Congratulations, my fellow victors, and thank you to everybody who voted. I think I shall be seeing you all in the next competition. :)
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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Congratulations, especially to everyone who won! Looking forward to the next competition.
A thought I had a little while ago was that there really aren’t all that many people who do much with COTFB. Part of that might be that people who don’t have a lot of experience homebrewing, or who think their ‘brews aren’t very good, don’t feel comfortable putting their creations up against those of the fantastic homebrewers here. (Not to make anyone here feel guilty about submitting, of course. I fon’t even know if that’s a factor.) But another part of the reason for that lack of participation could be that a lot of people just don’t know about it. Might it be a good idea to try to make it more known to the forums in general? I don’t know, just a thought. (I know it wouldn’t happen, but it would be really cool to see COTFB become a part of DDB, maybe officially. Also just a thought.)
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Congrats to everyone who won!! I'm definitely looking forward to the next round—these have been a lot of fun so far, even if I'm still figuring out exactly how to balance my homebrew XD
I've always felt that the pc options category was way too large
Things such as classes, subclasses, spells, feats, or race/lineage options.
It really sucks to write up a full subclass only to be beaten by a one-paragraph feat. And the fact that we have an entire class going against those other options seems unbalanced. Also, some of the inspirational options sound like DM options sometimes. Not to mention that the inspirational category is where the zaniest ideas often beat the more thought-out ones because they are more accessible or funny.
I would suggest something like this
DM Options: Things such as monsters, locations, encounters, puzzles, random tables or rules
PC Options: Things such as magic items, spells, feats, or even character builds.
Character Builder Options: Things such as Race/Lineage, Class, Subclass, and background.
DM Options - Things a DM uses to create or advance the story
PC Options - Things a player character can choose during their adventure
Character Builder Options - Things a player uses to create their character before the story begins (Is there a better name for this category?)
I think those categories are all similar in the amount of effort required for a submission. There is definitely some variance but I think they are closer than the previous groupings while keeping most everything in.
Also, I strongly feel that every creator should give their own submission a 5 rating. It prevents cheaters and people who aren't informed from skewing the results. The current system of not voting for yourself can be manipulated. Also, you could set up the voting so that everyone HAS to vote for everything. Some voting systems let you put this in as a rule (I think google forms does as well) so that no one gets missed. But if you are telling contestants not to vote for themselves you can never set that system up.
I've always felt that the pc options category was way too large
Things such as classes, subclasses, spells, feats, or race/lineage options.
It really sucks to write up a full subclass only to be beaten by a one-paragraph feat. And the fact that we have an entire class going against those other options seems unbalanced. Also, some of the inspirational options sound like DM options sometimes. Not to mention that the inspirational category is where the zaniest ideas often beat the more thought-out ones because they are more accessible or funny.
I would suggest something like this
DM Options: Things such as monsters, locations, encounters, puzzles, random tables or rules
PC Options: Things such as magic items, spells, feats, or even character builds.
Character Builder Options: Things such as Race/Lineage, Class, Subclass, and background.
DM Options - Things a DM uses to create or advance the story
PC Options - Things a player character can choose during their adventure
Character Builder Options - Things a player uses to create their character before the story begins (Is there a better name for this category?)
I think those categories are all similar in the amount of effort required for a submission. There is definitely some variance but I think they are closer than the previous groupings while keeping most everything in.
Also, I strongly feel that every creator should give their own submission a 5 rating. It prevents cheaters and people who aren't informed from skewing the results. The current system of not voting for yourself can be manipulated. Also, you could set up the voting so that everyone HAS to vote for everything. Some voting systems let you put this in as a rule (I think google forms does as well) so that no one gets missed. But if you are telling contestants not to vote for themselves you can never set that system up.
Interesting, I could see that voting system working. That way, creators either give themselves a 5 or give themselves a lower score. Question is how the 5 would be factored into the scoring.
As for the categories, I feel that your ideas actually do work better than what we currently have; “inspirational” options were quite a broad category and I always felt character builds didn’t quite fit in them, as every other kind of “Inspirational” option was used solely by DMs.
Question is how the 5 would be factored into the scoring.
If everyone gets a free 5 from themselves it's literally the same as if they all got a zero. So at least in that system, the only person who could screw up the result is the contestant by voting less than 5 on their own submission.
We had a few previous iterations of the competition in which the google form was setup such that everyone had to vote for every submission, but that drew some criticism and was later not employed.
As for altering the categories, I am certainly not against trying something new, but there are a few things that still seem off
1) You raise the issue about a subclass being beaten by a feat which requires much less writing / work to make, but then you still have class & subclass in the same category as lineages & backgrounds, where the latter two dont require as much work as the former two. Not to mention, even within subclasses alone theres alot of difference in complexity and # of features between base classes, making some more work than others
Edit.Idea: I do not think it will be possible to have every submission type ever be equal in terms of the work required. Perhaps what could be done to help with this is give the Judge the power to break ties by "judging" which of the tied submissions seemed to have more work put into it. For example, a class should beat a feat with the same point average, a full dungeon should beat a random table with the same point average, etc). Granted, the Judge will never be privy to work external to what is presented (like how much time is put into playtesting and such) but there should be some difference in quality that is apparent from what is presented. This also gives the position of Judge some actual influence over the outcome of the competition rather than being purely organizational / ceremonial. It also would simplify the tie-breaking process.
2) If the third category is going to be "Character Builder" options, then I still feel that feats make sense as part of the category. Furthermore, it seems odd that character builds are in the PC category rather than the Character Builder one. Ultimately, my issue is that everything in the PC category (outside of magic items) could be argued to be integral parts of what a player might choose to construct or inspire their character builds, so the PC & Character Builder categories become somewhat redundant and have alot of overlap in terms what they hope to accomplish.
DM Options: Things such as monsters, encounters/dungeons , magic items, random tables, or even optional rules
(wanted to move magic items back to DM, as these are up to the DM to award and can act as important story drivers)
PC Options: Things such as species, subclasses, classes, spells, feats, backgrounds, or even character builds.
(consolidated everything back into the PC Option. This makes this category the broadest, but it makes the most sense for a grouping)
Social/Environmental Options: Things such terrains, hazards, puzzles, non-monstrous NPCs, stories/lore, or even institutions like shops or taverns.
(has some similarity to DM options in who it will be the most useful to, but purposefully draws attention away from combat)
In this way, every category has some variety and the longer, more writing-intensive options from the original Inspirational category are divided into the other categories (encounters for DM, character builds for PC, and stories for S/E)
DM Options: Things such as monsters, encounters/dungeons , magic items, random tables, or even optional rules
(wanted to move magic items back to DM, as these are up to the DM to award and can act as important story drivers)
PC Options: Things such as species, subclasses, classes, spells, feats, backgrounds, or even character builds.
(consolidated everything back into the PC Option. This makes this category the broadest, but it makes the most sense for a grouping)
Social/Environmental Options: Things such terrains, hazards, puzzles, non-monstrous NPCs, stories/lore, or even institutions like shops or taverns.
(has some similarity to DM options in who it will be the most useful to, but purposefully draws attention away from combat)
In this way, every category has some variety and the longer, more writing-intensive options from the original Inspirational category are divided into the other categories (encounters for DM, character builds for PC, and stories for S/E)
Seems good to me, except I would omit character builds.
1) You raise the issue about a subclass being beaten by a feat which requires much less writing / work to make, but then you still have class & subclass in the same category as lineages & backgrounds, where the latter two dont require as much work as the former two. Not to mention, even within subclasses alone theres alot of difference in complexity and # of features between base classes, making some more work than others
2) If the third category is going to be "Character Builder" options, then I still feel that feats make sense as part of the category. Furthermore, it seems odd that character builds are in the PC category rather than the Character Builder one. Ultimately, my issue is that everything in the PC category (outside of magic items) could be argued to be integral parts of what a player might choose to construct or inspire their character builds, so the PC & Character Builder categories become somewhat redundant and have alot of overlap in terms what they hope to accomplish.
1) I agree but I think a category with only class/subclass is too small. Also creating an entire race in line with the new MOTM is not a small homebrew. I almost didn't put background in but it is something you choose before you create your character so it fits well. Also if you really custom pick what languages, tools, proficiencies, features, ideals, traits, bonds, and flaws you get with your background (not to mention the story behind it), a background can be very complex. Definitely more complex than most items or spells. The problem is that not many people do that and the ones who do should be rewarded. Also, I think that point actually shows why there needs to be a change. If a subclass requires much more work than a background, then it definitely shouldn't be grouped with something like spells.
Not to mention, even within subclasses alone theres alot of difference in complexity and # of features between base classes, making some more work than others. Yesbut you have that issue with every submission. The bigger point is grouping the more complex creations together and trying to separate things like subclass and spell from being in the same category while keeping a theme for the categories.
2) Feats the player pics after they make their character (unless they are a variant human) and that's how I separated everything.
DM Options - Things a DM uses to create or advance the story
PC Options - Things a player character can choose during their adventure
Character Builder Options - Things a player uses to create their character before the story begin
Character builds could go in either because it relies both on things you create before you start your story and things you pick during your story. But to be honest it really isn't homebrew so it should probably just be taken out. I just tried to keep every type of submission that was in previously.
I think a better name could be given for the Character Builder options. I thought about "Background Options" but it's too similar to the background submission. However"Background Options" might work better
1) You raise the issue about a subclass being beaten by a feat which requires much less writing / work to make, but then you still have class & subclass in the same category as lineages & backgrounds, where the latter two dont require as much work as the former two. Not to mention, even within subclasses alone theres alot of difference in complexity and # of features between base classes, making some more work than others
2) If the third category is going to be "Character Builder" options, then I still feel that feats make sense as part of the category. Furthermore, it seems odd that character builds are in the PC category rather than the Character Builder one. Ultimately, my issue is that everything in the PC category (outside of magic items) could be argued to be integral parts of what a player might choose to construct or inspire their character builds, so the PC & Character Builder categories become somewhat redundant and have alot of overlap in terms what they hope to accomplish.
1) I agree but I think a category with only class/subclass is too small. Also creating an entire race in line with the new MOTM is not a small homebrew. I almost didn't put background in but it is something you choose before you create your character so it fits well. Also if you really custom pick what languages, tools, proficiencies, features, ideals, traits, bonds, and flaws you get with your background (not to mention the story behind it), a background can be very complex. Definitely more complex than most items or spells. The problem is that not many people do that and the ones who do should be rewarded. Also, I think that point actually shows why there needs to be a change. If a subclass requires much more work than a background, then it definitely shouldn't be grouped with something like spells.
Not to mention, even within subclasses alone theres alot of difference in complexity and # of features between base classes, making some more work than others. Yesbut you have that issue with every submission. The bigger point is grouping the more complex creations together and trying to separate things like subclass and spell from being in the same category while keeping a theme for the categories.
2) Feats the player pics after they make their character (unless they are a variant human) and that's how I separated everything.
DM Options - Things a DM uses to create or advance the story
PC Options - Things a player character can choose during their adventure
Character Builder Options - Things a player uses to create their character before the story begin
Character builds could go in either because it relies both on things you create before you start your story and things you pick during your story. But to be honest it really isn't homebrew so it should probably just be taken out. I just tried to keep every type of submission that was in previously.
I think a better name could be given for the Character Builder options. I thought about "Background Options" but it's too similar to the background submission. However"Background Options" might work better
I see now the criteria used for separating CB Options and PC Options, and that makes sense, although arguably subclasses are in a grey zone of being picked before the story begins and during the adventure, depending on what level the adventure starts at, what class you are playing, and whether or not you multiclass.
The issue of one submission type requiring more work than another is always going to be somewhat subjective and it wouldnt necessarily be easy to have some sort of base reward system for added length. As I posted as an edit to my other response, perhaps the simplest way to do this would be to give tie-breaker power to the Judge to ascertain which of the tied submissions may have required more work to make.
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As another aside, to reiterate another comment from earlier it feels as though the participation in CotFB has dropped. This most recent example may simply be a consequence of it falling right around the holidays, which is a busy time of year for most people. That being said, IIRC the highest voter participation we have seen before I think is in the 20-25 people range.
Especially with the mass exodus of participation on DDB services with the OGL issue (which we will not delve into here), I worry that participation in forum threads like this may similarly drop.
I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how we could further bring attention to this competition and promote participation. The simplest idea I can come up with is an 'advertising thread' on the General Discussion forum, but I feel like that might be quickly removed or moved by a mod back to the Homebrew and Houserule forum, where it would quickly disappear.
As another note, the Homebrew and Houserule forum also isnt very good for visibility on its own, because half of Page 1 is occupied by pinned/locked homebrew guide threads, so new threads quickly get banished to Page 2 and beyond without constant updates.
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There are other probably more active communities, especially now with the OGL issue making people leave Beyond in masses. Maybe we should try to establish a successor to this contest on a different, neutral platform like Reddit?
I see nothing wrong with a feat potentially beating a subclass. If it’s better, and written better, it should win.
I think the problem is that they aren't comparable but are in the same category. It's harder to say one is better than the other because they are so different
BUT, since someone asked about making this more popular I think it's worth having a discussion about the actual purpose of this competition. Obviously, it's just to have fun and promote homebrew but I think we could do more with it.
There are only a few homebrews that you can actually submit to dnd beyond. Backgrounds, Feats, Magic Items, Monsters, Races, Spells, and Subclasses. When I first entered this competition a year ago, intuitively I thought that all the submissions would be things I could actually use in my game. However, a lot of the submissions are just cool things from someone else's game but can't really be added to everyone's game. Basically, the difference between buying the story of a book, or buying specific items from it like can be done with the adventures on dnd beyond. I've always thought of homebrew as that list of things that I can individually add to my game, not necessarily supporting someones upcoming kickstart campaign. We don't call custom campaigns homebrew, homebrew is much smaller and more accessible. Also, the website itself has a ranking system for homebrew creations that can be added to peoples games right on dnd beyond that we don't really interact with.
What would it look like to restrict submissions primarily to only submittable content on dndbeyond? If the competition is pumping out quality usable content for the users of this site then it could be a place that users return to every so often for new cool homebrew to add to their game. This would naturally make it more popular and hopefully, create more brewers.
I think we should consolidate all non-submittable content to the website into its own category so that we keep it around but keep the emphasis on what people can actually start using.
Going off some of what I've been reading how about this change to categories
#1 Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Feats,
#2 Subclass (No classes), Backgrounds, Races, Rules
#1 consists of homebrew of similar investment and things such as puzzles, could be accepted as magic items
#2 consists of things of larger investment and adds rules which also take a ton of thought
#3 is everything that couldn't be added to dnd beyond itself but could still inspire other's custom campaigns
It always bums me out when someone submits a homebrew not through dnd beyond because then I can't easily add it to my game. Especially subclasses, there have been a few cool subclasses made as pdf's that are basically unusable to anyone who uses digital tools. I don't want to go through the process of adding it all over into dnd beyond myself when it could have been done at the start.
And again this would make 2/3's of the competition immediately relevant to the actual homebrew system that runs this site on a likes and adds basis.
I think it's a worthwhile discussion, we are on the dnd beyond forums but the competition could be held on any forum anywhere. It would benefit us to lean towards the actual site we all use.
Im not a fan of restricting things to what can be built using D&D Beyond tools. I understand the desire to easily add homebrew to your games without much extra work, but there are two issues with using D&D Beyond Tools
1) It makes updating your submission during the competition a pain. This is why I prefer to use a thread post or Google Drive for my submissions. If I use D&D Beyond's tools, then every time I spot a typo or want to update how something works, then I need to make and publish a new version, which means I also need to update the link submitted to the homebrew thread. The other two can be readily edited and altered without much fuss
2) It restricts creativity. When building into the D&D Beyond homebrew tools, there are only certain types of benefits & bonuses you can mechanically work into the tools. If someone wanted to suggest the use of some novel mechanic for their homebrew submission (like using a Damage Threshold for creatures or casting spells with Hit Dice or something else odd) the tools do not exist to reflect that, so those sorts of submissions would not have the benefits of automation that comes with the standard bonuses and such for D&D Beyond character sheets.
There are other probably more active communities, especially now with the OGL issue making people leave Beyond in masses. Maybe we should try to establish a successor to this contest on a different, neutral platform like Reddit?
I wouldnt mind making a companion thread on other social media, but I dont want to move the competition somewhere else permanently. I like doing this competition on D&D Beyond, personally. Beyond that, I also fear it might alienate / drive away people who regularly participate if they do not have an account on Reddit or whatever other platform was chosen.
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Congrats to all of you, and great job Kaboom! This is now the third time you've won the competition... :)
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HERE.Congratulations, my fellow victors, and thank you to everybody who voted. I think I shall be seeing you all in the next competition. :)
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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Congratulations, especially to everyone who won! Looking forward to the next competition.
A thought I had a little while ago was that there really aren’t all that many people who do much with COTFB. Part of that might be that people who don’t have a lot of experience homebrewing, or who think their ‘brews aren’t very good, don’t feel comfortable putting their creations up against those of the fantastic homebrewers here. (Not to make anyone here feel guilty about submitting, of course. I fon’t even know if that’s a factor.) But another part of the reason for that lack of participation could be that a lot of people just don’t know about it. Might it be a good idea to try to make it more known to the forums in general? I don’t know, just a thought. (I know it wouldn’t happen, but it would be really cool to see COTFB become a part of DDB, maybe officially. Also just a thought.)
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Congrats to everyone who won!! I'm definitely looking forward to the next round—these have been a lot of fun so far, even if I'm still figuring out exactly how to balance my homebrew XD
I've always felt that the pc options category was way too large
Things such as classes, subclasses, spells, feats, or race/lineage options.
It really sucks to write up a full subclass only to be beaten by a one-paragraph feat. And the fact that we have an entire class going against those other options seems unbalanced. Also, some of the inspirational options sound like DM options sometimes. Not to mention that the inspirational category is where the zaniest ideas often beat the more thought-out ones because they are more accessible or funny.
I would suggest something like this
DM Options - Things a DM uses to create or advance the story
PC Options - Things a player character can choose during their adventure
Character Builder Options - Things a player uses to create their character before the story begins (Is there a better name for this category?)
I think those categories are all similar in the amount of effort required for a submission. There is definitely some variance but I think they are closer than the previous groupings while keeping most everything in.
Also, I strongly feel that every creator should give their own submission a 5 rating. It prevents cheaters and people who aren't informed from skewing the results. The current system of not voting for yourself can be manipulated. Also, you could set up the voting so that everyone HAS to vote for everything. Some voting systems let you put this in as a rule (I think google forms does as well) so that no one gets missed. But if you are telling contestants not to vote for themselves you can never set that system up.
Interesting, I could see that voting system working. That way, creators either give themselves a 5 or give themselves a lower score. Question is how the 5 would be factored into the scoring.
As for the categories, I feel that your ideas actually do work better than what we currently have; “inspirational” options were quite a broad category and I always felt character builds didn’t quite fit in them, as every other kind of “Inspirational” option was used solely by DMs.
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If everyone gets a free 5 from themselves it's literally the same as if they all got a zero. So at least in that system, the only person who could screw up the result is the contestant by voting less than 5 on their own submission.
Fornez-
We had a few previous iterations of the competition in which the google form was setup such that everyone had to vote for every submission, but that drew some criticism and was later not employed.
As for altering the categories, I am certainly not against trying something new, but there are a few things that still seem off
1) You raise the issue about a subclass being beaten by a feat which requires much less writing / work to make, but then you still have class & subclass in the same category as lineages & backgrounds, where the latter two dont require as much work as the former two. Not to mention, even within subclasses alone theres alot of difference in complexity and # of features between base classes, making some more work than others
Edit. Idea: I do not think it will be possible to have every submission type ever be equal in terms of the work required. Perhaps what could be done to help with this is give the Judge the power to break ties by "judging" which of the tied submissions seemed to have more work put into it. For example, a class should beat a feat with the same point average, a full dungeon should beat a random table with the same point average, etc). Granted, the Judge will never be privy to work external to what is presented (like how much time is put into playtesting and such) but there should be some difference in quality that is apparent from what is presented. This also gives the position of Judge some actual influence over the outcome of the competition rather than being purely organizational / ceremonial. It also would simplify the tie-breaking process.
2) If the third category is going to be "Character Builder" options, then I still feel that feats make sense as part of the category. Furthermore, it seems odd that character builds are in the PC category rather than the Character Builder one. Ultimately, my issue is that everything in the PC category (outside of magic items) could be argued to be integral parts of what a player might choose to construct or inspire their character builds, so the PC & Character Builder categories become somewhat redundant and have alot of overlap in terms what they hope to accomplish.
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How about this for the three categories:
(wanted to move magic items back to DM, as these are up to the DM to award and can act as important story drivers)
(consolidated everything back into the PC Option. This makes this category the broadest, but it makes the most sense for a grouping)
(has some similarity to DM options in who it will be the most useful to, but purposefully draws attention away from combat)
In this way, every category has some variety and the longer, more writing-intensive options from the original Inspirational category are divided into the other categories (encounters for DM, character builds for PC, and stories for S/E)
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Seems good to me, except I would omit character builds.
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1) I agree but I think a category with only class/subclass is too small. Also creating an entire race in line with the new MOTM is not a small homebrew. I almost didn't put background in but it is something you choose before you create your character so it fits well. Also if you really custom pick what languages, tools, proficiencies, features, ideals, traits, bonds, and flaws you get with your background (not to mention the story behind it), a background can be very complex. Definitely more complex than most items or spells. The problem is that not many people do that and the ones who do should be rewarded. Also, I think that point actually shows why there needs to be a change. If a subclass requires much more work than a background, then it definitely shouldn't be grouped with something like spells.
Not to mention, even within subclasses alone theres alot of difference in complexity and # of features between base classes, making some more work than others. Yes but you have that issue with every submission. The bigger point is grouping the more complex creations together and trying to separate things like subclass and spell from being in the same category while keeping a theme for the categories.
2) Feats the player pics after they make their character (unless they are a variant human) and that's how I separated everything.
DM Options - Things a DM uses to create or advance the story
PC Options - Things a player character can choose during their adventure
Character Builder Options - Things a player uses to create their character before the story begin
Character builds could go in either because it relies both on things you create before you start your story and things you pick during your story. But to be honest it really isn't homebrew so it should probably just be taken out. I just tried to keep every type of submission that was in previously.
I think a better name could be given for the Character Builder options. I thought about "Background Options" but it's too similar to the background submission. However"Background Options" might work better
I see now the criteria used for separating CB Options and PC Options, and that makes sense, although arguably subclasses are in a grey zone of being picked before the story begins and during the adventure, depending on what level the adventure starts at, what class you are playing, and whether or not you multiclass.
The issue of one submission type requiring more work than another is always going to be somewhat subjective and it wouldnt necessarily be easy to have some sort of base reward system for added length. As I posted as an edit to my other response, perhaps the simplest way to do this would be to give tie-breaker power to the Judge to ascertain which of the tied submissions may have required more work to make.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I see nothing wrong with a feat potentially beating a subclass. If it’s better, and written better, it should win.
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As another aside, to reiterate another comment from earlier it feels as though the participation in CotFB has dropped. This most recent example may simply be a consequence of it falling right around the holidays, which is a busy time of year for most people. That being said, IIRC the highest voter participation we have seen before I think is in the 20-25 people range.
Especially with the mass exodus of participation on DDB services with the OGL issue (which we will not delve into here), I worry that participation in forum threads like this may similarly drop.
I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how we could further bring attention to this competition and promote participation. The simplest idea I can come up with is an 'advertising thread' on the General Discussion forum, but I feel like that might be quickly removed or moved by a mod back to the Homebrew and Houserule forum, where it would quickly disappear.
As another note, the Homebrew and Houserule forum also isnt very good for visibility on its own, because half of Page 1 is occupied by pinned/locked homebrew guide threads, so new threads quickly get banished to Page 2 and beyond without constant updates.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Adohand’s Kitchen, perhaps.
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I am an Archfey, but nobody seems to notice.
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Not a bad idea. On a similar note, with this being a competition do you think it could fit to have a companion thread in Forum Games?
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There are other probably more active communities, especially now with the OGL issue making people leave Beyond in masses. Maybe we should try to establish a successor to this contest on a different, neutral platform like Reddit?
I think the problem is that they aren't comparable but are in the same category. It's harder to say one is better than the other because they are so different
BUT, since someone asked about making this more popular I think it's worth having a discussion about the actual purpose of this competition. Obviously, it's just to have fun and promote homebrew but I think we could do more with it.
There are only a few homebrews that you can actually submit to dnd beyond. Backgrounds, Feats, Magic Items, Monsters, Races, Spells, and Subclasses. When I first entered this competition a year ago, intuitively I thought that all the submissions would be things I could actually use in my game. However, a lot of the submissions are just cool things from someone else's game but can't really be added to everyone's game. Basically, the difference between buying the story of a book, or buying specific items from it like can be done with the adventures on dnd beyond. I've always thought of homebrew as that list of things that I can individually add to my game, not necessarily supporting someones upcoming kickstart campaign. We don't call custom campaigns homebrew, homebrew is much smaller and more accessible. Also, the website itself has a ranking system for homebrew creations that can be added to peoples games right on dnd beyond that we don't really interact with.
What would it look like to restrict submissions primarily to only submittable content on dndbeyond? If the competition is pumping out quality usable content for the users of this site then it could be a place that users return to every so often for new cool homebrew to add to their game. This would naturally make it more popular and hopefully, create more brewers.
I think we should consolidate all non-submittable content to the website into its own category so that we keep it around but keep the emphasis on what people can actually start using.
Going off some of what I've been reading how about this change to categories
#1 Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Feats,
#2 Subclass (No classes), Backgrounds, Races, Rules
#3 Lore/Landscape, Non-statblock NPC's, Stories/Encounters,
#1 consists of homebrew of similar investment and things such as puzzles, could be accepted as magic items
#2 consists of things of larger investment and adds rules which also take a ton of thought
#3 is everything that couldn't be added to dnd beyond itself but could still inspire other's custom campaigns
It always bums me out when someone submits a homebrew not through dnd beyond because then I can't easily add it to my game. Especially subclasses, there have been a few cool subclasses made as pdf's that are basically unusable to anyone who uses digital tools. I don't want to go through the process of adding it all over into dnd beyond myself when it could have been done at the start.
And again this would make 2/3's of the competition immediately relevant to the actual homebrew system that runs this site on a likes and adds basis.
I think it's a worthwhile discussion, we are on the dnd beyond forums but the competition could be held on any forum anywhere. It would benefit us to lean towards the actual site we all use.
Im not a fan of restricting things to what can be built using D&D Beyond tools. I understand the desire to easily add homebrew to your games without much extra work, but there are two issues with using D&D Beyond Tools
1) It makes updating your submission during the competition a pain. This is why I prefer to use a thread post or Google Drive for my submissions. If I use D&D Beyond's tools, then every time I spot a typo or want to update how something works, then I need to make and publish a new version, which means I also need to update the link submitted to the homebrew thread. The other two can be readily edited and altered without much fuss
2) It restricts creativity. When building into the D&D Beyond homebrew tools, there are only certain types of benefits & bonuses you can mechanically work into the tools. If someone wanted to suggest the use of some novel mechanic for their homebrew submission (like using a Damage Threshold for creatures or casting spells with Hit Dice or something else odd) the tools do not exist to reflect that, so those sorts of submissions would not have the benefits of automation that comes with the standard bonuses and such for D&D Beyond character sheets.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I wouldnt mind making a companion thread on other social media, but I dont want to move the competition somewhere else permanently. I like doing this competition on D&D Beyond, personally. Beyond that, I also fear it might alienate / drive away people who regularly participate if they do not have an account on Reddit or whatever other platform was chosen.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!