Hello everyone,

I come with a question for experienced GMs and 3PP lovers. I’ve recently become obsessed with nautical adventures and underwater worldbuilding, and my creativity has been stretched to its limit in that regard. For this reason I’ve become increasingly interested in books and related media from which I can draw inspiration, such as the PotC movies and Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

In my search for ideas, I’ve encountered a few DMsGuild supplements on the subject that greatly interest me, namely Underwater Campaigns and Call from the Deep. These two books are available in both PDF form and Print-on-Demand. I prefer to avoid digital formats in my reading, in part because I’m easily distractible and the online world only exacerbates the issue. And so my question is: 

Can anyone vouch for the reliability and quality of PoD books from the DMsGuild and DTRPG?

I’ve heard good things, but I’ve also read many horror stories about books falling apart after only a few weeks of use. Are these isolated incidents, or would I be wise to avoid PoD entirely?

If anyone could share their experiences with these sites, it’d be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

edit 12/4/24

I have had nothing but good experiences  with Drivethru's POD, though my focus has been mostly BECMI related 

I've got a few original Planescape books and a few DMsGuild authors available in PoD.  I'm happy with the stuff I got designed as books.  I'd only caution two things. 1.) If you're ordering something that was originally a boxed set, get some of those index tabs, because you're going to need them to negotiate between the varied books.  2.) Read reviews.  When Minsc and Boo's journal of villainy came out, it gained some ill will among print on demand folks upset with the number of typos in it.  I personally enjoyed the book, but I read/skimmedit pretty quickly and the few things in the book I've actually used in playing seemed fine. Reviews not only will discuss proofreading but the overall quality of the pdf or scan being used for the PoD. A lot of early D&D was print native, never having a digital production file when first published, so those are available via OCR/scanners, and the quality of those can vary depending on the source of the scan and other factors.  If a lot of people aren't liking the quality of a work, and no one seems to be seeing a correction being made, that's in buyer beware territory.

To midnight’s point-there’s inherent differences between current independent pubs and reproduced older pubs that actually first appeared as printed books-most of those went through a much more rigorous editor review process because you can’t print half a million books and then fix a typo.  New pubs likely have higher quality images and might look prettier but many are made in basements without the same review rigor.  I think there’s examples in both categories of below quality-and great quality.

my only design experience is making a deck of cards on the sister site-   Drivethrucards and the quality of the physical product is just superb (setting aside the content as I’m wildly biased in that regard).

I found the Elemental Evil's PC on DTRPG and ordered it. When I got it, it had some other book printed out as well. Print quality and cover were fine, it just had a few dozen extra pages of something I hadn't ordered included in the book. Sent an email to their customer support and was sent a new EEPC book that did not have the other book. Just some print/collating/binding(stapling) error that customer service fixed quickly.