I really don't understand the focus on stream integration. I'd be willing to be 99% of your customers don't care about it.
A very small percentage of people playing D&D stream D&D. However, the number of people that watch and engage in D&D streaming has grown exponentially (and continues to rise at a surprising rate) over the last year or two.
Since I see the data, I'd definitely take you up on your bet.
Also, please keep in mind that stream integration for us is nowhere near as involved as some of the other roadmap items we are working on - we will implement it as low-hanging fruit when we can get to it. Some of the things we'll have to do to make it work will benefit everyone, including the folks that don't stream or watch streams.
With the surge in watching D&D I gotta agree with this one here: it's not as intensive an undertaking, will make watching the streams more enjoyable, and will set up the new features at the same time. It makes sense to use the framework of the stream integration because, in theory, this will give everything a similar or the same look/feel: maintaining familiarity. I would imagine there is support from the Twitch developers too. Lastly, this framework can be recycled and tweaked setting up the monster/encounter builder features, NPC features, and I'm sure more. Effectively (hopefully) reducing the lag time in getting all of the features out.
So although we may see the streaming features first, it is a glimpse of things to come for everyone as well.
I'm not sure if there has been any talk about making campaign notes from within the compendium content for DM's? Similar to a pop-up note on a PDF or WORD document. Yup, more laziness: I dislike switching from campaign notes to the adventure compendiums.
Apologies if this is already covered, but we need the ability for characters to be transferred across campaigns. As a DM with a Master subscription, I should be able to view a PC in any one of my campaigns and transfer it to another. We can do this now via kludgy workarounds, and re-sending the link, but it would be better if it was just built in.
Also, the adventure content should have a quick way to access any of the maps. Sort of like you have the pop-up stat blocks for monsters, spells, etc.. If I'm reading a block of room descriptions, I'd love to have each one contain a hyperlink or popup to the map being referenced. Just an idea. :)
Apologies if this is already covered, but we need the ability for characters to be transferred across campaigns. As a DM with a Master subscription, I should be able to view a PC in any one of my campaigns and transfer it to another. We can do this now via kludgy workarounds, and re-sending the link, but it would be better if it was just built in.
Also, the adventure content should have a quick way to access any of the maps. Sort of like you have the pop-up stat blocks for monsters, spells, etc.. If I'm reading a block of room descriptions, I'd love to have each one contain a hyperlink or popup to the map being referenced. Just an idea. :)
I know it's probably a lot of work so it's nothing we would see any time soon, but I saw somewhere else where someone suggested that the maps themselves should be interactive. Either you click the number and it links to the corresponding text, or the text pops up in a pane. That would be very cool.
Also, please keep in mind that stream integration for us is nowhere near as involved as some of the other roadmap items we are working on - we will implement it as low-hanging fruit when we can get to it. Some of the things we'll have to do to make it work will benefit everyone, including the folks that don't stream or watch streams.
As an aside, I really appreciate your willingness to engage the community and have meaningful discussions about upcoming features and development. Your replies always seem thoughtful and sympathetic to what the community does or doesn't need. Keep up the good work.
Aside from the product itself being pretty solid (with nothing but improvements coming in the foreseeable future), you're also generating a lot of good will through these discussions. I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge it, and thank you for it. :-)
What's meant by "Your customer" here? Sure, I watch streams, but I'm your customer of a website for campaign management. Putting tools to stream before there are tools to run a game are in place. What's the point? Seems like it could be a huge misstep. Yes, I enjoy streaming games - but I'm here to run my games.
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but are there plans to allow a DM to restrict certain choices from players? For example I bought VGM for the monsters, but I don't want my players to choose any of the Races. Ideally, we could do this by source as well as by individual option (if I wanted to allow someone me of the races).
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but are there plans to allow a DM to restrict certain choices from players? For example I bought VGM for the monsters, but I don't want my players to choose any of the Races. Ideally, we could do this by source as well as by individual option (if I wanted to allow someone me of the races).
No, there are currently no plans to allow you to enforce such gaming group rules through the D&D Beyond site.
This would be a fairly complex system, that would be used by a small number of people and likely generate a lot of support requests from people, who don't understand why they can't see race X or sub-class Y.
Genuine question - is there a reason you'd like to be able to enforce this through D&D Beyond, rather than a discussion with the players, where you agree as a group what race & class their characters are going to be?
What's meant by "Your customer" here? Sure, I watch streams, but I'm your customer of a website for campaign management. Putting tools to stream before there are tools to run a game are in place. What's the point? Seems like it could be a huge misstep. Yes, I enjoy streaming games - but I'm here to run my games.
My understanding is that some of the aspects needed to make streaming possible will be updates that will assist with running and/or playing D&D through this website without streaming. Also, BadEye mentioned that streaming integration is a fairly easy update for the DDB team to make. I'd guess that the streaming integration will happen once they have a few more of these updates that will benefit you (as someone interested in running games) are in place, and they can do something easy to check another box on their to-do list. Regardless of when the streaming integration comes out, I don't think it is going to significantly delay the development of the other items on their list, and it may even help some of them come out sooner.
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but are there plans to allow a DM to restrict certain choices from players? For example I bought VGM for the monsters, but I don't want my players to choose any of the Races. Ideally, we could do this by source as well as by individual option (if I wanted to allow someone me of the races).
No, there are currently no plans to allow you to enforce such gaming group rules through the D&D Beyond site.
This would be a fairly complex system, that would be used by a small number of people and likely generate a lot of support requests from people, who don't understand why they can't see race X or sub-class Y.
Genuine question - is there a reason you'd like to be able to enforce this through D&D Beyond, rather than a discussion with the players, where you agree as a group what race & class their characters are going to be?
Genuine, probably related answer--I have a bit of arachnophobia, so I ban spiders and drow in all my games, so I'd like to be able to choose to not see spiders and drow when I go to the Monsters Listing to build an encounter (or just to browse).
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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
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but are there plans to allow a DM to restrict certain choices from players? For example I bought VGM for the monsters, but I don't want my players to choose any of the Races. Ideally, we could do this by source as well as by individual option (if I wanted to allow someone me of the races).
No, there are currently no plans to allow you to enforce such gaming group rules through the D&D Beyond site.
This would be a fairly complex system, that would be used by a small number of people and likely generate a lot of support requests from people, who don't understand why they can't see race X or sub-class Y.
Genuine question - is there a reason you'd like to be able to enforce this through D&D Beyond, rather than a discussion with the players, where you agree as a group what race & class their characters are going to be?
in some way later if your the owner of the book and you share it in a campaign i think they will let you disable sharing on some of the books you share i guess its more usefull for adventure but once again if you give a magic item unique at that adventure book how the player will see it if you dont share that adventure with him ... guess its a bit complicated but i'm sure they can do it as they can sell you only magic items from a book or only specific race etc... its matter of time before they implement that kind of restriction because its very on demande for adventure to prevent player to go check maps or read stuff in it but you will be able to restrict only stuff that you own so if another player have volo you wont be able to remove the acces of its own book he bough ... and that normal.
Genuine question - is there a reason you'd like to be able to enforce this through D&D Beyond, rather than a discussion with the players, where you agree as a group what race & class their characters are going to be?
I'm currently running three different games, with a total of 16 players. It's a lot to manage under the best of circumstances, but about half of those players are new to 5E, don't have the books, and frankly have no idea what source things they see on DDB come from. I've explained my guidelines several times, butit has yet to click for most of them... if they see it in the builder, they assume it's fine. This might be fine for others since character creation is infrequent, but in the past 3 weeks I (or rather the Tomb of Annihilation) has killed 10 characters.
Genuine question - is there a reason you'd like to be able to enforce this through D&D Beyond, rather than a discussion with the players, where you agree as a group what race & class their characters are going to be?
I'm currently running three different games, with a total of 16 players. It's a lot to manage under the best of circumstances, but about half of those players are new to 5E, don't have the books, and frankly have no idea what source things they see on DDB come from. I've explained my guidelines several times, butit has yet to click for most of them... if they see it in the builder, they assume it's fine. This might be fine for others since character creation is infrequent, but in the past 3 weeks I (or rather the Tomb of Annihilation) has killed 10 characters.
I just want to second this request. You should be able to, at a campaign level, turn on/off source books for character creation. This is something that if you're trying to manage more than one campaign could get very difficult quickly, and makes it much easier than saying 'I know you see that, but don't click it.'
EDIT to elaborate:
Per campaign click the source books you want to allow. In character builder under that campaign, banner that says 'Your DM has restricted available source books to: [List of Books]. If you have a question please contact your DM'.
Hide elements not in the source books I select. I think this would be used by more people than you think so when you start a new campaign you don't have to tell someone new to the game that crazy race X is off limits.
What's meant by "Your customer" here? Sure, I watch streams, but I'm your customer of a website for campaign management. Putting tools to stream before there are tools to run a game are in place. What's the point? Seems like it could be a huge misstep. Yes, I enjoy streaming games - but I'm here to run my games.
From what I have read the intent for stream integration is to provide quick character information and views for those watching the stream. Similar to what a lot of users have asked for in campaign management. So there is quite a bit of overlap. Also, the main reason for the site was to be an online resource of the printed materials, character creation, and a place to create and view various home-brew content. Then, be able to share content across those within the campaign and maybe manage small pieces of your campaign.
From watching the live stream Q&A I believe there was a lot of surprise how well received the site was overall. I agree the tools to manage a game are more important overall to most, including myself. From a development perspective it does make sense to do these in tandem. We could even see some things come out at the same time. If I recall there is a lot of character sheet re-working that is being done which is useful for both.
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but are there plans to allow a DM to restrict certain choices from players? For example I bought VGM for the monsters, but I don't want my players to choose any of the Races. Ideally, we could do this by source as well as by individual option (if I wanted to allow someone me of the races).
No, there are currently no plans to allow you to enforce such gaming group rules through the D&D Beyond site.
This would be a fairly complex system, that would be used by a small number of people and likely generate a lot of support requests from people, who don't understand why they can't see race X or sub-class Y.
Genuine question - is there a reason you'd like to be able to enforce this through D&D Beyond, rather than a discussion with the players, where you agree as a group what race & class their characters are going to be?
I can see why you want to do this, especially with newer players, or just those that want to be difficult.
I wouldn't be surprised if down the line though we begin seeing restrictions by source. I know there has been discussion on validations for Adventurers league and such could it be possible to choose the validations at a high-level similar to selecting gaining HP, gaining XP, and AbilityScore generation?
I know there are plans for features which would make it easier to see if your players would be following any restrictions (ex: when a character sheet is updated) which is easier to implement than creating essentially a "permissions" section that could have a ton of switches/check-boxes.
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but are there plans to allow a DM to restrict certain choices from players? For example I bought VGM for the monsters, but I don't want my players to choose any of the Races. Ideally, we could do this by source as well as by individual option (if I wanted to allow someone me of the races).
No, there are currently no plans to allow you to enforce such gaming group rules through the D&D Beyond site.
This would be a fairly complex system, that would be used by a small number of people and likely generate a lot of support requests from people, who don't understand why they can't see race X or sub-class Y.
Genuine question - is there a reason you'd like to be able to enforce this through D&D Beyond, rather than a discussion with the players, where you agree as a group what race & class their characters are going to be?
I can see why you want to do this, especially with newer players, or just those that want to be difficult.
I wouldn't be surprised if down the line though we begin seeing restrictions by source. I know there has been discussion on validations for Adventurers league and such could it be possible to choose the validations at a high-level similar to selecting gaining HP, gaining XP, and AbilityScore generation?
I know there are plans for features which would make it easier to see if your players would be following any restrictions (ex: when a character sheet is updated) which is easier to implement than creating essentially a "permissions" section that could have a ton of switches/check-boxes.
I actually came here to suggest a related idea: an optional campaign view of the compendium where the DM can toggle on or off rules.
For instance, say in my hypothetical campaign I'm using the following DMG optional rules: Madness, Slow Natural Healing, Healer's Kit Dependency, and Plot Points. I've also decided to replace the default Traps rules with Traps Revisited from Xanathar's Guide. Dragonborn, Half-Elves, and Half-Orcs are also banned for whatever reason. We decide all Humans are Variant Humans.
In my campaign management, I choose to "build" my own compendium, which would amount to an on-off toggle on all rules, races, feats, etc. It would be a big list for sure, but a walkthrough category by category could help.
Alternatively, perhaps on each page in the main compendium there could be a "campaign compendium" button which you click then select your campaign, and whether you want to toggle the content on or off in that campaign's view of the compendium. That way the D&D Beyond staff don't have to create the exhaustive Permissions section - the DM just searches for the page they want to exclude/include and sets it themselves from there.
For my example, I would toggle Madness and Plot Points to on. I would toggle the DMG Healing variants on while toggling the default rules they replace off. Similarly, I would toggle traps off and Traps Revisited from Xanathar's on. Likewise, I would toggle off Dragoborn, Half-Orcs, Half-Elves, and default humans (leaving Variant Humans on).
From this point on, whenever I or my players access the compendium via the campaign's portal, we see only the content that is relevant to our campaign.
Campaign-specific views of the compendium would also be ideal for integrating homebrew content the DM has created, which would be off by default but could be added manually, creating a complete rules bible for the DM's game including all their custom races, feats, spells, houserules, etc.
I know it's an ambitious idea, but it would be super useful. Right now I have zero use for D&D Beyond's campaign management - if it could eventually do what I've described it would go from useless to me to indispensable.
I actually came here to suggest a related idea: an optional campaign view of the compendium where the DM can toggle on or off rules.
For instance, say in my hypothetical campaign I'm using the following DMG optional rules: Madness, Slow Natural Healing, Healer's Kit Dependency, and Plot Points. I've also decided to replace the default Traps rules with Traps Revisited from Xanathar's Guide. Dragonborn, Half-Elves, and Half-Orcs are also banned for whatever reason. We decide all Humans are Variant Humans.
In my campaign management, I choose to "build" my own compendium, which would amount to an on-off toggle on all rules, races, feats, etc. It would be a big list for sure, but a walkthrough category by category could help.
Alternatively, perhaps on each page in the main compendium there could be a "campaign compendium" button which you click then select your campaign, and whether you want to toggle the content on or off in that campaign's view of the compendium. That way the D&D Beyond staff don't have to create the exhaustive Permissions section - the DM just searches for the page they want to exclude/include and sets it themselves from there.
For my example, I would toggle Madness and Plot Points to on. I would toggle the DMG Healing variants on while toggling the default rules they replace off. Similarly, I would toggle traps off and Traps Revisited from Xanathar's on. Likewise, I would toggle off Dragoborn, Half-Orcs, Half-Elves, and default humans (leaving Variant Humans on).
From this point on, whenever I or my players access the compendium via the campaign's portal, we see only the content that is relevant to our campaign.
Campaign-specific views of the compendium would also be ideal for integrating homebrew content the DM has created, which would be off by default but could be added manually, creating a complete rules bible for the DM's game including all their custom races, feats, spells, houserules, etc.
I know it's an ambitious idea, but it would be super useful. Right now I have zero use for D&D Beyond's campaign management - if it could eventually do what I've described it would go from useless to me to indispensable.
I think these are great ideas. 5E offers so much flexibility with its optional and variant rules, so it makes sense for the campaign manger to allow a DM to take full advantage of that. I realize there is much to come, but for the moment the bare bones campaign manager is particularly useful.
Not at all a bad idea, and it has actually come up in another thread recently, although I can't remember exactly which one.
The thing that makes this idea tricky though is Content Sharing. As in, Content Sharing allows all users (Players and DM) to share everything they have purchased with everyone in the campaign.
So let's take a real example. My DM for ToA bought the physical book at launch, but as a favor to her and because I have plans to DM it for my other group later, I went ahead and purchased it on DDB.
Now let's say hypothetically, I decide to start running it in 6 months. The group I'm playing in is far enough ahead at that point to where I'm not worried about the group I'd be DMing for catching up, so spoilers aren't an issue.
So what happens if my DM decided to lock the contents of that book from Player View? Do I lose the content I paid for until she decides to grant it back to me? Do I have to quit the campaign to get it back if she won't unlock it? Or can she not lock it from me since I bought it? If that's the case, what's to stop a player who wants to cheat bad enough from just buying the book themselves? On that note, what's to stop any player from just buying a physical book?
I'm not particularly worried about this scenario, but it's worth bringing up as a hypothetical to demonstrate how different the circumstances can be from group to group.
Like I said, a toggle isn't a bad idea and it's a good point that needs to be discussed, but ultimately at some point for many groups, it still has to come down to trusting your players to not cheat themselves out of the experience. I'm only bringing up criticisms so that the argument for the toggle can consider every angle.
When campaign management goes live, we will never lock a user from viewing content they paid for. The option will exist for the DM to stop content sharing for specific compendium content, but the original people that purchased that content will always have access to it. Remember, campaign management is still quite a ways away. It's coming, but we're still solidifying the foundation before building this massive tower.
So yes, if a player wants to read ToA they will always be able to read it if they've purchased it - no matter what campaigns they're a part of.
Not at all a bad idea, and it has actually come up in another thread recently, although I can't remember exactly which one.
The thing that makes this idea tricky though is Content Sharing. As in, Content Sharing allows all users (Players and DM) to share everything they have purchased with everyone in the campaign.
So let's take a real example. My DM for ToA bought the physical book at launch, but as a favor to her and because I have plans to DM it for my other group later, I went ahead and purchased it on DDB.
Now let's say hypothetically, I decide to start running it in 6 months. The group I'm playing in is far enough ahead at that point to where I'm not worried about the group I'd be DMing for catching up, so spoilers aren't an issue.
So what happens if my DM decided to lock the contents of that book from Player View? Do I lose the content I paid for until she decides to grant it back to me? Do I have to quit the campaign to get it back if she won't unlock it? Or can she not lock it from me since I bought it? If that's the case, what's to stop a player who wants to cheat bad enough from just buying the book themselves? On that note, what's to stop any player from just buying a physical book?
I'm not particularly worried about this scenario, but it's worth bringing up as a hypothetical to demonstrate how different the circumstances can be from group to group.
Like I said, a toggle isn't a bad idea and it's a good point that needs to be discussed, but ultimately at some point for many groups, it still has to come down to trusting your players to not cheat themselves out of the experience. I'm only bringing up criticisms so that the argument for the toggle can consider every angle.
Throwing my 2 coppers (stole this from someone, I am sure) around! You rise some very valid concerns. If a toggle mechanic is introduced, the only way for it to be effectively useful and fair is to limit visibility of content solely inside that campaign, the same way a player can create a character he doesn't own the resources for only when that character is created within the campaign.
I find the toggle function having close to no appeal to me, as I usually game and will use DDB to game with people I know, so the trust issue is not in question, but I can see how it could be very useful for people using DDB for campaigns with more of a "random" player base or via post, where trust can be put a little more into question. As you say, though, nothing stops someone from buying the material here or anywhere else and circumvent the lockout from the content inside the campaign share function, but that possibility does not defeat the purpose of the toggle function, imho (someone willing enough to "cheat" might still not be willing to pay money for it).
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What i would like is something like a city template, like you guys have monster templates, character sheets etc.
The one could summon these by using [city] Big ass city [/city], this will call the action to preview quick facts on this city.
Facts could be like: inhabitants (races), regions in city (if there are any), encounters (again call to action, draw from monsters) etc.
Apologies if this is already covered, but we need the ability for characters to be transferred across campaigns. As a DM with a Master subscription, I should be able to view a PC in any one of my campaigns and transfer it to another. We can do this now via kludgy workarounds, and re-sending the link, but it would be better if it was just built in.
Also, the adventure content should have a quick way to access any of the maps. Sort of like you have the pop-up stat blocks for monsters, spells, etc.. If I'm reading a block of room descriptions, I'd love to have each one contain a hyperlink or popup to the map being referenced. Just an idea. :)
What's meant by "Your customer" here? Sure, I watch streams, but I'm your customer of a website for campaign management. Putting tools to stream before there are tools to run a game are in place. What's the point? Seems like it could be a huge misstep. Yes, I enjoy streaming games - but I'm here to run my games.
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but are there plans to allow a DM to restrict certain choices from players? For example I bought VGM for the monsters, but I don't want my players to choose any of the Races. Ideally, we could do this by source as well as by individual option (if I wanted to allow someone me of the races).
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My understanding is that some of the aspects needed to make streaming possible will be updates that will assist with running and/or playing D&D through this website without streaming. Also, BadEye mentioned that streaming integration is a fairly easy update for the DDB team to make. I'd guess that the streaming integration will happen once they have a few more of these updates that will benefit you (as someone interested in running games) are in place, and they can do something easy to check another box on their to-do list. Regardless of when the streaming integration comes out, I don't think it is going to significantly delay the development of the other items on their list, and it may even help some of them come out sooner.
"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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Not at all a bad idea, and it has actually come up in another thread recently, although I can't remember exactly which one.
The thing that makes this idea tricky though is Content Sharing. As in, Content Sharing allows all users (Players and DM) to share everything they have purchased with everyone in the campaign.
So let's take a real example. My DM for ToA bought the physical book at launch, but as a favor to her and because I have plans to DM it for my other group later, I went ahead and purchased it on DDB.
Now let's say hypothetically, I decide to start running it in 6 months. The group I'm playing in is far enough ahead at that point to where I'm not worried about the group I'd be DMing for catching up, so spoilers aren't an issue.
So what happens if my DM decided to lock the contents of that book from Player View? Do I lose the content I paid for until she decides to grant it back to me? Do I have to quit the campaign to get it back if she won't unlock it? Or can she not lock it from me since I bought it? If that's the case, what's to stop a player who wants to cheat bad enough from just buying the book themselves? On that note, what's to stop any player from just buying a physical book?
I'm not particularly worried about this scenario, but it's worth bringing up as a hypothetical to demonstrate how different the circumstances can be from group to group.
Like I said, a toggle isn't a bad idea and it's a good point that needs to be discussed, but ultimately at some point for many groups, it still has to come down to trusting your players to not cheat themselves out of the experience. I'm only bringing up criticisms so that the argument for the toggle can consider every angle.
When campaign management goes live, we will never lock a user from viewing content they paid for. The option will exist for the DM to stop content sharing for specific compendium content, but the original people that purchased that content will always have access to it. Remember, campaign management is still quite a ways away. It's coming, but we're still solidifying the foundation before building this massive tower.
So yes, if a player wants to read ToA they will always be able to read it if they've purchased it - no matter what campaigns they're a part of.
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You rise some very valid concerns.
If a toggle mechanic is introduced, the only way for it to be effectively useful and fair is to limit visibility of content solely inside that campaign, the same way a player can create a character he doesn't own the resources for only when that character is created within the campaign.
As you say, though, nothing stops someone from buying the material here or anywhere else and circumvent the lockout from the content inside the campaign share function, but that possibility does not defeat the purpose of the toggle function, imho (someone willing enough to "cheat" might still not be willing to pay money for it).
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games