I see that point, I think I was trying to emphasize the categories that are on dnd beyond not forcing people to use them. If we lean into those categories we might get more submissions using them. And yes the update process is a little annoying but that's why I never submit my homebrew until the end of the competition. I have a pretty easy system for updating it myself now but it isn't intuitive for new users
While I appreciate your thoughts, I think this would rather deter people from participating.
Unfortunately, properly creating D&D Beyond homebrew so that it can be used in a game and actually works, is, at least of now, very unituitive and complicated. Also, the D&D Beyond homebrew creator is extremely restrictive, because it does not support many custom mechanics, any spells granted to subclasses must be SRD ones, you can't link to your other published homebrew, when you update your homebrew, links still lead to the old version...
As a result, creating homebrew on other sites like GMBinder is much easier and allows for much more creative freedom. It also is why my subclasses all are on GMBinder rather than DnD Beyond. Actually my thought behind releasing my monsters on Beyond is that DMs here have easy access to them if they want to use them. But with subclasses and other homebrew (including monsters that use more than one statblock as they have different forms) that just does not really work.
I've gone pretty deep into using the dnd beyond tools including running calculations and adding code. So I guess I'm more familiar with them than most. And I don't venture far out of the SRD anyways so I guess some of this might be specific to me. I still think it benefits us to lean into dnd beyond since we are on the site. People only know this competition exists because of the site so most likely everyone here uses it. But yeah we shouldn't count submissions out because they aren't on the site
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.
I know I wouldn’t participate if it wasn’t held on Beyond.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
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.
I agree, although sometimes it is quite obvious :-) It also is annoying when people give bad votes because they either haven't read a submission properly or just doing it out of spite.
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.
Maybe we should just wait for now how the situation evolves. Maybe we can stay on Beyond, maybe it then is indeed a better move to leave this platform behind.
This idea might just be too out there, but what if we (1) narrow the scope of valid entries, maybe even down to just what the DMG gives guidelines for homebrewing, and (2) have a few separate themes not tied to any category. So people could make races, subclasses, spells, feats, backgrounds, magic items, and monsters and could submit up to one ‘brew for each theme. Separating themes from types of entries might simplify things. Or it might complicate thing, I don’t know.
Maybe then, in addition to that, we could have an “other” category for, well, other things - dungeons, encounters, NCPs, stories, terrain, miscellaneous rules (whether additional or revised rules), etc., etc.
I don’t know that any of this would work, but you never know what good ideas other people will have because you proposed your bad idea. 🤷♂️
If we could get participation up enough, it might even work to have a category for every type of DDB-create-able submission (race, subclass, etc.). With few people, though, that probably wouldn’t be feasible.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I think for right now I am going to keep things simple. The competition will stay on D&D Beyond and the categories will more or less stay the same with some small modifications (as I outlined on the previous page). During the next competition, I will explore routes of 'networking' the competition to see if we can increase popularity/participation and we can continue to discuss how we want to change the rules to give ideas for whoever the next judge is.
I am waiting on some final feedback from the other winners in a group message we are using, but I hope to have the next thread started by the end of today
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 think for right now I am going to keep things simple. The competition will stay on D&D Beyond and the categories will more or less stay the same with some small modifications (as I outlined on the previous page). During the next competition, I will explore routes of 'networking' the competition to see if we can increase popularity/participation and we can continue to discuss how we want to change the rules to give ideas for whoever the next judge is.
I am waiting on some final feedback from the other winners in a group message we are using, but I hope to have the next thread started by the end of today
Good plan.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
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I see that point, I think I was trying to emphasize the categories that are on dnd beyond not forcing people to use them. If we lean into those categories we might get more submissions using them. And yes the update process is a little annoying but that's why I never submit my homebrew until the end of the competition. I have a pretty easy system for updating it myself now but it isn't intuitive for new users
While I appreciate your thoughts, I think this would rather deter people from participating.
Unfortunately, properly creating D&D Beyond homebrew so that it can be used in a game and actually works, is, at least of now, very unituitive and complicated. Also, the D&D Beyond homebrew creator is extremely restrictive, because it does not support many custom mechanics, any spells granted to subclasses must be SRD ones, you can't link to your other published homebrew, when you update your homebrew, links still lead to the old version...
As a result, creating homebrew on other sites like GMBinder is much easier and allows for much more creative freedom. It also is why my subclasses all are on GMBinder rather than DnD Beyond. Actually my thought behind releasing my monsters on Beyond is that DMs here have easy access to them if they want to use them. But with subclasses and other homebrew (including monsters that use more than one statblock as they have different forms) that just does not really work.
I've gone pretty deep into using the dnd beyond tools including running calculations and adding code. So I guess I'm more familiar with them than most. And I don't venture far out of the SRD anyways so I guess some of this might be specific to me. I still think it benefits us to lean into dnd beyond since we are on the site. People only know this competition exists because of the site so most likely everyone here uses it. But yeah we shouldn't count submissions out because they aren't on the site
I know I wouldn’t participate if it wasn’t held on Beyond.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I agree, although sometimes it is quite obvious :-) It also is annoying when people give bad votes because they either haven't read a submission properly or just doing it out of spite.
Maybe we should just wait for now how the situation evolves. Maybe we can stay on Beyond, maybe it then is indeed a better move to leave this platform behind.
This idea might just be too out there, but what if we (1) narrow the scope of valid entries, maybe even down to just what the DMG gives guidelines for homebrewing, and (2) have a few separate themes not tied to any category. So people could make races, subclasses, spells, feats, backgrounds, magic items, and monsters and could submit up to one ‘brew for each theme. Separating themes from types of entries might simplify things. Or it might complicate thing, I don’t know.
Maybe then, in addition to that, we could have an “other” category for, well, other things - dungeons, encounters, NCPs, stories, terrain, miscellaneous rules (whether additional or revised rules), etc., etc.
I don’t know that any of this would work, but you never know what good ideas other people will have because you proposed your bad idea. 🤷♂️
If we could get participation up enough, it might even work to have a category for every type of DDB-create-able submission (race, subclass, etc.). With few people, though, that probably wouldn’t be feasible.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I think for right now I am going to keep things simple. The competition will stay on D&D Beyond and the categories will more or less stay the same with some small modifications (as I outlined on the previous page). During the next competition, I will explore routes of 'networking' the competition to see if we can increase popularity/participation and we can continue to discuss how we want to change the rules to give ideas for whoever the next judge is.
I am waiting on some final feedback from the other winners in a group message we are using, but I hope to have the next thread started by the end of today
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
New thread is live: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/homebrew-house-rules/161874-competition-of-the-finest-brews-xiii
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Good plan.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.