Why can't 5e homebrew go here?

[TyGuy]

The homebrew sub is always so dead. And there's frequent "balance" discussions here already. Which is the heart of most homebrew threads, as people are usually simply looking for balance critique.
But if someone has an idea for a magic item specific to 5e they have to pass up this high traffic sub and post over where they're lucky to get 10 replies and maybe 2-3 will be honest balance feedback.
The frequency of 5e threads over there suggests that they wouldn't clog up this forum either.

What's the issue?

[strangebloke]

The homebrew sub is always so dead. And there's frequent "balance" discussions here already. Which is the heart of most homebrew threads, as people are usually simply looking for balance critique.
But if someone has an idea for a magic item specific to 5e they have to pass up this high traffic sub and post over where they're lucky to get 10 replies and maybe 2-3 will be honest balance feedback.
The frequency of 5e threads over there suggests that they wouldn't clog up this forum either.

What's the issue?

I wish I could tell you. Usually the route is, you post in the homebrew thread, then you subtly link back to it on the sly in here over and over until you get feedback. I think someone literally made a thread a while back named "why would you ever play a monk if [homebrewed monk replacement] was allowed." It's all very tongue in cheek.

[Kane0]

Presumably to distinguish between discussing the game as it is vs the game as it could be customized to be, especially given the average DM's response to the word 'homebrew'.

[Eriol]

I honestly don't know who is in charge of and administrates how the forums are laid out (The Giant himself?). Honestly, I was surprised that homebrew wasn't sub-forumed under the system they're in (so the 5e stuff would be in a sub-forum of this, and the others also separated appropriately). So this kind of discussion may not even be for this forum, but more for the Board/Site issues forum? Maybe? I honestly don't know.

And honestly, it's up to the admins. I wouldn't even know how to start gathering support from the community itself to change it, or even if there is a desire for it to be changed.

[Leon]

half the threads that should be in that section are here instead.

[Psyren]

I approve of the current policy; the last thing I want to do is to wade through a dozen threads of rando homebrew to get to any discussion about the printed game. Even the best homebrew on the planet is unlikely to see play at my groups' tables anyway.

Presumably to distinguish between discussing the game as it is vs the game as it could be customized to be, especially given the average DM's response to the word 'homebrew'.

A lot of homebrew goes way beyond simple customization too. A lot of us are fine with a simple tweak, e.g. "wouldn't it be cool if War Clerics got Extra Attack at 8 instead of that lousy Divine Strike" or "At my tables we start the martial arts die at 1d6." Whereas in the homebrew sub you're often being asked to review multiple brand new subclasses from the ground up.

[Amnestic]

I approve of the current policy; the last thing I want to do is to wade through a dozen threads of rando homebrew to get to any discussion about the printed game. Even the best homebrew on the planet is unlikely to see play at my groups' tables anyway.

I expect this is the reason primarily. As someone who staves off boredom by tippity typing up homebrew sometimes, I imagine if the forums were fused it would be frustrating to filter out my people's creations.

I can understand the idea behind subforuming it differently but I'm not sure that would really help get more eyes or voices on people's works.

[Willie the Duck]

The homebrew sub is always so dead. And there's frequent "balance" discussions here already. Which is the heart of most homebrew threads, as people are usually simply looking for balance critique.
But if someone has an idea for a magic item specific to 5e they have to pass up this high traffic sub and post over where they're lucky to get 10 replies and maybe 2-3 will be honest balance feedback.
The frequency of 5e threads over there suggests that they wouldn't clog up this forum either.

What's the issue?

None of us know. It doesn't have an obvious reason like the botspam explanation for thread necromancy or minimum character count. It's just how things were laid out.

That said, I think the homebrew thread is always so dead because most people don't want to engage with other group's homebrew, so moving the discussions over here 1) won't actually wildly increase the engagement upon the homebrew material, and 2) will make people not interested in said topics have to filter it themselves* to their frustration.
*and let's be honest, people are not great at labelling their thread titles to indicate things like this, so you have to go into the threads and read them to realize this.

In the end, the problem is not the forum layout, it is peoples' experience with other online gamers' homebrew. Reddit and dandwiki.com and other such places have suggested that willingness to post said homebrew and ability to step back and analyze with a critical eye don't go hand in hand very much. Obviously the solution to that is input and discussion, of course, so I understand why someone would want a well-travelled homebrew section.

[Amechra]

As someone who has been around for a fair bit... the homebrew forums used to be way more active. If I had to give a reason why they're so much less active now, I'd say it's because of a combination of the "death" of traditional forums (people who would've joined up here to share their stuff are going to Reddit instead) and because DM's Guild exists (so most good homebrew ends up being sold instead of being offered for free).

Alas, a bunch of the more active homebrewers have moved off to other things, the forums in general have shrunk (I think that most of the posts on this subforum are made by the same 20-or-so people?), and homebrewing for 5e kinda sucks¹. And thus we've entered into a vicious cycle where no-one posts stuff on the homebrew forums (because no-one looks at it) or looks at stuff on the homebrew forums (because most of the stuff posted there is either a contest entry or practically unusable).

¹ As someone who did oodles of homebrew for 3.5 (and stopped because I'm not a teenager anymore), one of the big issues with 5e is that the only "small" thing you can homebrew and playtest is a spell. Classes are bulkier (because of subclasses) and feats are so expensive that you'll usually end up with 1-2 feats at most. Races and Subclasses are the simplest mechanical "things" you can design for 5e, but they're so mechanically-defining for a character that you can't really slap them on after the fact.

[Unoriginal]

The homebrew sub is always so dead. And there's frequent "balance" discussions here already. Which is the heart of most homebrew threads, as people are usually simply looking for balance critique.
But if someone has an idea for a magic item specific to 5e they have to pass up this high traffic sub and post over where they're lucky to get 10 replies and maybe 2-3 will be honest balance feedback.

Is the assumption that there would be more replies if the thread was on the 5e subforum?


I don't understand the reasoning. Sure, there are more people that would see the thread on the 5e subforum, but if people don't want to participate in the homebrewing threads by going to the homebrew subforum, why would they want to participate in the homebrewing threads more on the 5e subforum?

I expect this is the reason primarily. As someone who staves off boredom by tippity typing up homebrew sometimes, I imagine if the forums were fused it would be frustrating to filter out my people's creations.

Also that.

[LudicSavant]

In the end, the problem is not the forum layout, it is peoples' experience with other online gamers' homebrew.

I'm not sure about that. I generally recall better homebrew being produced on forums that did not segregate their homebrew section (like the old 3.5e boards, where you would often find, for instance, homebrew classes on the Classes board, etc). Even on some of the ones that did, they would often allow discussion of creating or balancing things in a sort of main forum, then have a subforum for actually, like, putting finished writeups or things that are less "tweaks and fixes" and more "completely new classes and systems."

I think the homebrew boards may suffer somewhat from being separated from "the place people go for discussions focused on the nitty-gritty of a particular system/edition."

Also, just any topic would probably get less traffic if it was segregated off into its own section. Yeah, you could say that someone could always seek out that particular topic, but that takes extra steps from just seeing it pop up in your "usual" feed and having a particular thread catch your eye.

I think there are definitely people who are interested in homebrew and worldbuilding who just don't habitually take that extra step of opening up multiple forums to look at.

A lot of homebrew goes way beyond simple customization too. A lot of us are fine with a simple tweak, e.g. "wouldn't it be cool if War Clerics got Extra Attack at 8 instead of that lousy Divine Strike" or "At my tables we start the martial arts die at 1d6." Whereas in the homebrew sub you're often being asked to review multiple brand new subclasses from the ground up.

Yeah. Which leaves it awkward when you don't want to talk about multiple brand new subclasses from the ground up, but do want to talk about tweaks to improve the game or the like. Like if you want to talk about "how would you fix the numbers on Conjure Animals" I'm not 100% sure you'd get better feedback or even reception on the homebrew forum than here.

[Grod_The_Giant]

As someone who has been around for a fair bit... the homebrew forums used to be way more active.

As a fellow old fart, I agree. I think the biggest reason is that there's been a cultural shift (on this forum, at least).

In the late 3.PF days, the preposterous amount of material was seen as a positive, even a selling point. Sure, there are other games out there that are simpler or better-balanced or more elegant or what have you, but nothing that could touch the sheer amount of stuff in 3.PF. Adding homebrew was just taking one more step in a direction that was already widely embraced. Adding to that was the way that 3.5's horrific and widely-acknowledged imbalances, which not only gave you a wider tolerance for acceptable power levels, but--to the kind of game design fans who get really into these internet arguments--served as a source of inspiration. Untold amounts of 'brew was produced for the sole purpose of addressing that.

(As a primary example, take me. Looking back at all the stuff I wrote and bookmarked for 3.5, I have 39 threads dedicated to revising existing content and structure, verses 24 that presenting purely original content. And even then, 10 of those were "here are new options to replace the old stuff that's borked beyond repair." In 5e, though? Everything in my Guide to Greatness and a significant majority of stuff in my Grimoire of the Grotesque is original.)

But 5e culture has kind of gone the other way. Instead of enjoying the variety, people fret about bloat, and balance is so much tighter that even small issues wind up standing out like sore thumbs. There's a general assumption that the Player's Handbook knew what it was doing, compared to "the PHB is the single worst-balanced book in the game" of 3.5. If you think the published stuff is good and that there are already too many options, why would you put in all the extra work of writing or reviewing random internet homebrew?

[TyGuy]

half the threads that should be in that section are here instead.

That's part of why the separation is bizarre and somewhat superficial to me. I consider balancing existing content to be homebrew as it is deviating from RAW. And that subject gets to hang out here. But if you go too far, there's an ill defined line that can be crossed when a subclass or race gets revamped. And the *new* stuff isn't allowed at all.

I'm not sure about that. I generally recall better homebrew being produced on forums that did not segregate their homebrew section (like the old 3.5e boards, where you would often find, for instance, homebrew classes on the Classes board, etc). Even on some of the ones that did, they would often allow discussion of creating or balancing things in a sort of main forum, then have a subforum for actually, like, putting finished writeups or things that are less "tweaks and fixes" and more "completely new classes and systems."

I think the homebrew boards may suffer somewhat from being separated from "the place people go for discussions focused on the nitty-gritty of a particular system/edition."

Also, just any topic would probably get less traffic if it was segregated off into its own section. Yeah, you could say that someone could always seek out that particular topic, but that takes extra steps from just seeing it pop up in your "usual" feed and having a particular thread catch your eye.

I think there are definitely people who are interested in homebrew and worldbuilding who just don't habitually take that extra step of opening up multiple forums to look at.



Yeah. Which leaves it awkward when you don't want to talk about multiple brand new subclasses from the ground up, but do want to talk about tweaks to improve the game or the like. Like if you want to talk about "how would you fix the numbers on Conjure Animals" I'm not 100% sure you'd get better feedback or even reception on the homebrew forum than here.

We're in agreement. Thanks for sparing me the time to articulate all that ;)

[Psyren]

Even on some of the ones that did, they would often allow discussion of creating or balancing things in a sort of main forum, then have a subforum for actually, like, putting finished writeups.

While I agree that the writeups being in homebrew makes sense, I think discussing whatever issue you're trying to fix or whatever gap you're trying to close or whatever underserved market you're trying to serve in the general area is completely fine. After all, before you homebrew anything you should first define the problem.

With that said, I also think there's a sizeable contingent here who are highly dissatisfied with 5e as printed but would rather just vent/kvetch about it than rally around a fix they particularly like and boost its profile. Eliminating the homebrew sub wouldn't change that.

I think there are definitely people who are interested in homebrew and worldbuilding who just don't habitually take that extra step of opening up multiple forums to look at.

I'd agree with this but I don't think the benefits (whether to the homebrewers, or the reviewers who would engage with content here but not there) outweigh the clutter such a decision would result in, at least imo. I assume that if enough people want it, it can be suggested in Board/Site Issues for Rawhide to take a look at, but as stated I am personally against.

Yeah. Which leaves it awkward when you don't want to talk about multiple brand new subclasses from the ground up, but do want to talk about tweaks to improve the game or the like. Like if you want to talk about "how would you fix the numbers on Conjure Animals" I'm not 100% sure you'd get better feedback or even reception on the homebrew forum than here.

I'd say this falls under "defining the problem" I mentioned above. To discuss how you'd fix the numbers on CA, you have to articulate and debate what's wrong with the existing numbers, and I believe that has a place here. Then once you've collected enough perspective from the discussion, make a fix there and link it in a reply in the discussion thread.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Ogre: I realize the irony in moving a thread about "Why are X threads in Y forum, not Z?"

However, it is as said above; to keep the 5e subforum for the discussion of the game as it is, with the homebrew forum for modifications that people are making and wanting feedback on; especially modifications to the "objects" as it were (races, classes, feats, etc.) instead of the verbs (relatively simple houserules).

Many many years ago, before my hair got thin and turned gray, the Homebrew stuff WAS in the main subforum. It was frequently crowded, especially in the high-volume subforums of the day (i.e. 3.5), and folks who were doing Homebrew didn't like that they never got comments, and folks who didn't like homebrew were annoyed that those threads were clogging up the "real" discussion. Thus, a Homebrew Forum.

As a frequent homebrewer, I know the frustration of not getting hits... or, worse, getting hits but no comments. It is frustrating, and I have been known to scream "VALIDATE ME, YOU BASTARDS!" at my screen. But separating out Homebrew was, and is, seen as best for both homebrewers and non-homebrewers.

[LudicSavant]

We're in agreement. Thanks for sparing me the time to articulate all that ;)

I'd say this falls under "defining the problem" I mentioned above.

In short, no. It's not just "opinions on problems with the Battlerager" but also "how to fix them."

We actually have a ton of threads like that on the 5e forums. And perhaps the surest way of making such threads unproductive is to move them to the homebrew forum.

People interested in talking about the problems are often also interested in talking about the solutions. If you're restricting it to stopping the process at "defining the problem" you cut off at least half of that conversation and forcefully limit it only to the "venting/kvetching" part.

Eliminating the homebrew sub wouldn't change that.

It's not about eliminating the homebrew sub. You can have both, as per the example in my first paragraph.

[strangebloke]

The Mod Ogre: I realize the irony in moving a thread about "Why are X threads in Y forum, not Z?"

However, it is as said above; to keep the 5e subforum for the discussion of the game as it is, with the homebrew forum for modifications that people are making and wanting feedback on; especially modifications to the "objects" as it were (races, classes, feats, etc.) instead of the verbs (relatively simple houserules).

Many many years ago, before my hair got thin and turned gray, the Homebrew stuff WAS in the main subforum. It was frequently crowded, especially in the high-volume subforums of the day (i.e. 3.5), and folks who were doing Homebrew didn't like that they never got comments, and folks who didn't like homebrew were annoyed that those threads were clogging up the "real" discussion. Thus, a Homebrew Forum.

As a frequent homebrewer, I know the frustration of not getting hits... or, worse, getting hits but no comments. It is frustrating, and I have been known to scream "VALIDATE ME, YOU BASTARDS!" at my screen. But separating out Homebrew was, and is, seen as best for both homebrewers and non-homebrewers.

While I understand this point, it does feel like stuff's changed a lot? Looking at the homebrew section, its hardly as though there's tons of new threads for 5e coming out on a weekly basis.

[Psyren]

In short, no. It's not just "opinions on problems with the Battlerager" but also "how to fix them."

We actually have a ton of threads like that on the 5e forums. And perhaps the surest way of making such threads unproductive is to move them to the homebrew forum.

People interested in talking about the problems are often also interested in talking about the solutions. If you're restricting it to stopping the process at "defining the problem" you cut off at least half of that conversation.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I'm not saying the discussion should stop before solutions are proposed or else demand the thread get potholed into oblivion. I'm saying there's a line between solutions that are a quick fix ("verbs" as Mark Hall mentioned) and solutions that are particularly detailed or involved ("nouns", which would then be posted in the dedicated sub for such and linked back to the main discussion of the problem as additional fodder.)

I'm further saying that starting from the solution and assuming your problem is equally evident to everyone is also probably a better fit for homebrew since you're proceeding from a fait accompli.

It's not about eliminating the homebrew sub. You can have both, as per the example in my first paragraph.

I'm confused then about what you think would go there if all the 5e homebrew were to be allowed to go back into 5e general. Why have the sub then?

[LibraryOgre]

While I understand this point, it does feel like stuff's changed a lot? Looking at the homebrew section, its hardly as though there's tons of new threads for 5e coming out on a weekly basis.

The Mod Ogre: TBH, not too much.

Right now, the oldest thread on the front page of 5e (on my usual "30 posts per page" setting) is from April 10th, 3 days ago. The oldest thread on the front page of Homebrew is from March 23rd, which is three weeks ago. Stuff on the 2nd and later pages tends to get a lot less traffic, regardless, so putting the Homebrew in the 5e forum would knock off everything but the first 5-10 posts onto the second page.

Getting useful feedback on things is hard; I know I'm bad about doing it for others, unless the title catches my eye and my mood. But getting feedback on things was hard even when it was in the main thread. Roland or Rawhide might be amenable to the discussion, but that's my understanding of the issue.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Wisely-moved and well-explained by Mark Hall. As noted, part of the current structure is for historical reasons; previously, the traffic in both the Roleplaying Games and Homebrew were both higher and in different proportion. Even then, when both sections were hopping, many homebrewers wanted to put their stuff in the RPG section just to get more traffic, which was often not appreciated by those wanting to talk about the game more or less unaltered.

Part of the reason for the current structure also a matter of meaningful distinction between talking about the current game and sharing homebrew versions/additions; people have come to expect and rely on that distinction to let them know where to put stuff, where to look for stuff, and what kind of discussion they'll have in each section.

The issue raised about "should X be merged with Y" is not a new one and is not limited to the instance mentioned here. There's always a tension between combining things vs. separating things. Increasing viewership vs. minimizing clutter is one pair of competing considerations in that discussion but not the only one.

I suspect the game vs. homebrew distinction is pretty fundamental to people's expectations here and eliminating it would be viewed more as cluttering things up rather than streamlining things into a more efficient mode. But, as mentioned, that's just one of the considerations behind the structure. It's not purely a volume issue.

We've made new subforums and combined things before as needed. It might happen again.

Finally, while I'm sure this thread and posts are well-intended, some of it treads perilously close to inappropriate topics about the Forum Rules, moderation, and the evasion of those things. For that reason and because of the general practice in Board Issues, I'll close this thread now.