Dungeonmaster's Guild Review

This week Wizards of the Coast released Dungeon Master's Guild, an online market where you can buy and publish Dungeons and Dragons 5e Forgotten Realms material. Along with the Dungeon Master's Guild they also released their OGL (Open Game License) allowing you to publish your own setting as well.

Dungeon Master's Guild
More than a year ago I looked into publishing my own 5e material, but couldn't find any legal authorization to do so. My wife discovered a kickstarter by a guy who was publishing a 5e adventure, and it seemed like he broke a lot of the copyright rules. I wrote to Wizards of the Coast, mainly to get authority to publish my material or get an explanation why this other guy was allowed to do so. I got no response.

Now Wizards of the Coast has unveiled their online market place called Dungeon Master's Guild. This focuses on the Forgotten Realms. According to their podcast and other similar sources, they chose only to focus on the Forgotten Realms to begin with because it's a way for them to gather writers, bloggers, game designers, etc. It makes it easier for them to find material for their computer games, books, and future D&D material.

Open Game License
They haven't excluded the possibility to publish your own setting using dungeons and dragons 5e, but they won't publish it on the Dungeon Master's Guild. Instead, they released their OGL and their SRD (System Reference Document) allowing you to self publish your own material.

A research into artwork showed that artists that made a lot of material created better content than artists who focused a long time on one piece, so get cracking and create lots. Publish it here and there and see if you can't create something awesome.

The Future
Personally, I'm already writing an adventure. It is designed for our multiple gamemaster game and set in our collective setting. However, I've adjusted the adventure so that the published adventure is set in the Jungles of Chult. I should have it up on the Dungeon Master's Guild next week. After that, I might start looking into finishing my Orcslayer campaign, which was my plan when I started thinking about publishing my material. Still, I mustn't discard my other two projects: D&D at a LAN in November, and my 3.5 high level campaign that I'm hoping to resume this summer.