What’s up with Raising the Stakes?

Just in case you didn’t know, the guide to Curse of Strahd that we’ve been working on for two years is complete! All 105 pages are finished and available for your perusal.

What you may not know is that it was briefly available for sale on dmsguild.com. A whopping 3.5 days, in fact! During that time, it sold well—it was ranked #2 most popular during that time period, and was quickly on its way to attaining Gold status.

Unfortunately, dmsguild.com has a rule stating (I’m paraphrasing here) that content posted to their website must be exclusive to their site. Said content may not be published elsewhere, even in part. That last bit there is where we tripped over their website’s policy.

You see, for the last two years, the content of Raising the Stakes has been available on both YouTube and Patreon, and now here on this website. It’s not as polished as what’s in the final book, and the final book has even more content (updated encounters, stat blocks, etc.), but the fact that there is an overlap of content was enough to violate dmsguild.com policy.

On Tuesday morning, I woke up to an email from a representative of dmsguild.com stating that the book had been taken down. After a few back-and-forth messages, it was made clear why. So now, you can no longer find Raising the Stakes on dmsguild.com.

And I’m okay with that!

Why am I okay with that, you ask?

First, because dmsguild.com’s policies are pretty clearly laid out. They aren’t a hidden secret that one needs to delve into abandoned crypts to find. It’s my own fault for violating those policies.

Second, it looks like I get to keep the proceeds from the sales I made in those 3.5 days. The book made back its art budget and then some, so I’m happy with that.

One thing you ought to know about D&D related content is that no content using Wizards intellectual property (IP) can be sold anywhere but dmsguild.com. That’s how Wizards profits off of your use of their IP, and it’s totally fair. But given that, I cannot actually sell Raising the Stakes.

But while I cannot sell the book, I can definitely give it away for free. And now that I get to release it for free, Raising the Stakes gets to have an even wider audience! I’m all for helping the community step up their game and run their best Curse of Strahd possible.

So if you want your copy of Raising the Stakes, all you just need to do one of two things:

1. Sign up for our newsletter on the homepage
   OR
2. Create a user account on this website and visit the Member Content area