they have now, which eventually makes someone spend more, by creating the master tier account, and buying the books digitially
and yes, i know this is the case, i ran a 1k+ server several years ago which had a few of the same issues.
I do not believe it would cost them much anyways, if people do not want to spend, they will in turn go to Dicecloud and will just look up the free PDFs that are out there, adding an increase makes much more sense if they have it say, 30$ a month, which I would actually pay for means I am basically paying for a supplement book every month. I think quite in fact it will have the opposite and add a support for the larger west march servers who will gladly pay for the increase. In this case in particular I would have to still buy more slots even with an increase to the current system.
If you ran a server with 1k people for a west march you would know all of this would have helped a lot more than having to struggle getting more campaigns. The increase for slots in my eyes would help a lot in the end of this. I just like many others who stand by their viewpoints also stand by this viewpoint as one that could offer more support for players who do run these larger servers, and as I have also seen many people who use these campaigns still end up buying some content from DnD Beyond. :D
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
I manage a 600+ member server and have not had that problem at all, as stated it's cleared out quite often! However more space is always needed, which some servers like mine also clear them out on a weekly base.
you stated its cleared out often of the people who arent using it or arent being .
im saying the people who are active, usually dont intend on buying any content themselves,just are using your content, so they themselves dont have to ever buy and thats the usual case, so ddb will probably never increase its size, or add an increased payment, for that very reason, as it ends up, costing them more money in the long run, then say what they have now, which eventually makes someone spend more, by creating the master tier account, and buying the books digitially
and yes, i know this is the case, i ran a 1k+ server several years ago which had a few of the same issues.
I do not believe it would cost them much anyways, if people do not want to spend, they will in turn go to Dicecloud and will just look up the free PDFs that are out there, adding an increase makes much more sense if they have it say, 30$ a month, which I would actually pay for means I am basically paying for a supplement book every month. I think quite in fact it will have the opposite and add a support for the larger west march servers who will gladly pay for the increase. In this case in particular I would have to still buy more slots even with an increase to the current system.
If you ran a server with 1k people for a west march you would know all of this would have helped a lot more than having to struggle getting more campaigns. The increase for slots in my eyes would help a lot in the end of this. I just like many others who stand by their viewpoints also stand by this viewpoint as one that could offer more support for players who do run these larger servers, and as I have also seen many people who use these campaigns still end up buying some content from DnD Beyond. :D
I mean, yes it would help, but its simply not going to happen, especailly because they want to utilize the player base that isnt paying at the moment, which are players like those, who refuse to pay because they can simply join a campaign and get it elsewhere, not having to pay the forty or more bucks for a couple books online, not only that, but these large servers arent really as massive as a draw that you make them out to be, so again, they wont probably be doing anything for it.
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
I manage a 600+ member server and have not had that problem at all, as stated it's cleared out quite often! However more space is always needed, which some servers like mine also clear them out on a weekly base.
you stated its cleared out often of the people who arent using it or arent being .
im saying the people who are active, usually dont intend on buying any content themselves,just are using your content, so they themselves dont have to ever buy and thats the usual case, so ddb will probably never increase its size, or add an increased payment, for that very reason, as it ends up, costing them more money in the long run, then say what they have now, which eventually makes someone spend more, by creating the master tier account, and buying the books digitially
and yes, i know this is the case, i ran a 1k+ server several years ago which had a few of the same issues.
I do not believe it would cost them much anyways, if people do not want to spend, they will in turn go to Dicecloud and will just look up the free PDFs that are out there, adding an increase makes much more sense if they have it say, 30$ a month, which I would actually pay for means I am basically paying for a supplement book every month. I think quite in fact it will have the opposite and add a support for the larger west march servers who will gladly pay for the increase. In this case in particular I would have to still buy more slots even with an increase to the current system.
If you ran a server with 1k people for a west march you would know all of this would have helped a lot more than having to struggle getting more campaigns. The increase for slots in my eyes would help a lot in the end of this. I just like many others who stand by their viewpoints also stand by this viewpoint as one that could offer more support for players who do run these larger servers, and as I have also seen many people who use these campaigns still end up buying some content from DnD Beyond. :D
I mean, yes it would help, but its simply not going to happen, especailly because they want to utilize the player base that isnt paying at the moment, which are players like those, who refuse to pay because they can simply join a campaign and get it elsewhere, not having to pay the forty or more bucks for a couple books online, not only that, but these large servers arent really as massive as a draw that you make them out to be, so again, they wont probably be doing anything for it.
I suppose we will beg to differ, looking at the west march status as a whole is well worth an investment just like they did with Adventurers League, it is much much more expensive than 40$ for a few of these books because they have to be bought here.
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
I manage a 600+ member server and have not had that problem at all, as stated it's cleared out quite often! However more space is always needed, which some servers like mine also clear them out on a weekly base.
you stated its cleared out often of the people who arent using it or arent being .
im saying the people who are active, usually dont intend on buying any content themselves,just are using your content, so they themselves dont have to ever buy and thats the usual case, so ddb will probably never increase its size, or add an increased payment, for that very reason, as it ends up, costing them more money in the long run, then say what they have now, which eventually makes someone spend more, by creating the master tier account, and buying the books digitially
and yes, i know this is the case, i ran a 1k+ server several years ago which had a few of the same issues.
I do not believe it would cost them much anyways, if people do not want to spend, they will in turn go to Dicecloud and will just look up the free PDFs that are out there, adding an increase makes much more sense if they have it say, 30$ a month, which I would actually pay for means I am basically paying for a supplement book every month. I think quite in fact it will have the opposite and add a support for the larger west march servers who will gladly pay for the increase. In this case in particular I would have to still buy more slots even with an increase to the current system.
If you ran a server with 1k people for a west march you would know all of this would have helped a lot more than having to struggle getting more campaigns. The increase for slots in my eyes would help a lot in the end of this. I just like many others who stand by their viewpoints also stand by this viewpoint as one that could offer more support for players who do run these larger servers, and as I have also seen many people who use these campaigns still end up buying some content from DnD Beyond. :D
I mean, yes it would help, but its simply not going to happen, especailly because they want to utilize the player base that isnt paying at the moment, which are players like those, who refuse to pay because they can simply join a campaign and get it elsewhere, not having to pay the forty or more bucks for a couple books online, not only that, but these large servers arent really as massive as a draw that you make them out to be, so again, they wont probably be doing anything for it.
I suppose we will beg to differ, looking at the west march status as a whole is well worth an investment just like they did with Adventurers League, it is much much more expensive than 40$ for a few of these books because they have to be bought here.
as i said in my other post, a large majority of your players dont even know what that is, and a large number of players are repeat players across servers, so the amount of actual westmarch players is actually quite small in comparison. I can list on my two hands the majority of the large active westmarch servers with around 1k total people, if it were to get bigger i could see them setting up a seperate system for it, but as it stands rn, theyd end up just losing potential profit, so they wont invest or do anything for it
Think another issue here is "West Marches" isn't really formally discussed/acknowledged as a playstyle or way to organize play. Among official and even third party products I can't think of any publication that explicitly supports west marches play style, though I may be wrong. Sorta like the other end of the spectrum from solo play which was once acknowledged and supported as a mode of play in at least in the BECMI edition (at least at lower levels).
Again, this sounds like something even larger scale than some of the pro DMs have asked for here, and for whatever reason it's a question that has never been officially answered (another thread someone brainstormed in half jest a more robust "D&D matching" system, which would arguably render West Marches servers a little moot or at least compete with them, so maybe it's been noted).
I'm not saying West Marches isn't a thing, I'm just saying for whatever reason West Marches isn't a concept broached in current official D&D.
I was goint to try to run an online West Marches style game a couple of years ago and when I saw there was no support here gave up on the idea.
In the least I would think they could remove the 5 x 12 configuration and allow you to configure your 60 slots as best required for no extra cost.
I would support a higher cost sub tier perhaps but I would expect there also to be more campaign tools for this as well then, like a campaign calender/schedular and some sort of campaign journal or something to post session summaries to all those that didn't play, as well as more robust campaign content options. (I know there are other methods for this, I'm not saying I can't do it without these tools in DDB but that I would Want these tools at the least if they want to justify a higher share slot tier to me) Of course the cost/value of this higher tier would matter as well.
What I don't want is extra organisational problems, liking having to run multiple campaigns here for the slots and to have to kick and invite constantly to juggle this artificially limited resource.
Think another issue here is "West Marches" isn't really formally discussed/acknowledged as a playstyle or way to organize play. Among official and even third party products I can't think of any publication that explicitly supports west marches play style, though I may be wrong. Sorta like the other end of the spectrum from solo play which was once acknowledged and supported as a mode of play in at least in the BECMI edition (at least at lower levels).
Again, this sounds like something even larger scale than some of the pro DMs have asked for here, and for whatever reason it's a question that has never been officially answered (another thread someone brainstormed in half jest a more robust "D&D matching" system, which would arguably render West Marches servers a little moot or at least compete with them, so maybe it's been noted).
I'm not saying West Marches isn't a thing, I'm just saying for whatever reason West Marches isn't a concept broached in current official D&D.
There is content for it, but its usually made by the community itself and never officially licensed, there are other third party things, but because every west marches is run differently, theres a vast differential of opinion on whats good for a westmarch, and it can lead to some even worse disagreements then there are here on the forums, cuz theres no mods or ppl to stop you there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
It is not unreasonable to think that they could offer a service that cost more that bigger servers would pay for to gain extra slots for more players. That is all I am saying :)
Paying extra is already done - some players buy all the source books and share them in campaigns.
This was already discussed.
its fairly big, but your right, unless your in the circles you wouldnt know so I definently wouldnt take it in as the biggest, especially because most servers dont go over 60 people max, and even if they do, usually everyone on one is on 1-4 others, so you end up with alot of repeat players on a huge amount of servers, there are servers with thousands but those are few and far between. the average server also doesnt last more then a single year, if it makes it to that, though that can vary on player base and stuff. so a 60 person campaign is actually usually just fine
In a way yes, I do get West Marches have a high turnover rate yet, running a community of 600+ for over two years has been a huge toll with us not able to provide campaigns for our player base. Like I was saying though a higher tier subscription would work since it is a monthly amount of money gained.
DMs for hire or Pro DMs or whatever the term of art is these days come around from time to time making a similar but smaller scale ask of expanding campaign allotment. I don't recall actual staff engaging the question, but I may be wrong. All I'm saying there is that the question for higher campaign amounts has been asked, but it doesn't seem to be answered to the askers' liking.
I'm ambivalent on the campaign limit. Let's still recognize though that the move from 3 campaigns to 5 was a move done out of COVID consideration for the D&D community, but seems to be done at a "cost/benefit" to DDB that's satisfactory as the measure was supposed to be temporary.
I'm a little confused as to why several hundred West Marches players need to be bannered under one DM. My understanding of West Marches (largely from Matt Coleville's video on them) is that they're not traditional "campaigns" but more akin to pick up games where, there is a standing (pre-populated with environs and encounters?) game world, often rendered as a hex map, a group of players grab a DM for a specific mission in that game world and they do it. If DDB was integral to that process it would just be the players adding their character to the DMs "campaign" invite and leaving that campaign when the mission's done. Also at a loss as to how hundreds of players marching the same west, so to speak, since I thought the players also had lasting impact on the Marches they march through (so if there's a TPK, for instance and to use a clean example, another party traveling through the same space will likely be able to recovered the TPK's stuff).
I'll also say the notion that West Marches are a great way of introducing players to D&D is a new one to me too. The nature of the play style seems to insist on players who know what they're doing so much as they're actually requesting the sort of adventures they're going to venture forth and do.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
it depends on where you play, but usually in westmarches like that, level of impact is limited so others can come be adventurers, whether or not you were there in the first place, ie, you may not be able to kill orcus, but you could stop his first invasion into the pmp or something like that, though you usually cant pick others items up if theres a tpk, to prevent others from purposefully tanking games so their friends can get stuff, or their other characters
The reason for the bannered under one dm thing has more to do so with the most common dice roller used, avrea only linking to three different types of sheets, and being based off ddb stuff, so if your in a campaign, you can use all the stuff from ddb with near perfect symmetry, so its less about the dm and basically moreso about a mass amount of players able to get the content, as many of those same players will just hop into a new server, ask for a link, and never buy stuff themselves(ive been on roughly 30+ servers, and 90% of the playerbase hates beyond cuz of the needing to buy stuff, some will literally steal campaign links so they never have to buy.)
though usually in a westmarch its not the players requesting a quest, more as its dm posts quests when they are free, thats why its dry at times
I love this thread. I think it's just getting started.
thing is, people basically join, wanting to use those and never buy stuff, ddb will probably never increase for that reason, especially because it eventually forces more people to join and buy stuff, as dicecloud has a harsh learning curve, and google docs has so many issues.
Possible, however most west marches that are around 200+ people periodically clear out their campaigns constantly from the AFK members, or they deactivate them until the player returns to play, so I would say that is not entirely true for the larger ones. Dicecloud has been getting more and more updates and as of late I have started to see more and more of the players turning to that free source.
its still 100% true for big servers,, just cuz folk go afk, doesnt mean the active players arent hopping into the server and looking to never buy while using others stuff, which is extremely common in even the 1k+ servers, its common enough that there are even jokes about how easy it is to do
I manage a 600+ member server and have not had that problem at all, as stated it's cleared out quite often! However more space is always needed, which some servers like mine also clear them out on a weekly base.
you stated its cleared out often of the people who arent using it or arent being .
im saying the people who are active, usually dont intend on buying any content themselves,just are using your content, so they themselves dont have to ever buy and thats the usual case, so ddb will probably never increase its size, or add an increased payment, for that very reason, as it ends up, costing them more money in the long run, then say what they have now, which eventually makes someone spend more, by creating the master tier account, and buying the books digitially
and yes, i know this is the case, i ran a 1k+ server several years ago which had a few of the same issues.
I do not believe it would cost them much anyways, if people do not want to spend, they will in turn go to Dicecloud and will just look up the free PDFs that are out there, adding an increase makes much more sense if they have it say, 30$ a month, which I would actually pay for means I am basically paying for a supplement book every month. I think quite in fact it will have the opposite and add a support for the larger west march servers who will gladly pay for the increase. In this case in particular I would have to still buy more slots even with an increase to the current system.
If you ran a server with 1k people for a west march you would know all of this would have helped a lot more than having to struggle getting more campaigns. The increase for slots in my eyes would help a lot in the end of this. I just like many others who stand by their viewpoints also stand by this viewpoint as one that could offer more support for players who do run these larger servers, and as I have also seen many people who use these campaigns still end up buying some content from DnD Beyond. :D
I mean, yes it would help, but its simply not going to happen, especailly because they want to utilize the player base that isnt paying at the moment, which are players like those, who refuse to pay because they can simply join a campaign and get it elsewhere, not having to pay the forty or more bucks for a couple books online, not only that, but these large servers arent really as massive as a draw that you make them out to be, so again, they wont probably be doing anything for it.
I suppose we will beg to differ, looking at the west march status as a whole is well worth an investment just like they did with Adventurers League, it is much much more expensive than 40$ for a few of these books because they have to be bought here.
as i said in my other post, a large majority of your players dont even know what that is, and a large number of players are repeat players across servers, so the amount of actual westmarch players is actually quite small in comparison. I can list on my two hands the majority of the large active westmarch servers with around 1k total people, if it were to get bigger i could see them setting up a seperate system for it, but as it stands rn, theyd end up just losing potential profit, so they wont invest or do anything for it
Think another issue here is "West Marches" isn't really formally discussed/acknowledged as a playstyle or way to organize play. Among official and even third party products I can't think of any publication that explicitly supports west marches play style, though I may be wrong. Sorta like the other end of the spectrum from solo play which was once acknowledged and supported as a mode of play in at least in the BECMI edition (at least at lower levels).
Again, this sounds like something even larger scale than some of the pro DMs have asked for here, and for whatever reason it's a question that has never been officially answered (another thread someone brainstormed in half jest a more robust "D&D matching" system, which would arguably render West Marches servers a little moot or at least compete with them, so maybe it's been noted).
I'm not saying West Marches isn't a thing, I'm just saying for whatever reason West Marches isn't a concept broached in current official D&D.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I was goint to try to run an online West Marches style game a couple of years ago and when I saw there was no support here gave up on the idea.
In the least I would think they could remove the 5 x 12 configuration and allow you to configure your 60 slots as best required for no extra cost.
I would support a higher cost sub tier perhaps but I would expect there also to be more campaign tools for this as well then, like a campaign calender/schedular and some sort of campaign journal or something to post session summaries to all those that didn't play, as well as more robust campaign content options. (I know there are other methods for this, I'm not saying I can't do it without these tools in DDB but that I would Want these tools at the least if they want to justify a higher share slot tier to me) Of course the cost/value of this higher tier would matter as well.
What I don't want is extra organisational problems, liking having to run multiple campaigns here for the slots and to have to kick and invite constantly to juggle this artificially limited resource.
There is content for it, but its usually made by the community itself and never officially licensed, there are other third party things, but because every west marches is run differently, theres a vast differential of opinion on whats good for a westmarch, and it can lead to some even worse disagreements then there are here on the forums, cuz theres no mods or ppl to stop you there.