Campaign Creator
Spring 2023
Hosted through D&D Beyond, the Campaign Creator is a role playing game supplement design tool which allows users of all experience levels to easily create, playtest, and share community content.
Background Research
Project Background
D&D has been around for nearly 50 years and has become increasingly popular, currently being played by over 30 million people per year. Many people enjoy adding in “Homebrew” content, which are stories, character traits, and items created by the writer, rather than being officially made by the creators of D&D.
Currently there are a few third party software platforms which can aid people in writing this content, however they often include extra fees, high levels of design skill and knowledge, as well as time to find or create assets. The most notable example is GM Binder, which requires the knowledge of CSS and HTML. All of this detours many people from moving past a simple word document, or bringing their ideas to life at all.
GM Binder Landing Page
Market Need - The OGL Debate
The OGL (Oopen Game License) is the legal documentation used when creating third party game content for D&D. WOTC (Wizards of the Coast) recently attempted to ammend the OGL, which lead to heavy public backlash. More concretely, upwards of 40,000 users reportedly unsubscribed from D&D Beyond. Causing an estimated loss of $180,000 in subscription revenue during the month of January, 2023.
This information, along with hundreds of anecdotal commentaries from both general users as well as community influencers, proves that rather than trying to limit the creation of third party content. WOTC and D&D should focus on celebrating community content in a way that not only benefits end users, but also increases the amount of content which WOTC can directly profit from. So, how might WOTC gain more D&D Beyond subscriptions and increase the profitibility of the D&D brand without minimizing competition?
Solution - The Campaign Creator
D&D Beyond already hosts a number of tools for creating creatures, items, and encounters. These tools could be leveraged and improved upon by adding a web based, drag and drop editor for compiling all of these elements into a cohesive game supplement. This would open up a new revenue stream for WOTC as a writing platform, and also provide further incentive for users to subscribe to D&D Beyond as a more cost effective alternative to other products like Adobe Suite for designing content.
User Research
The goal of the Campaign Creator is to create a no-code platform within the D&D brand that makes the creation and play experience of homebrew content more inviting to users of various experience levels. User interviews were conducted with D&D enthusiests ranging from seasoned creators those just starting out their first homebrew creation.
Online Interviews
I spoke with a few notable influencers within the online D&D community to ask a few questions about writing custom content. For both interviews I asked the following questions:
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What is your writing process? What steps do you take to go from initial thought to “final” product?
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What resources or tools do you use while writing? These could include anything from pen/paper, word editing apps, ways of gathering assets, etc.
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Are there any legal notations you had to consider or include in your writing? If so, what resources did you use to figure that out?
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What initially inspired you to start making your own content? Were there any major pain points when starting out? Do you have any thoughts on what may have helped you?
In Person Interviews
I also ran an in person contexual inquiry of three players, giving them the following prompt:
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Write a quick 30 - 60 minute adventure which
contains at least one role play encounter and one combat encounter.
After one hour of writing I gave them each a little bit of time to explain their story so the others could quickly make characters for each adventure before taking turns to play out their stories. Afterwards I asked them to reply to a few follows up questions.
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What steps did you take when writing your adventure? Did you use any resources to help keep track of your ideas, create encounters, etc.
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What were some pain points you experienced while writing?
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Do you have any thoughts on what would help you write in the future/ make the experience easier or more enjoyable.
Responses
Process
Most start the process simply by findinig inpiration and jotting it down within some application or a journal.​
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From there, depending on, their experience level, they may move to a word document editor like docs to flesh out the idea.
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If they have the ability to do so, more experienced creators might finish in a program like Illustrstor or inkarnate to finalize their work .
Resources & Tools
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Google Docs
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Reddit
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Inkarnate
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Midjourney
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illustrator
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Talespire
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GM Binder
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Kobold Fight Club
Pain Points
A common pain point among all respondants dealt with illustrations. Many want to use illustrations but either do not have the artistic background or funding to commission art.
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While AI art is becoming increasingly popular, there is a degree of public backlash over the use of it.
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Creating a catalague of free to use art assets, or AI art generated from a specific data set, seems highly valuable to users.
User Groups
After speaking with users, two main user groups emerged: those who primarily write for themselves/ their own D&D group, and those who write primarily to publish for other people to play through. With both groups seeming equally prevalent, the service accommodate both users who write for themselves/ play for fun, as well as those who write/ playtest for others.
Despite these two groups having very different end goals, there is a large overlap in desired tools/processes. Even those who said they write for others said they enjoy playing their own content and playing for fun helps them iterate on concepts.
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Using these two groups, a "Jobs to be done" and a User Journey Map were made to help narrow down the scope of potential features within the platform.
Jobs to be Done
User Journey Map
Market Research
Overview
Throughout the campaign creation process, there are many products which are used at varying stages. Currently users cobble together a number of products to achieve their final goal.
Here is an overview of some common applications and how their use overlaps within the writing process. The applications were broken down into four overlapping groups.
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Writing:
Products used during writing and editing phases often focus on note taking and text formatting.
Research:
Products used for research can range from documentation for legal notation to artwork and asset collection.
Playing:
Products used for playing include VTTs (Virtual table tops) as well as companion apps for side information.
Publishing:
Platforms for publishing or sharing ideas, and finished or in process work.
Seem overwhelming?
Users think so too, with most saying they did not really know where to start or often having to experiment with new combinations of tools.
To help narrow down this pool of options, users were asked not what applications they currently use, but what features they actually found valuable in their process. A few were unanimously stated by everyone.
World Building:
Creators need tools to help build out their campaign settings, locations, characters, and general lore or history.
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World Anvil
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Kanka
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Legend Keeper
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5eTools
Writing & Note Taking:
Creators need ways of jotting down notes both during play and as side thoughts when writing.
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Google Docs
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Miro
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Notion
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Indesign
Asset Creation & Gathering:
Creators need to be able to upload, generate, or create visuals to improve the look and feel of their content.
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Midjourney
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Reddit: r/UnearthedArcana
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Inkarnate
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DungeonFog
With these three critical factors in mind, a further deep dive will be done to analyze the top applications from each group. Since this platform is meant to be an extension of D&D Beyond, its current offerings will also be examined.
World Building
Writing & Note Taking
Asset Creation & Gathering
D&D Beyond
Conclusion
Feature packed world builders like World Anvil, Kanka, and Legend keeper often contain so many tools that users feel lost or confused.
Simple text editors work great for notes or compiling other assets into booklets, but don’t offer any specific tools and often require a good amount of design skill.
Asset creation sites range in function but are prone to paywalls. Some also have a high skill learning curve.
D&D Beyond has the benefit of being having official D&D content, however many users find its beta features annoying and overly locked behind paywalls.
New features like a simple map maker and art generator for homebrew content could make D&D Beyond a viable competitor against established world building and map making applications.
Design Criteria
User Insights
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Users currently need multiple apps for note taking, world building, and art creation
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Being able to quickly make edits or jot down ideas is crucial
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The ability to share and get feedback is valuable
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Paying for multiple subscriptions is not always an option
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Not every user has time to dedicate towards learning hard programs or design fundamentals
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Being able to make something visually appealing is important, but not as important as feeling well organized
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Users love customization but shy away from visually complicated sites
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Taking advantage of AI is very appealing to many users
Market Insights
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Many apps have large subscription costs and minimal content freely available
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Many sites conatain feature bloat, which quickly feels cluttered and uninviting
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Very few apps have built in tutorials that are easy to follow
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None of the applications combine other features with a word document creator
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Many competing world building apps have modes for use while actively playing
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The ability to share content with an online community is featured in most apps
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Not many apps currently incorporate AI features
How Might We
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Create a world building and document creation tool which is easy to learn and takes advantage of AI technology?
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Create a world building and document creation tool which is cost effective and promotes community engagement?
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Create a world building and documentation tool which takes advantage of AI technology and simplifies DM-ing?​
Prototyping
Features
Other D&D Beyond Features
​While the Campaign Creator is the main focus of this project, in order to create a cohesive product a few other changes will be made to the D&D Beyond website:
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Update the navigation menu to reflect additional features
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Add a direct link to The Dungeon Master’s Guild
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Improve the usability of Homebrew creation tools
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Create a map maker for world and battle maps
Campaign Creator
As for the Campaign Creator, the following concepts will be explored and implemented in some form:
Ideation & Creation:
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Organizing chapters
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Cards/ nodes for quick thoughts
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Draft history
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Tools:
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Insert assets
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Background presets
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Text editor with pre- made styles
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Auto- Layout
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Layer Select
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Create for PDF or Print
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Facing vs non facing pages
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Aesthetic:
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Pre - built document page templates
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Pre - built style guides
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Generated table / stat block templates
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Generated legal notation
Testing:
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Playtest mode - In app pdf viewer but can have comments/ sticky notes placed on pages
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Play tester Feedback section
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Tabs/ pages for building out specific items, towns, NPCs
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Ai prompting, asset, art generation
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Adding co - authors
D&D Beyond Navigation
As part of this project, some modifications to the orignal D&D Beyond site were made. Partially to accommodate the new features, but also to improve user flow through the site. A more complete case study of this can be found in
Original Site
Low Fidelity Overlay
Navigation Redesign
Example Statblock
New Stat Block Creation
Monster stat blocks are a critical element to any D&D campaign. They provide key information for game moderators (Dungeon Masters) and follow a consistant and memorizable layout.
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That said, many users claimed it was difficult to use D&D Beyonds current stat block creator. Since this was a vital tool for most creators, the stat block creator was adjusted to be more user friendly.
Original Tool
Most users found the original creator to be overly complicated and thought it appeared outdated.
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The new stat block creator is designed to closely resemble the final result.
New Tool Layout
New Example Output
Style Guides
Style guides were created for both web and print, with web styles focusing on making the online tools and print styles for use within it. By working within the D&D brand, styles were largely already established. Colors and fonts are all very standard within the physical and digital resources, however backgrounds very by release. A simple, parchment textured, tan background is fairly common so it was chosen as the first background asset.
Web Component Library
These components created the base which will be used for future iterations of pages within the campaign creator tool. Text can easily be edited and is based off the brands style guides, icons can be added or modified, and tabs can easily be toggled between active and deactivate, all of which will greatly reduce time needed to design each screen.
Print Component Library
"Print Components" were made as assets which would be dropped into the editor by users. These editable assets are used in app to help save users time and follow the D&D style guides more easily.
Editor Tab
The Editor tab on the left nav is the main tool for page layout. Users can place assets into a page, reorganize the content layout, and add text or other images. It also shows layers to help users organize their designs more easily.
Assets Tab
The Assets tab on the left nav gives users quick access to any official or home brew monsters, items, subclasses, or other content which they have added to their collection. Users can easily drag content from the assets panel onto their pages.
Articles Tab
The Articles tab on the left nav gives users an area to draft ideas, world build, and create quick notes without affecting the layout of their final design. Within the Articles tab, a tool bar was added to the top of the working space, rather than in the left nav, to differentiate from the editor tab.
For a more complete look at the prototype, check out the figma file by clicking the image above!
