Secondary and lesser problems include that despite the extreme efforts of a very small group of people to balance and improve homebrew content, anyone and everyone adds whatever they want, and changes whatever they want-without even needing to create an account. I maintain that a title/logo change would do more to help it, though. The 'homebrew' banner was globally added to the top of homebrew pages a few months ago to help this miscommunication problem. Almost every external complaint I've heard about dandwiki originates from three points not being clearly communicated and/or understood. This is despite the fact that homebrew is over 90% of what the wiki is used for, and arguably the only reason to use it over better sites that exclusively contain SRD material.įor any remotely experienced DM, the titular inclusion of 'Homebrew' alone implies (a) hey this is homebrew, (b) most of this will be crap so use your own judgement, (c) if you aren't the DM, ask your DM about it. I have been a somewhat active user of the site for the past year now and maintain that this is the biggest problem, but most diehard contributors argue that just because it has SRD content and such the title of 'homebrew' is inappropriate. The biggest problem with 'dandwiki' is that it is named 'D&D Wiki' instead of 'D&D Homebrew Wiki (that also has pages for publications/products and SRD content).' There's no oversight on what gets added to the site (it's a wiki, anybody can edit it)! Not only that, but the site doesn't even make it easy to spot the bad entries (comments are restricted to the hidden-by-default 'discussion' pages, there's no voting mechanism, etc.) As a DM, saying 'no' to this gets annoying after the first few times, especially since. When combined with the name (you expect a site called to be a wiki for D&D, right?), this means that it's very easy for new players to stumble upon homebrew content, think it's official, and expect to be able to use it in their games. The results from the site are highly ranked in relevant searches (e.g., this is the first result in a google search for 3.5 necromancer). Official content on the site is marked with a 'SRD' label ( example), but the homebrew banner is inexplicably hard to notice despite being bright purple. It's easy, especially for new players, to mistake the homebrew for official content. Far, far more than the amount of official content on the site. The site hosts pages and pages of homebrew races, classes, feats, spells, etc. But misleading readers about material and making them think it was “official” causes a lot of headaches for DMs and groups and is the real reason that people dislike the site so strongly. As they say, 90% of everything is crap, so the first problem is neither surprising nor supremely problematic it just means you have to spend time and effort finding the few diamonds in the rough that I’m sure are there. The second problem is really the real problem. This lack of editors also meant there is no one correcting mis-use of various marks of officiality, which leads to the second problem. In fact, it never was clear if people were even allowed or supposed to provide editing on others’ work-which defeats the point of a wiki. Wikis only function well if there are enough editors to mind what the public is putting there, and dandwiki never had that. Many things have been put up there in the wrong places and marked as official material when it is not, which makes it very hard to trust it for use as a System Resource Document.īoth problems basically stem from the same source-the lack of sufficient critical mass in editors to maintain the place.

Poor indication of what is and is not homebrew.

This becomes a vicious circle where the only people who go there are the people who cannot recognize the low quality of the content-which means their own content is likely low quality as well. Anyone can add anything they want, and since there is no vetting, the overwhelming majority of it is bad.

Dnd homebrew wiki