Writing a Sourcebook for D&D

Over the last month, I've been attempting something pretty big. The other day, I noticed my copy of "Explorer's Guide to Wildemont," the officially published D&D sourcebook for the campaign world of Critical Roll, sitting on my shelf. Like any sane person, I plucked it off and began to flip through some of the pages. I thought it was interesting how this sourcebook could be the wellspring for YEARS of memories held between friends. If someone read this book and became particularly inspired, they could reach out to their friends with the intention of making memories that would last a long time.

Now, I had just finished up a prototype for a project that was very numbers-heavy (Maybe I'll make a post about it here?), and I did not want to jump immediately back into coding. Instead, I thought it would be pretty fun to try to layout a sourcebook like "Explorer's Guide to Wildemont," but I quickly found myself with a bunch of problems. I'd like to take a moment to talk about some of the problems I encountered, as well as how I attempted to handle them, and what I learned from the whole experience.

Problem 1: OGL & Bureaucracy

Now, I want to set something straight right now. If you want to make content for an RPG, you do not have to choose D&D. There are a lot of really fun frameworks out there that don't have the problem I'm about to talk about at all. GURPS (Generic Universal Role-Playing System) is open to modification and customization. PBtA (Powered By the Apocalypse) is not even a concrete system, instead just a loose collection of commonly-accepted rules that can be easily modified and tweaked (See Monster of the Week). But let's move passed the disclaimers and actually talk about the problem.

Technically. Legally. You can't publish 5e content on your own. Now, to some people, this might just inherently make sense, but to others (like me), this didn't click right away. Essentially, the thought process is this- WotC (Wizards of the Coast) owns D&D. It's their game with their rules and their world. Even if you're creating your very own campaign setting with your very own quests, the moment you say "Make a DEX saving throw," you're immediately referencing work that isn't your own. [INCORRECT BUZZER NOISE] That's also Copyright Infringement. So, how do you get around this? Well, you use what WotC says you can use.

Now, you may remember a bit ago hearing about some drama with the OGL. I don't really want to talk about that whole can of worms, but essentially, there was a big fiasco when WotC was deciding what you could use in your published content for 5e, and it ended with them essentially publishing their OWN sourcebook called the SRD (System Reference Document) and the OGL (Open Gaming License) that outlined EXACTLY what you could say and reference about 5e. This actually did exist before, which is how people could actually create standalone modules not though WotC, but don't worry about that. Essentially, a bunch of it got changed and revised and now it's out there for 5e and you can go look at it right now if you wanted!. The SRD was the "Make a DEX saving throw," issue, and the OGL was for the copyright infringement issue. So everything was all well and dandy for 5e! So no problem, right?

In 2024, WotC announced that they were updating some of the core rules of the game! So, 6e- Sorry, I mean 5.5e- Sorry, I mean D&D One- Sorry, I mean Dungeons and Dragons 5e 2024 Rules (Oh yeah, good choice, rolls off the tongue.) was going to have it's OWN SRD and OGL that would define what of the NEW rules you could use in published work. And, as it stands, those new documents are not available (at the time of writing). This essentially means that I can draft out whatever content I want, but I will have to go back through it and possible cut some things that aren't technically available to use.

Now, this is mostly fine. I can look at the 5e SRD and OGL and (probably) extrapolate what will be (mostly) available to use. I just have to keep in mind that whatever I write will be open to getting sniped by the Lawyers of the Coast.

Problem 2: Content for Days

Okay, so, I've made peace with the gods of Bureaucracy, what's next? Well, content is next. Lots of content. If I wanted to make a book around the size of "Explorer's Guide to Wildemont," do you know how long it would be? According to readinglength.com, it's about 76,000 words or ~5 hours of non-stop reading. Now, I'm not going to hard commit to making a book this long, but it would be really neat if I could get to a similar size within reason. So... Here's what I did:

Divide By Chapter

Using EGtW as a guide, I loosely blocked out an outline in a Trello board that would help me keep track of what was written and what still needed attention. I divided tasks up by chapter, and then further broke those down using checklists in order to keep everything organized. Once I actually went into a Word Doc and started outlining the chapters, I'd come back to the tasks and update those checklists to have the actual headers I'd be including.

Jump Around

One thing I've learned when working on solo projects, is that it's nearly impossible for me to do one aspect of a project from start to finish without burning out. What I mean is that if you told me to do ALL of the art for a project, by the time I finished, I wouldn't even have the motivation to finish anything. So, I decided pretty early on that I'd focus on jumping from section to section. I wanted to include species, subclasses, magic items, and a whole mess of other additions to the game. I never sat down and wrote every single species or every single magic item out. Instead I'd jump around. Maybe write some lore, then swap over to a subclass. Maybe some new spells, and then some location information. Doing this, I trick my brain into thinking that we were constantly doing new, which is exciting.

Write Everyday

Self-Help Book time. Did you know if you do a little bit of something everyday, overtime you can accomplish big things? I don't really need to write too much in this section, just know that everyday I try to work on the sourcebook for at least 20 minutes. I actually track this in Trello too.

Feedback

Obviously, I needed to get feedback on this stuff. One of the most irritating thing about RPG players is that there's a subsection of them that love to purposefully misinterpret rules in order to do something stupid (I also like to do this :D). So, I sent certain mechanical pages to my group of game-dev and RPG friends to get them to look it over. I made a lot of oversights, and I'm sure there are some that I still missed. Here's the thing though. The percentage of D&D players who like to "power-game" is significantly lower in 5e than it was in previous systems. As a designer, I'm still paying attention to the balance of all of the features I add, but I'm not overly stressing over them. I'm not running the data analysis and determining that X feature actually gives you a +1.5 bonus over a +1 bonus and therefore is busted and unusable. Because that isn't the point. Also, it's a bit overkill. I mean, there are some official WotC subclasses/spells/magic items that are just mechanically the best, so why would I worry about it?

Problem 3: Making it Pretty

You know, I really like the painterly style of the drawings in the official D&D books, but I know that it would take me eons to emulate it. To be honest, I'm still trying to solve the issue of finding illustrations for my work, partly because I have so many custom species in my sourcebook. I'll have to figure out some sort of solution, and I have a few in mind. I've had some success in the past kitbashing photos together and using filters to make them look smooth, but I'll need to make sure I keep track of everything I use. Alternatively, I could shell out some money to actually commission work, but that's just not an option for me at the moment. What I won't do is use Gen-AI, because that would be dumb as hell to include in an officially published book.

Beyond that, I was able to find a pretty good style template that emulates the fonts and page styles of the official sourcebooks without being identical. That has helped me get everything to a somewhat professional-looking state, although I've got no idea what happens when it's time to actually print it out. If I get the sourcebook to that point though, I think it should be pretty easy to adapt.

Final Thoughts

I've been working on the sourcebook for about a month at this point, and I'm at about 30k words and with 2 chapters of 5 looking pretty good. Depending on the remaining chapters and how word-heavy they are, I'm think I'm actually on track for making something about the size of EGtW, which is pretty cool!

I've particularly enjoyed developing the factions for the world. I think that the best DMs do a good job of connecting their players' characters to existing ties in the world, and writing the factions has been a great way for me to facilitate that. I've had to think about how different archetypes of characters might link in to the world, and compensate with additional content when I realize there is a missing piece.

I've also REALLY loved making the new subclasses. I designed the subclasses with the world in mind, and so it's been a really interesting opportunity to reinforce the culture and norms of the world through what new subclasses are being offered. Also, it's been fun to make subclasses that I think are interesting without being completely busted. Lots of homebrew content is wildly over or underpowered, and so finding that balance has been a really fun challenge.

If you decide that you want to try and write a sourcebook, I'd recommend really thinking about what you want to be included. You don't have to go crazy with new species and spells and subclasses, sometimes just outlining your factions are enough to facilitate a really fun and unique experience. TTRPGs thrive when they have interesting characters, settings, and stories. With a sourcebook you want to make sure all three can be accounted for, which has been an absolute blast.

I'll absolutely be releasing my sourcebook on my portfolio here once it's all wrapped up and I make sure I'm not breaking any laws (although, I think as long as I don't sell it I should be okay?). Keep your eyes out!

Connor