The folks behind Dungeons & Dragons, the classic tabletop role-playing game, have created Dungeon Masters Guild, a digital marketplace for regular people to publish and sell fifth edition (5e) D&D adventures, monsters and more.

Specifically, the Dungeons & Dragons group at Wizards of the Coast teamed up with digital marketplace operator OneBookShelf for the endeavor. OneBookShelf should be fairly familiar to anyone who’s purchased digital PDFs for tabletop RPGs before; they’re the backbone of Dungeons & Dragons Classics as well as DriveThruRPG. However, Dungeon Masters Guild is a little bit different thanks to the very specific kind of content that it’s intended to showcase.

The idea here is simple: Wizards lets folks sell stuff based on its rules in a digital walled garden of Wizards creation and curation. Typically, the company is very, very specific about what set of rules can be used in what — which is why so much of what you find is based on the 3.5 edition ruleset like Pathfinder. However, the release of Dungeon Masters Guild finally allows folks to self-publish stuff based on the fifth edition rules, and there’s another big “finally,” too.

“For the first time ever, you’ll be able to self-publish material set in the Forgotten Realms,” the article announcing Dungeon Masters Guild reveals. “Set your side trek in Neverwinter or Baldur’s Gate, have your characters go toe-to-toe with the Xanathar, the beholder crime lord of Waterdeep, or fall in with some traitorous drow in Menzoberranzan.”

The big catch, of course, is that anything self-published to Dungeon Masters Guild and sold for cash will only see half of whatever it makes going to the creators. The other half will be split between Wizards and OneBookShelf. The official FAQ is a handy guide to how that all shakes out, and the brand spankin’ new Systems Reference Document (SRD) outlines what one can self-publish via the Dungeon Masters Guild versus what’s available if one wants to self-publish in print under the Open Gaming License (OGL) for fifth edition.

Basically, Dungeons & Dragons just got a major shot in the arm thanks to opening up to self-published material.

Source: Dungeons & Dragons