Greetings DnD, @Devil_Master and I are bringing this topic to the community as a whole for discussion rather than making an executive decision like we had to on Piracy.
- The Question
While this has not become an issue yet, it would be a good idea to start this discussion now rather than later. So, the question is, where will we as a community draw the line between OC and Homebrew posts, and advertising.
- Why This is an Issue
This community is an open space for everyone to share their ideas, questions, stories, art, maps, homebrew, ANYTHING relating to Dungeons and Dragons (within the rules). We do not want to discourage anyone from posting, BUT we have to draw this line because no one wants to be spammed with advertisements.
That being said, there are those who create content for sale on various platforms, which is by no means a bad thing and entirely expected when someone puts their heart and soul into OC content. For example I am talking about OC art prints, OC modules, OC maps, OC homebrew, etc. These things take enormous amounts of time and talent to create and it is completely within those content creator’s rights to ask for payment for their product.
What we as a community need to decide on, is how to define when something goes from content sharing here, to advertising.
- Solution for Discussion
OC content MUST be posted in a way that is freely accessible by users of this community regarding the specific thing posted.
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Artwork - OC Artwork must be viewable here, without paywall, but may be linked in the body text to payable prints, higher resolutions for sale, etc… No comment spam, No reply spam, just a single link in the body text of your post.
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Battlemaps - OC battlemaps must be viewable here, without paywall, in a usable and not excessively downgraded state but may be linked to a payable version of a higher resolution/quality/detail etc.
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Homebrew* - OC Homebrew Content must be posted in a viewable, usable, and not excessively downgraded state but may be linked to a payable version that has higher detail/quality/etc.
*Clarification - Say you have a homebrew race. You can post here at the bare minimum, a basic framework of the race, how to use them, how to create a character with them, etc. and then you may link to a PAID version where maybe you have more details, lore, art, formatted in a way you’d see in official books etc.
Looking forward to the community’s ideas on this topic and establishing a rule set for this in the near future. I think it also goes without saying this will be a living rule set and will be amenable in the future.
Edit: We have also considered the idea of implementing post limits if that becomes an issue, for example if someone wants to show off their art work and link to their site, they can only do so once per week to cut down on the spam.
Personally I despised the amount of character artist advertising that goes on on Reddit’s DnD community. In absence of any way of filtering such things out of my feed on Lemmy, I’ll likely just unsub from any community where that sort of thing becomes the norm.
Personally I don’t see it as a problem when someone posts some art they did (commissioned or otherwise) that has D&D relevance, and in the body of the post mentions “I am taking commissions, DM me for details” or whatever. However, it becomes a problem when they’re posting everything they make, and it’s clear the intention is to fish for sales, not to show off some neat, topical art. It’s very hard to draw up hard and fast rules for this, and I think everyone would have a different idea of what’s ‘too much’.
I think the rules laid out in #1 are pretty straight forward, no spamming the comments, no replying to every comment with your link. Just a single link in the body content of your post. I would expect any DM spamming to also be reported as that’s just rude.
Frankly I just am not interested in people’s character art. To me that is very distantly related to ttrpgs. I join a community like this to discuss what people are actually doing in their games, not to see a bunch of drawings.
to that I would say, this IS the catch all community for DnD. I wish we had post tags of some sort and filters but until then it’s all going to be in one feed. I also think that saying something is “distantly related” is very much just your opinion. As I have said before in other threads, to some people the art IS the best part of DnD. To others the details of the roles and the harrowing adventure, and to others the behind the scenes creation of figures, battle maps, etc… DnD is a very WIDE community and I encourage you to widen your view on it.
Nah, I’ll just unsub from this sub. There are quite a few dnd/TTRPG communities on Lemmy. If this one goes the route of being flooded with starving artists I have no problem unsubbing. That’s part of the beauty of the fediverse.
Agreed. I never subscribed to /r/dnd because I’m interested in actually playing the game.
That’s exactly why we want to have this discussion