I was curious, how many people are going to pick up and run a homebrew campaign with just the PHB and other available materials? I'm considering going this route, a fellow DM is going to wait till Christmas or so to allow DMG to be released.
opinions?
The game is meant to run fine on just the free materials alone - and once the PHB is officially out (or shortly thereafter) the free materials are going to be updated to include a selection of monsters and the parts of the parts of the DMG that are essential to setting up and running a campaign.
So yeah, lots of people are going to be playing campaigns with just the PHB (or even less).
I am actually much more concerned with the volume of monsters that will be freely available. You should be able to craft a campaign without issue using the free material, I just hope there is enough variety in the monsters they release with the update.
I expect it will be adequate but not overwhelming. Some rules on moster design would help that considerably as well.
I'll be starting Lost Mines of Phandelver with the PHB materials. I'm planning to to go for the rest of this year, or a little longer if we haven't finished. Once the DMG is out and I've chosen modules, I'm going to run a new set of adventures.
I'll be buying everything. The rulebooks are a great value and I'll be missing too much to not have them.
If I needed to save money, I would get the PHB and use basic, and perhaps add on the monster manual for more of them. The DMG is the least important of the three, and some portions of it should make its way into Basic anyways.
We have been playing for two sessions now just using "the lost mine of phandelver" and the basic rules PDF
I have been very inspired by 5th Ed/Next. Feels very much like what it used to feel like when i first began playing many many years ago. I stopped after 3.5, took 6 years off, and decided to re-look at the new edition (hoping it would be good enough to entice me back to the game)...it has. Since the Basic release i have been hammering away on a homebrew world/campaign, and have told my old players that im back as a DM and working on a campaign to begin tonight actually 
all my players have re-signed up, and we are all keen. Ive told them that we will begin in basic, and when the PHB is released here in Aus (next week), we will have a sit-down session and pour through the PHB's together, and agree what we want and dont want in our Homebrew. I have written modules that will take the PC's to around 7th, with more modules coming to me daily. Looking forward to tonights game. Happy gaming
Nerd
I'm running two campaigns now, crimping monsters from the released content and playtest packet, making up/converting magic items and otherwise having a ball. The game's close enough in principle to most prior editions that the DM process is fairly straight-forward. Mostly looking forward to seeing what all optional and expanded content the DMG offers at this point.
I`m running two campaigns too. Its easy to carry older edition dming experiences to new one. DMG is gonna be good improvement but not necessary to play game for now..