Fully agree. same Initial thoughts when I saw that pole.
To be transparent, we actually have received far more feedback (both here in the forums and elsewhere) regarding the items on the list above than anything regarding campaign management.
I think much of the confusion revolves around people having different opinions for what "campaign management" is or means.
The feedback we have received on the topic covers a vast array of "wants" that are truly diverse. Most of these I would disagree with being any more a "need" than what others have described as needs. i.e. Each person wants what he or she wants.
I believe a far more valuable exercise would be to try to get feedback on what people are looking for in campaign management. If we can get a "Top 5" list of those things (out of the nearly 100 things I've seen mentioned), then we could potentially make something happen.
It would be tough to even do a poll on it at this point because there are so many potential choices.
Perhaps we can start a thread to collect what features people want to see, then add a poll for the top items to see what wins out.
I'll get one out there. Be sure to let your voice be heard!
Badeye, I love that you are this active on the forums. A proof of your commitment to the community.
Also appreciate your response, but I have to wonder, when was the pole conducted and did the community understand that at launch there would be no further enhancements to the campaign system?
tbh I had expected another phase prior to launch. I probably voted for a encounter builder and/or combat tracker. These are still high on my list, however at that time - the campaign management system was barely on my radar.. I didn't start looking at this until both phase 2 & 3 had been delivered - since the building blocks for campaign management literally were still being built in the earlier phases.
Point is, I agree a fresh poling might be useful now that the product is out and people appreciate more of how this stuff works. 2,000 comments in the beta might not serve as well as 1000 after release, if beta users might not have fully understood the launch product .. If the features prioritize in a similar fashion no harm done right? If they don't it would serve the community better.
Not trying to stir the pot! I've actually really enjoyed MUCH of what has been accomplished already. As another has posted, it's great having everything at the fingertips. Job well done to your Team thus far.
I too really thought there was something coming with this. It seems the message of this section changed from "it's just a skeleton of what it will be" to "we don't have anything because it isn't clear what you guys want", it's honestly the first thing I have been truly disappointed in and based on the recent staff feedback doesn't appear to be important to them.
That's a little dramatic, but I understand your attempt to draw attention to the sentiment. I never said in my comments above that "we don't have anything because it isn't clear what you guys want" - wasn't my point at all.
We absolutely have things planned for campaign management and I (personally) have said from the very beginning that at launch it will be a skeleton of what it will be.
The point of my asking for consolidated feedback about campaign management at this point is that after reading thousands and thousands of posts with previous feedback, people have very divergent ideas about what "campaign management" means.
In other words, yes, as said all along campaign management as it is now is a skeleton and we have plans to do a great deal with it. Those things that we have planned are likely not going to cover the huge spread of conceptions about what it is, quickly at any rate.
I see people asking for a replacement for Obsidian Portal. I see people asking for the ability to inject notes/ comments into adventures. I see people asking for tooltipping on maps. I see people asking for stream integration. I see people asking for whitelisting/ blacklisting content. And many, many more - all as "campaign management."
I'm working on a way to best allow those divergent ideas within the community to surface and allow the community rate them to inform our plans.
I can completely agree that different people have different needs/priorities. And honestly DnDBeyond has already met a critical need. Core Content and Rules available at our fingertips.
My priorities are "time" driven. What takes me the most amount of time that would rather spend having fun with my group. What was provided at launch is already a big win. A big chunk of time has already been saved. So please first and foremost I want to be grateful to everyone that put in the hard work for DnD Beyond to be what it is right now. Despite owning hardcopy of the materials I got the Legendary Bundle and Master Sub because I see it as an investment into the good things to come. My vocal participation in the beta was limited mainly because I didn't put any skin in the game and felt I had no right to decide how things should go or push a given agenda. I asked questions and went with the flow, shared high level ideas as appropriate. No sense of entitlement :P. That's changed as now I'm a subscriber and vested in the toolset. It's not about being entitled, but rather an engaged investor who has put their money behind something.
For me, my most time consuming tasks are:
1) Developing the story and my intended flow (which players will blow up anyways). That's time well spent as-is, I really don't need (sure I want) tools to help me do that.
2) Finding music and art to supplement the story. So yes if I had a repository of good background music I could queue up and change up as need during a session that would be change (ie chains clinking in a prison dungeon, occasional inmate swearing, people being tortured in the background, crowds in a big city, village, etc, in a Library, Forest, Jungle, Desert, Boss Music :P etc...) Some DM's do it other's don't. I try when possible. But when I do it sucks away a lot of prep time.
3) Encounters.. specifically slapping together a list of monsters I want in the encounter for a given part of the session. Then rolling out the loot should the party win (or subtracting out loot that got away). Their are other components but those are "key" ones for me. I'm not sure the other elements of the encounter are easily automated or not. Sure I want something to quickly track initiative.. but seriously that takes all of 30secs then turn order is established.
4) Rolling, but I'll never give up my dice :P, using their lucky die is what my players want, we'll never use automated rolling. I might for pre-planning monster HP, but you know what. Random rolling is a google away.
5) NPCs. Love them. Tedious to roll them up. I need help here. I'd love to provide some generic parameters (ie race, class, level, heck I wouldn't mind going through a basic survey type questionnaire) and bam, I have an NPC, equipment, spells
5) Bigger picture stuff, Collections of Cities, Towns, Countries, etc. Each which I can associate with monsters, NPCs. I don't need fancy maps (I usually make those on my own). This is just the meta-data to keep everything straight in my head. So if the party ever returns and say, "Oh yeah is XYZ still here". I can quickly look it up and know who they are talking about and the context. Only reason this is important is quite literally I had a 2nd edition campaign that stretched over 20 years (same group {mostly} from level 1 to 30). So a lot of history was built up over the years that we lost track of... would have been a great book if we remember it all.
6) Journal. We've started having individuals journals and a campaign journal going now. Reason is two-fold. Individual journals record some of the private stuff the players wants. Plus also the player's memory of what happened. In the most fun cases my players choose to remember the same event differently, especially when it comes to what an absent player is doing at this time in the game :P. Now the meta data connections possibilities could be really rich here. Imagine over the course of several sessions the DM can have a visible timeline of events build up. Players make journal entries, and link them to the session or event of interest. 5 years later we can look back at an event or session and go through and see what everyone was thinking at the time.
Just phase 1 of my personal brain dump there is a lot more. Apologies for the unstructured manner in which I shared my needs.
Sincerely!
I love all those ideas.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
I feel extremely mislead by its title "Campaign Management." Allowing my players to use the core books for free is nice, but at best what you have now is "Player Management"
I need management tools for enemy, map, trap, items and the like before recognizing it as a campaign manager.
I know it's been said a bunch here already, but here I am raising my hand too.
The D&D team decided to call one of the game systems in fifth edition "Downtime Activities."
They did so because that's what would make the most sense to give players an idea of what it is intended for. What we got in the PHB and DMG could have easily been called "A Few Things to Spend Gold and Time on Between Sessions."
The "Downtime Activities" system isn't finished, but it had to have a starting point.
We could have called what we have so far in Campaign Management something like "Connecting and Sharing Content with Players in Your Group," but that's a feature of a broader system. A system that will be built out over time.
And again, I went on record extremely early to try to manage expectations around what would be included as Campaign Management at launch in order to not mislead anyone. You might have missed that, but the intent has never been to mislead.
We'll see what everyone has to say about their ideas for Campaign Management and go from there. I believe we've demonstrated that we engage with the feedback and take actions to make this better. Campaign Management will be no different.
I feel extremely mislead by its title "Campaign Management." Allowing my players to use the core books for free is nice, but at best what you have now is "Player Management"
I need management tools for enemy, map, trap, items and the like before recognizing it as a campaign manager.
I know it's been said a bunch here already, but here I am raising my hand too.
The D&D team decided to call one of the game systems in fifth edition "Downtime Activities."
They did so because that's what would make the most sense to give players an idea of what it is intended for. What we got in the PHB and DMG could have easily been called "A Few Things to Spend Gold and Time on Between Sessions."
The "Downtime Activities" system isn't finished, but it had to have a starting point.
We could have called what we have so far in Campaign Management something like "Connecting and Sharing Content with Players in Your Group," but that's a feature of a broader system. A system that will be built out over time.
And again, I went on record extremely early to try to manage expectations around what would be included as Campaign Management at launch in order to not mislead anyone. You might have missed that, but the intent has never been to mislead.
We'll see what everyone has to say about their ideas for Campaign Management and go from there. I believe we've demonstrated that we engage with the feedback and take actions to make this better. Campaign Management will be no different.
I feel extremely mislead by its title "Campaign Management." Allowing my players to use the core books for free is nice, but at best what you have now is "Player Management"
I need management tools for enemy, map, trap, items and the like before recognizing it as a campaign manager.
I know it's been said a bunch here already, but here I am raising my hand too.
The D&D team decided to call one of the game systems in fifth edition "Downtime Activities."
They did so because that's what would make the most sense to give players an idea of what it is intended for. What we got in the PHB and DMG could have easily been called "A Few Things to Spend Gold and Time on Between Sessions."
The "Downtime Activities" system isn't finished, but it had to have a starting point.
We could have called what we have so far in Campaign Management something like "Connecting and Sharing Content with Players in Your Group," but that's a feature of a broader system. A system that will be built out over time.
And again, I went on record extremely early to try to manage expectations around what would be included as Campaign Management at launch in order to not mislead anyone. You might have missed that, but the intent has never been to mislead.
We'll see what everyone has to say about their ideas for Campaign Management and go from there. I believe we've demonstrated that we engage with the feedback and take actions to make this better. Campaign Management will be no different.
Thanks!
It's a foundation to build a product based on what the users want! which is exactly how WotC created the best version of D&D so far (he said matter of factly, lol) I am super happy with seeing the foundation and look forward to all the amazing features as they roll out!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
Personally, right now I use a whole heap of tools to run my games. I have a one note file which has all my story planning, world lore, locations, NPCs. (It also has all the monsters, items and spells on easy look up, which D&D beyond will probably replace now.)
I also wrote my own desktop program to run encounters, and I feel as a DM creating the initial combat is the most time consuming thing which slows the game down itself, in terms of both working out what to use (not knowing how many of my players will be there and what they will do in advance). This program has made it much more manageable but is totally disconnected to my one note, so I have to look up spells and specific details.
I use obsidian portal for notes for the players on where the campaign is and sessions notes etc, and use facebook and skype to keep them up to date with when we are playing and any other things I need to bring up. I run the actual map stuff in roll 20, because I can't draw, I don't want to prepare heaps of maps in advance. So that is a whole heap of stuff I used to try and make the games run smoothly and deal with my weaknesses as a DM.
I would be glad to be able to rid myself of some of these tools. In order of preference I guess it would be:
Ability to have information for my players and myself, categorised and with linked enabled. So I could add links to my created items, NPCs, locations, story/lore etc. Basically in some ways act like a better one note, where any page or home brew I create, or official content can be linked to as part of one of these "notes". I could then use this also to have recaps of sessions and remove the need for both my one note and obsidian portal.
2nd on my list would be encounter building first, then combat tracking later. Just ways to build encounters based on my player count, ideally from a preset list of monsters. This way actually the very next thing I was going to code into my personal program, so this is why it is number 2 as I can get around this myself.
i really have to say, if it's going to be any kind of "campaign manager" you NEED to have an encounter builder. Insider had this and it was my most used feature as a 4th ed DM.
also if you'd let me link to things in notes that'd be awesome - ex: i own curse of strahd on your platform. if i could leave a note like 'characters walked into @Madame Eva's tent and this is where we called it for the night" that'd be great. or "characters started a feud with @character" so i could easily get information on that character without hunting.
a combat tracker for the encounter i generated would be a nice to have - but honestly i'd almost prefer to see time spent on other features. like if i make a custom map i should be able to link it into a campaign page (also, while we're at it - could we please get a "just maps" section for the campaigns we purchase? it'd be incredible handy to be able to navigate just the included maps)
back to maps - if i have a adventure with "player view" maps (i think you're looking into implementing this) please let me share them to people via the campaign management section as well! same with handouts!
if you're hungry for feature lists to make the campaign manager an actual campaign manager... look at realm works for inspiration.
your player tools are on point, but we DM's need a lot more to run a game from just your service. really glad you're collecting feedback and communicating with the community. really happy with what we have currently, can't wait to see what's next.
In it's current state you would be better not calling this a campaign manager. Sorry guys but there is so much that I want from a campaign manager and 3x rich text boxes doesn't come close.
If you could combine the functionality of Realm Works with the sexy web ui that you guys are obviously capable of then that would be severely interesting. Right now though this is a synchronised Character Manager for the DM. That alone is something I am incredibly interested in having but my campaign manager is a vital part of my DM Toolset and it's therefore alot more beneficial to use the character manager / combat manager that integrates with the campaign manager than it is to use DnDBeyond alongside Realm Works.
Reading through the release notes it doesn't even sound like you are building a campaign manager. This is a game/session manager.
stream integration
Encounter building
combat tracking
These things are cool but they have very little to do with managing my campaign. Where's the...
Ability to upload map
Pin the maps and document locations
Use fog of war on maps
Create, document and manage npcs
Create, document and manage locations
Create, document and manage groups
Create, document and manage events (story, not just encounters)
Ability to use flowcharts to map out my story
Relationship mapping between NPCs
Track session journals
Create custom calendars and manage events
Don't get me wrong, I get that it will be possible to document some of these things in the 3x rich text boxes provided. But with alot of information comes the requirements for information management and there's no way that will be efficient or user friendly with your current framework.
I really dislike that you need to host the images somewhere else. If i was going to use this to document my campaign then that would be really annoying. I get why you've done it, just don't like the extra effort that would cause.
^^^^ this guy gets it. session management is awesome, but if you're going to give us campaign management tools... then give us this.
I feel extremely mislead by its title "Campaign Management." Allowing my players to use the core books for free is nice, but at best what you have now is "Player Management"
I need management tools for enemy, map, trap, items and the like before recognizing it as a campaign manager.
I know it's been said a bunch here already, but here I am raising my hand too.
The D&D team decided to call one of the game systems in fifth edition "Downtime Activities."
They did so because that's what would make the most sense to give players an idea of what it is intended for. What we got in the PHB and DMG could have easily been called "A Few Things to Spend Gold and Time on Between Sessions."
The "Downtime Activities" system isn't finished, but it had to have a starting point.
We could have called what we have so far in Campaign Management something like "Connecting and Sharing Content with Players in Your Group," but that's a feature of a broader system. A system that will be built out over time.
And again, I went on record extremely early to try to manage expectations around what would be included as Campaign Management at launch in order to not mislead anyone. You might have missed that, but the intent has never been to mislead.
We'll see what everyone has to say about their ideas for Campaign Management and go from there. I believe we've demonstrated that we engage with the feedback and take actions to make this better. Campaign Management will be no different.
Thanks!
I actually came back to retract my previous statement as I finally had a chance to find news updates and forum posts on the campaign manager; also thought about it and really, it's an equivalent addition to the pen and paper I use now. I do wish there was some clarification of it being a work in progress on the campaign management pages. Thank you for the response; I use the tools frequently, but I'm rarely an active community member, please forgive me for missing those.
Nice features would be to add items to players sheets. For example if i'm awarding a magic item to someone specifically, or perhaps a single PC steals something I can just add it to their sheet and they can read it without others knowing what it is.
The adventure paths are just the basic text from the books laid out neatly, can we have a way to add the AP to the campaign and then somehow track progress and/or position in the story?
More than one private and one public box would be a good start as well, you should be able to create as many as you see fit to easily spread out information you want to store.
So far the Campaign Manager is just the platform to share purchased content, I can't find a good use for it to manage my campaign
Fully agree. same Initial thoughts when I saw that pole.
To be transparent, we actually have received far more feedback (both here in the forums and elsewhere) regarding the items on the list above than anything regarding campaign management.
I think much of the confusion revolves around people having different opinions for what "campaign management" is or means.
The feedback we have received on the topic covers a vast array of "wants" that are truly diverse. Most of these I would disagree with being any more a "need" than what others have described as needs. i.e. Each person wants what he or she wants.
I believe a far more valuable exercise would be to try to get feedback on what people are looking for in campaign management. If we can get a "Top 5" list of those things (out of the nearly 100 things I've seen mentioned), then we could potentially make something happen.
It would be tough to even do a poll on it at this point because there are so many potential choices.
Perhaps we can start a thread to collect what features people want to see, then add a poll for the top items to see what wins out.
I'll get one out there. Be sure to let your voice be heard!
Badeye, I love that you are this active on the forums. A proof of your commitment to the community.
Also appreciate your response, but I have to wonder, when was the pole conducted and did the community understand that at launch there would be no further enhancements to the campaign system?
tbh I had expected another phase prior to launch. I probably voted for a encounter builder and/or combat tracker. These are still high on my list, however at that time - the campaign management system was barely on my radar.. I didn't start looking at this until both phase 2 & 3 had been delivered - since the building blocks for campaign management literally were still being built in the earlier phases.
Point is, I agree a fresh poling might be useful now that the product is out and people appreciate more of how this stuff works. 2,000 comments in the beta might not serve as well as 1000 after release, if beta users might not have fully understood the launch product .. If the features prioritize in a similar fashion no harm done right? If they don't it would serve the community better.
Not trying to stir the pot! I've actually really enjoyed MUCH of what has been accomplished already. As another has posted, it's great having everything at the fingertips. Job well done to your Team thus far.
I too really thought there was something coming with this. It seems the message of this section changed from "it's just a skeleton of what it will be" to "we don't have anything because it isn't clear what you guys want", it's honestly the first thing I have been truly disappointed in and based on the recent staff feedback doesn't appear to be important to them.
That's a little dramatic, but I understand your attempt to draw attention to the sentiment. I never said in my comments above that "we don't have anything because it isn't clear what you guys want" - wasn't my point at all.
We absolutely have things planned for campaign management and I (personally) have said from the very beginning that at launch it will be a skeleton of what it will be.
The point of my asking for consolidated feedback about campaign management at this point is that after reading thousands and thousands of posts with previous feedback, people have very divergent ideas about what "campaign management" means.
In other words, yes, as said all along campaign management as it is now is a skeleton and we have plans to do a great deal with it. Those things that we have planned are likely not going to cover the huge spread of conceptions about what it is, quickly at any rate.
I see people asking for a replacement for Obsidian Portal. I see people asking for the ability to inject notes/ comments into adventures. I see people asking for tooltipping on maps. I see people asking for stream integration. I see people asking for whitelisting/ blacklisting content. And many, many more - all as "campaign management."
I'm working on a way to best allow those divergent ideas within the community to surface and allow the community rate them to inform our plans.
Yea it is a bit dramatic, but that's because virtually every other part of the site has evolved, kudos on that, but this part hasn't been touched. I know i sound angry but I do love what has been done so far and greatly appreciate the fact that staff responds to feedback and changes the product based on that feedback (evidenced in the fact that i dropped $150 2 days ago on this product despite it not having this important section). The product meets many of my needs already with the excellent databases set up for monsters, items, and spells, seriously the quickness and ease of use is fantastic.
It's frustrating because this feature is really important to me as a DM, which I know the majority of the community isn't so the demand for DM tools is much smaller. Then looking at every post made about what's coming up and what's on the roadmap the campaign manager slowly dropped to the bottom of the list and now doesn't even get listed anymore. It was early on, but now has seemed to take a back seat to everything, which worries me that any updates beyond a notepad are months away, with the one exception of an encounter builder.
You say you have things planned for the campaign manager, which I believe 100% but, they haven't really been shared and we also have no idea when to expect them (not only with regards to time but with regards to priority). Any insight on what's already planned and when it's coming? I think if there was a starting point (and I don't believe what we have now can really be considered a starting point) the feedback on what else the community wants would be better. Regading timing of any updates, are we looking at weeks? Months? A year? Longer?
Fully agree. same Initial thoughts when I saw that pole.
To be transparent, we actually have received far more feedback (both here in the forums and elsewhere) regarding the items on the list above than anything regarding campaign management.
I think much of the confusion revolves around people having different opinions for what "campaign management" is or means.
The feedback we have received on the topic covers a vast array of "wants" that are truly diverse. Most of these I would disagree with being any more a "need" than what others have described as needs. i.e. Each person wants what he or she wants.
I believe a far more valuable exercise would be to try to get feedback on what people are looking for in campaign management. If we can get a "Top 5" list of those things (out of the nearly 100 things I've seen mentioned), then we could potentially make something happen.
It would be tough to even do a poll on it at this point because there are so many potential choices.
Perhaps we can start a thread to collect what features people want to see, then add a poll for the top items to see what wins out.
I'll get one out there. Be sure to let your voice be heard!
Badeye, I love that you are this active on the forums. A proof of your commitment to the community.
Also appreciate your response, but I have to wonder, when was the pole conducted and did the community understand that at launch there would be no further enhancements to the campaign system?
tbh I had expected another phase prior to launch. I probably voted for a encounter builder and/or combat tracker. These are still high on my list, however at that time - the campaign management system was barely on my radar.. I didn't start looking at this until both phase 2 & 3 had been delivered - since the building blocks for campaign management literally were still being built in the earlier phases.
Point is, I agree a fresh poling might be useful now that the product is out and people appreciate more of how this stuff works. 2,000 comments in the beta might not serve as well as 1000 after release, if beta users might not have fully understood the launch product .. If the features prioritize in a similar fashion no harm done right? If they don't it would serve the community better.
Not trying to stir the pot! I've actually really enjoyed MUCH of what has been accomplished already. As another has posted, it's great having everything at the fingertips. Job well done to your Team thus far.
I too really thought there was something coming with this. It seems the message of this section changed from "it's just a skeleton of what it will be" to "we don't have anything because it isn't clear what you guys want", it's honestly the first thing I have been truly disappointed in and based on the recent staff feedback doesn't appear to be important to them.
That's a little dramatic, but I understand your attempt to draw attention to the sentiment. I never said in my comments above that "we don't have anything because it isn't clear what you guys want" - wasn't my point at all.
We absolutely have things planned for campaign management and I (personally) have said from the very beginning that at launch it will be a skeleton of what it will be.
The point of my asking for consolidated feedback about campaign management at this point is that after reading thousands and thousands of posts with previous feedback, people have very divergent ideas about what "campaign management" means.
In other words, yes, as said all along campaign management as it is now is a skeleton and we have plans to do a great deal with it. Those things that we have planned are likely not going to cover the huge spread of conceptions about what it is, quickly at any rate.
I see people asking for a replacement for Obsidian Portal. I see people asking for the ability to inject notes/ comments into adventures. I see people asking for tooltipping on maps. I see people asking for stream integration. I see people asking for whitelisting/ blacklisting content. And many, many more - all as "campaign management."
I'm working on a way to best allow those divergent ideas within the community to surface and allow the community rate them to inform our plans.
Yea it is a bit dramatic, but that's because virtually every other part of the site has evolved, kudos on that, but this part hasn't been touched. I know i sound angry but I do love what has been done so far and greatly appreciate the fact that staff responds to feedback and changes the product based on that feedback (evidenced in the fact that i dropped $150 2 days ago on this product despite it not having this important section). The product meets many of my needs already with the excellent databases set up for monsters, items, and spells, seriously the quickness and ease of use is fantastic.
It's frustrating because this feature is really important to me as a DM, which I know the majority of the community isn't so the demand for DM tools is much smaller. Then looking at every post made about what's coming up and what's on the roadmap the campaign manager slowly dropped to the bottom of the list and now doesn't even get listed anymore. It was early on, but now has seemed to take a back seat to everything, which worries me that any updates beyond a notepad are months away, with the one exception of an encounter builder.
You say you have things planned for the campaign manager, which I believe 100% but, they haven't really been shared and we also have no idea when to expect them (not only with regards to time but with regards to priority). Any insight on what's already planned and when it's coming? I think if there was a starting point (and I don't believe what we have now can really be considered a starting point) the feedback on what else the community wants would be better. Regading timing of any updates, are we looking at weeks? Months? A year? Longer?
They have said that they have well over 100 items on their list just for the campaign manager and will be working on supplying a place for us to rank them and then we can get a roadmap going.
I think Obsidian Portal is an excellent product for them to start looking at. I didn't like OP because of the user interface, but overall it did what I am hoping this does. The ability to create and link to assets and allow only certain people to see them would go a long way :)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
I would really appreciate the option to allow all the characters in a shared campaign to view each-other's character sheets (but not change them, of course). For more developed sheets, like ones with backstories and intricate appearance descriptions, this would make a huge difference.
Please be sure to read the guidelines for the thread!
Thanks BadEye -- sorry if I was grumpy. I'm really excited about the product and glad it exists. It's super awesome as is, I just really can't wait till the section also gets developed :)
The reaction to feedback from all DNDBeyond staff has been amazing. The people that are bringing D&D to the forefront of gaming and making it so popular today (including those at DNDBeyond) truly care about their product and that's reflected in things like this.
I would really appreciate the option to allow all the characters in a shared campaign to view each-other's character sheets (but not change them, of course). For more developed sheets, like ones with backstories and intricate appearance descriptions, this would make a huge difference.
Loving this platform, and can't get enough of it.
- A brand new DM
View-only character sheets are in the works.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for this D&D Beyond Campaign Manager to 1000% replace the disappointing Obsidian Portal campaign manager we use today.
I mean, we can't even print character sheets from Obsidian Portal! It's basic misses/mistakes like these that drive passionate fan bases and users absolutely crazy.
Look forward to the DDB CM becoming a helpful DM session, combat and campaign management tool - with built-in simplicity or complexity - as much or as little of each as each individual user and DM wants!
A true host of simple, complex, and in-between optional features for the Campaign Manager, please - thank you!
I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for this D&D Beyond Campaign Manager to 1000% replace the disappointing Obsidian Portal campaign manager we use today.
Agreed. We can quibble about how well OP is implemented, but what it sets out to do is pretty much the definition of a Campaign Manager.
Half the stuff in that thread are things like "Encounter Builder" or "Random Name Generator". It would never, ever occur to me to group those under a "Campaign Manager". They're great ideas, and I'm kinda interested in seeing some of them created (I don't actually care about any random tables, but get why someone would be). I'd just put them under a different umbrella, maybe "DM Tools" or something.
Without, at the very least, NPC generating tools, and encounter building/management I can't see any justification to spend $55/per year for the DM subscription. I was very intrigued and optimistic all the way through the beta but now that it's live with no added functionality to campaign management other than being a virtual file folder for character sheets I don't see much value in this as a tool for running and maintaining a campaign. If broad campaign management functionality gets added in the future I would certainly call the price tag fair and well worth it. But really, robust campaign management should have been complete at launch.
Without, at the very least, NPC generating tools, and encounter building/management I can't see any justification to spend $55/per year for the DM subscription. I was very intrigued and optimistic all the way through the beta but now that it's live with no added functionality to campaign management other than being a virtual file folder for character sheets I don't see much value in this as a tool for running and maintaining a campaign. If broad campaign management functionality gets added in the future I would certainly call the price tag fair and well worth it. But really, robust campaign management should have been complete at launch.
We appreciate the feedback, but we made it very clear from the start that campaign management for launch would be a starting point primarily focused on sharing unlocked content with other players. Saying it "should have been complete" is one perspective among many.
We have had a very successful first week, which would indicate as we expected that many people desire to invest in the service as it currently is. This is a good thing, as it means we will be able to continue development strongly and add the aforementioned robust campaign management over time. We even hope to ramp up our resources with this level of support.
In the meantime, I encourage you to share your feedback on what you would like to see as part of campaign management, as we've come to see that means different things to different people. A thread is consolidating that feedback here.
Thanks!
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
Personally, right now I use a whole heap of tools to run my games. I have a one note file which has all my story planning, world lore, locations, NPCs. (It also has all the monsters, items and spells on easy look up, which D&D beyond will probably replace now.)
I also wrote my own desktop program to run encounters, and I feel as a DM creating the initial combat is the most time consuming thing which slows the game down itself, in terms of both working out what to use (not knowing how many of my players will be there and what they will do in advance). This program has made it much more manageable but is totally disconnected to my one note, so I have to look up spells and specific details.
I use obsidian portal for notes for the players on where the campaign is and sessions notes etc, and use facebook and skype to keep them up to date with when we are playing and any other things I need to bring up. I run the actual map stuff in roll 20, because I can't draw, I don't want to prepare heaps of maps in advance. So that is a whole heap of stuff I used to try and make the games run smoothly and deal with my weaknesses as a DM.
I would be glad to be able to rid myself of some of these tools. In order of preference I guess it would be:
Ability to have information for my players and myself, categorised and with linked enabled. So I could add links to my created items, NPCs, locations, story/lore etc. Basically in some ways act like a better one note, where any page or home brew I create, or official content can be linked to as part of one of these "notes". I could then use this also to have recaps of sessions and remove the need for both my one note and obsidian portal.
2nd on my list would be encounter building first, then combat tracking later. Just ways to build encounters based on my player count, ideally from a preset list of monsters. This way actually the very next thing I was going to code into my personal program, so this is why it is number 2 as I can get around this myself.
i really have to say, if it's going to be any kind of "campaign manager" you NEED to have an encounter builder. Insider had this and it was my most used feature as a 4th ed DM.
also if you'd let me link to things in notes that'd be awesome - ex: i own curse of strahd on your platform. if i could leave a note like 'characters walked into @Madame Eva's tent and this is where we called it for the night" that'd be great. or "characters started a feud with @character" so i could easily get information on that character without hunting.
a combat tracker for the encounter i generated would be a nice to have - but honestly i'd almost prefer to see time spent on other features. like if i make a custom map i should be able to link it into a campaign page (also, while we're at it - could we please get a "just maps" section for the campaigns we purchase? it'd be incredible handy to be able to navigate just the included maps)
back to maps - if i have a adventure with "player view" maps (i think you're looking into implementing this) please let me share them to people via the campaign management section as well! same with handouts!
if you're hungry for feature lists to make the campaign manager an actual campaign manager... look at realm works for inspiration.
your player tools are on point, but we DM's need a lot more to run a game from just your service. really glad you're collecting feedback and communicating with the community. really happy with what we have currently, can't wait to see what's next.
Thank you for the response; I use the tools frequently, but I'm rarely an active community member, please forgive me for missing those.
Nice features would be to add items to players sheets. For example if i'm awarding a magic item to someone specifically, or perhaps a single PC steals something I can just add it to their sheet and they can read it without others knowing what it is.
The adventure paths are just the basic text from the books laid out neatly, can we have a way to add the AP to the campaign and then somehow track progress and/or position in the story?
More than one private and one public box would be a good start as well, you should be able to create as many as you see fit to easily spread out information you want to store.
So far the Campaign Manager is just the platform to share purchased content, I can't find a good use for it to manage my campaign
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
I need a campaign wiki.
With tooltip linking.
What a poster said above about would be ideal.
I think Obsidian Portal is an excellent product for them to start looking at. I didn't like OP because of the user interface, but overall it did what I am hoping this does. The ability to create and link to assets and allow only certain people to see them would go a long way :)
The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
Alright folks, share your feature suggestions here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/d-d-beyond-feedback/6393-campaign-management-features-wish-list
Please be sure to read the guidelines for the thread!
I would really appreciate the option to allow all the characters in a shared campaign to view each-other's character sheets (but not change them, of course). For more developed sheets, like ones with backstories and intricate appearance descriptions, this would make a huge difference.
Loving this platform, and can't get enough of it.
- A brand new DM
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for this D&D Beyond Campaign Manager to 1000% replace the disappointing Obsidian Portal campaign manager we use today.
I mean, we can't even print character sheets from Obsidian Portal! It's basic misses/mistakes like these that drive passionate fan bases and users absolutely crazy.
Look forward to the DDB CM becoming a helpful DM session, combat and campaign management tool - with built-in simplicity or complexity - as much or as little of each as each individual user and DM wants!
A true host of simple, complex, and in-between optional features for the Campaign Manager, please - thank you!
Without, at the very least, NPC generating tools, and encounter building/management I can't see any justification to spend $55/per year for the DM subscription. I was very intrigued and optimistic all the way through the beta but now that it's live with no added functionality to campaign management other than being a virtual file folder for character sheets I don't see much value in this as a tool for running and maintaining a campaign. If broad campaign management functionality gets added in the future I would certainly call the price tag fair and well worth it. But really, robust campaign management should have been complete at launch.