Homebrew Spotlight - what would you like to see?
Poll: Preferred format for the Homebrew Spotlight feature?
Preferred format for the Homebrew Spotlight feature? - Single Choice
- Video feature, showing the homebrew but with links to the homebrew in the forum post. 23.8%
- Just a forum post, with screenshots and written commentary, includes links to the homebrew 76.2%
Ended Nov 30, 2018
Poll: Each homebrew spotlight should be:
Each homebrew spotlight should be: - Single Choice
- a top 3 homebrew of each type for that month (background, subclass, race etc). 95.2%
- a top 10 homebrew of two types of homebrew, so for example Backgrounds & Races. 4.8%
Ended Nov 30, 2018
It's something I've talked about with staff and the other moderators for quite a while - doing a periodic Homebrew Spotlight feature.
Due to the time it would take to do properly and the commitment, I'm thinking it will be a monthly feature, aiming to publish at the start of each month.
I'm interested in feedback on format though, before I dive in (see the poll).
The Content of each Homebrew Spotlight
Please vote in the poll above.
I currently have two thoughts on how to do this:
Top 3 of each homebrew type
There are currently seven types of homebrew content that can be created: Backgrounds, Feats, Magic Items, Monsters, Races, Spells, & Subclasses.
With this format, each monthly homebrew spotlight would have a "Top 3" of each type, for a total of 21 included.
Top 10 of two homebrew types
This format would have greater focus on two homebrew types, with a Top Ten format for each of two homebrew types. For example, one month might be, "Homebrew Spotlight: Backgrounds & Races" and the following month could be, "Homebrew Spotlight: Feats & Spells"
With this format, there would be a total of 20 each month and homebrew Subclasses may well warrant being on it's own due to the added complexity of subclasses.
The format - Video or Forum?
Again, please vote above.
Pretty much as the poll says. I'm not sure how long a monthly spotlight video would be - with 20 homebrew to review, I would guess about half an hour?
How will I decide on the homebrew to include?
I'll be asking the community to make suggestions in a monthly forum thread. It will probably be posted on the 1st of the month, or shortly after and run for the entire month. The homebrew spotlight itself will likely be published around the middle of each month, giving me time to take the suggestions, decide on which homebrew to include and create the spotlight.
I understand that, without the ability to sort homebrew by date, or restrict to a date range, I am not sure how well this would work (note that I have access to the back end control panel, so CAN filter and sort the entries by date - this isn't something that is available to the community however).
edit: As Astromancer mentions below - restricting submissions to just the previous month would prevent some really good homebrew from being eligible, so I won't go with this.
Users may not nominate their own homebrew.Users may not nominate more than one homebrew in each category.Sooooo .... any questions and/or suggestions?
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
I voted for forum post-- But really my vote would be for an 'article' post. It would add an additional value to the feature-- though may be more 'official' than what you're going for. However, I would still vote for forum post, since I think that would be less work on you, which for a monthly volunteer feature I think is better for the feature's existence in the long-run. :)
I agree with everything Mellie said; the time to make such a video might not be worth the reward.
On the content side, I think a sampling of all the homebrew types would better. People looking for monsters wouldn't have to wait for the monster month, users wouldn't have to worry about nominating magical items when magical items were last month. If you were planning on collecting homebrews from that month, there would be two or three months of each homebrew type that would go ignored. This sampling also benefits from the forum format: if I'm only interested in spells, I don't want to wait 20 minutes for spells to come up.
I would encourage not collecting homebrew published within a the past month. There's so much good homebrew already, I wouldn't want those to be overlooked.
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Astromancer's Homebrew Assembly
"The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read." - Terry Pratchett
Thanks for the feedback so far - if the feature is popular enough to be worth continuing, it will naturally trend towards newer homebrew, but you're right Astromancer, it would be a poor plan to ignore a year of already published homebrew!
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
I don't know how I can efficiently nominate entries without this feature. I'm not going to be searching through a thousand pages of material to find the right date ranges. Is there any chance the devs can implement this sorting for the community? I've really wanted it for a while.
Any movement on this front? I still love the idea.