Or maybe they could do something where we scan the bar codes of our existing books to unlock those features on the site
The problem is that barcodes are not unique. They just indicate what the product is, so one Player Handbook's barcode is the same as any other and could be scanned an unlimited amount of times. Also, how would DDB make money? They don't make money off the physical books.
I have also payed multiple times for 5th edition content. Hardcover copies of all core rule books and supplements along with purchasing the full digital bundle through Fantasy Grounds has resulted in a significant investment. I love the game enough to invest money, however at some point there has to be a medium model that allows integrating these resources across the physical/digital barrier. Repetitive purchase of the same game content in effort to access on different applications or devices is not ethical nor affordable.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."
Well...it may not be affordable and a bad business model, but it is completely ethical. I agree that I hope there is a middle ground, at least for the players!
I am not sure which billing method will be the best for the platform.
One time fee is my preference.
Even if the price point is identical to the physical books. So far I have only used the 3 core books. Repurchase is not a problem for me, if it allows me to transcend to pretty much all digital.
Overall I love 5th editions trend of less books, and less rule and mechanic bloat.
I am not sure which billing method will be the best for the platform.
One time fee is my preference.
Even if the price point is identical to the physical books. So far I have only used the 3 core books. Repurchase is not a problem for me, if it allows me to transcend to pretty much all digital.
Overall I love 5th editions trend of less books, and less rule and mechanic bloat.
I agree. For most DMs you don't need much past the 3 core books. Too many rules books just makes it a pain for the DM to keep track of. I don't even let my players use any optional rules. I know a lot of people like things like feats but it is just one more thing to keep track of and to make sure players are using correctly. I like to keep things simple. There are enough good choices as is. I find in general simple is better and keeps players and me from becoming overwhelmed.
I plan to buy the three core books and call it good. I don't see myself needing to pay for much more. If I run a WotC adventure I may buy that at that time. No reason to buy the adventure books until you need them. Players only need the handbook.
DDB has said the books will be discounted. Seems fairly reasonable to me as I have no desire to subscribe.
I agree. For most DMs you don't need much past the 3 core books. Too many rules books just makes it a pain for the DM to keep track of. I don't even let my players use any optional rules. I know a lot of people like things like feats but it is just one more thing to keep track of and to make sure players are using correctly. I like to keep thing simple. There are enough good choices as is. I find in general simple is better and keeps players and me from becoming overwhelmed.
I plan to buy the three core books and call it good. I don't see myself needing to pay for much more. If I run a WotC adventure I may buy that at that time. No reason to buy the adventure books until you need them. Players only need the handbook.
A lot of "generic" systems will do setting/genre-specific source books. GURPS was famous for this, but Hero and Savage Worlds both have a variety of "Fantasy Hero", "Savage Horror", etc. type books. Some of these reprint the same or nearly the same powers, and it's not a big deal -- it might be if they did huge amounts of it, but they typically just have marginal overlap and/or enough tweaking to make them similar, but different.
I'm starting to think this might be a reasonable idea with D&D. Obviously, we don't need a "Fantasy 5E" book. But, a new "Oriental Adventures" that has appropriately flavored feats, spells, races, subclasses, etc. would be interesting. It really wouldn't overlap with something like a "Complete Viking Handbook" (looking at my shelf), either. Dark Sun is it's own, proprietary sub-genre, as would be Eberron. Do them one-and-done. Some people would probably buy everything and try to use everything. If done right, there could be a generally understood expectation that most games would only use Core + 1, which would soft-limit the overload, but still allow some room for additional material.
Of course, that model runs fairly counter to the one with "Volo's Guide to Monsters" and "Big Book o' Crunch, 2017 Volume", so I'm not really holding my breath. But... That's how I'd want to try things, if I were running the company.
I agree. For most DMs you don't need much past the 3 core books. Too many rules books just makes it a pain for the DM to keep track of. I don't even let my players use any optional rules. I know a lot of people like things like feats but it is just one more thing to keep track of and to make sure players are using correctly. I like to keep thing simple. There are enough good choices as is. I find in general simple is better and keeps players and me from becoming overwhelmed.
I plan to buy the three core books and call it good. I don't see myself needing to pay for much more. If I run a WotC adventure I may buy that at that time. No reason to buy the adventure books until you need them. Players only need the handbook.
A lot of "generic" systems will do setting/genre-specific source books. GURPS was famous for this, but Hero and Savage Worlds both have a variety of "Fantasy Hero", "Savage Horror", etc. type books. Some of these reprint the same or nearly the same powers, and it's not a big deal -- it might be if they did huge amounts of it, but they typically just have marginal overlap and/or enough tweaking to make them similar, but different.
I'm starting to think this might be a reasonable idea with D&D. Obviously, we don't need a "Fantasy 5E" book. But, a new "Oriental Adventures" that has appropriately flavored feats, spells, races, subclasses, etc. would be interesting. It really wouldn't overlap with something like a "Complete Viking Handbook" (looking at my shelf), either. Dark Sun is it's own, proprietary sub-genre, as would be Eberron. Do them one-and-done. Some people would probably buy everything and try to use everything. If done right, there could be a generally understood expectation that most games would only use Core + 1, which would soft-limit the overload, but still allow some room for additional material.
Of course, that model runs fairly counter to the one with "Volo's Guide to Monsters" and "Big Book o' Crunch, 2017 Volume", so I'm not really holding my breath. But... That's how I'd want to try things, if I were running the company.
Ya, I could see that working. Honestly, WotC can put out whatever they want. For me and my players, I don't need 1000 races and classes to chose from or a ton more optional rules. I know some people love hypercomplex systems but for me, 5th ed hit just the right mix. It could be fun to see it applied to new settings.
Oh, definitely. The glut of options is one of the reasons I eventually dropped 3.5E. I'm in no way saying that I want a return to that in 5E. I do, however, love to see different takes on things and ways to get more flavor out of rules. And "flavor" doesn't equate to "I fight moar better", IMO. I'm both looking forward to the 2017 "book o' crunch" and nervous about it.
I'm looking forward to it because I want to see a final cut of the Mystic and some of the various sub-classes that have been floated in UA. On the other hand, I'm afraid (near certainty) that it'll be a big dump of random rules -- a PHB2, regardless of actual name (which will probably actually be pulled from some Realms lore, such as "Volo's Guide to Adventuring").
This might have been discussed already, but when we refer to "one-time fee" are we talking about "You buy the 5e PHB for $x.xx and it's now always available to you", or "You pay $x.xx and all content ever added or available is already paid for and ready for you to use"?
This might have been discussed already, but when we refer to "one-time fee" are we talking about "You buy the 5e PHB for $x.xx and it's now always available to you", or "You pay $x.xx and all content ever added or available is already paid for and ready for you to use"?
OMG That Profile pic. :O Love it.
I would expect (suspect) that this will all be cheaper than the other digital options out there. Hopefully at least.
This might have been discussed already, but when we refer to "one-time fee" are we talking about "You buy the 5e PHB for $x.xx and it's now always available to you", or "You pay $x.xx and all content ever added or available is already paid for and ready for you to use"?
When I say it, I mean buy a book or some other definite unit of content (they've confirmed you can buy just a single race, for example) and you have that content in perpetuity. I'm hoping (and somewhat assuming) there will be a "Core Rules" bundle where you can buy the PHB, DMG, and MM as a package deal, presumably for a discount of some sort, even if it's only 5% off.
I would think the "all content, even stuff no one has started writing, yet" would fall under a subscription model, like DDI was. At the current rate at which content is being released, that seems like it'd be heavily weighted in the house's favor, even at a low monthly rate.
This might have been discussed already, but when we refer to "one-time fee" are we talking about "You buy the 5e PHB for $x.xx and it's now always available to you", or "You pay $x.xx and all content ever added or available is already paid for and ready for you to use"?
Yeah, this seems to vary from person to person and is open to one's own interpretation. But what's going to happen is that you will be able to purchase individual books or parts of books (races or classes), and the subscription will include no content other than to give you access to "public homebrew content". So far at least, it seems the primary focus of the subscription will be to let players maintain more than 6 character slots and to let DMs share their purchased content with their players. So the subscriptions will not be standalone. The Master tier does nothing if you don't also buy some content.
The Master tier does nothing if you don't also buy some content.
Sure it does. It allows you to put player accounts into a campaign, share content with that campaign, and track and possibly even edit their character sheets, like adding gold or xp, double checking their math, etc. I imagine it will also have other advance campaign management stuff, and open up more advanced uses of the encounter/adventure building tools, when they come online.
A lot of "generic" systems will do setting/genre-specific source books. GURPS was famous for this, but Hero and Savage Worlds both have a variety of "Fantasy Hero", "Savage Horror", etc. type books. Some of these reprint the same or nearly the same powers, and it's not a big deal -- it might be if they did huge amounts of it, but they typically just have marginal overlap and/or enough tweaking to make them similar, but different.
I'm starting to think this might be a reasonable idea with D&D. Obviously, we don't need a "Fantasy 5E" book. But, a new "Oriental Adventures" that has appropriately flavored feats, spells, races, subclasses, etc. would be interesting. It really wouldn't overlap with something like a "Complete Viking Handbook" (looking at my shelf), either. Dark Sun is it's own, proprietary sub-genre, as would be Eberron. Do them one-and-done. Some people would probably buy everything and try to use everything. If done right, there could be a generally understood expectation that most games would only use Core + 1, which would soft-limit the overload, but still allow some room for additional material.
Of course, that model runs fairly counter to the one with "Volo's Guide to Monsters" and "Big Book o' Crunch, 2017 Volume", so I'm not really holding my breath. But... That's how I'd want to try things, if I were running the company.
I think you could do this with books like Volo's, actually. They'd combine quite nicely. The Viking book would have player and DM stuff, in chapters, just like Volo's.
I agree. For most DMs you don't need much past the 3 core books. Too many rules books just makes it a pain for the DM to keep track of. I don't even let my players use any optional rules. I know a lot of people like things like feats but it is just one more thing to keep track of and to make sure players are using correctly. I like to keep thing simple. There are enough good choices as is. I find in general simple is better and keeps players and me from becoming overwhelmed.
I plan to buy the three core books and call it good. I don't see myself needing to pay for much more. If I run a WotC adventure I may buy that at that time. No reason to buy the adventure books until you need them. Players only need the handbook.
DDB has said the books will be discounted. Seems fairly reasonable to me as I have no desire to subscribe.
I think the hard thing for wotc is how much this varies from group to group.
In my group, it isn't even up to the DM to decide if feats are allowed, it's a group decision. And not one person in my entire group wants a "core only" game. Heck, our current campaign doesn't have any humans, fighters, clerics, or rogues. Two half-elves, and elf, and a dwarf, but one half-elf is a half-drow, and the dwarf is a mystic with sorcerer flavor.
We would probably just play something else before playing in a phb only game with no optional rules/content. In fact, we didn't switch to 5e, as a group, until after Volo's. Some of us played 5e before that, but our main game was still in the game I'm building. The switch to 5e is giving me the chance to table that game for a while while I create a new iteration of the beta rules, which is nice, but if 5e hadn't expanded a bit, we'd never have picked it up.
The Master tier does nothing if you don't also buy some content.
Sure it does. It allows you to put player accounts into a campaign, share content with that campaign, and track and possibly even edit their character sheets, like adding gold or xp, double checking their math, etc. I imagine it will also have other advance campaign management stuff, and open up more advanced uses of the encounter/adventure building tools, when they come online.
I agree. For most DMs you don't need much past the 3 core books. Too many rules books just makes it a pain for the DM to keep track of. I don't even let my players use any optional rules. I know a lot of people like things like feats but it is just one more thing to keep track of and to make sure players are using correctly. I like to keep thing simple. There are enough good choices as is. I find in general simple is better and keeps players and me from becoming overwhelmed.
I plan to buy the three core books and call it good. I don't see myself needing to pay for much more. If I run a WotC adventure I may buy that at that time. No reason to buy the adventure books until you need them. Players only need the handbook.
DDB has said the books will be discounted. Seems fairly reasonable to me as I have no desire to subscribe.
I think the hard thing for wotc is how much this varies from group to group.
In my group, it isn't even up to the DM to decide if feats are allowed, it's a group decision. And not one person in my entire group wants a "core only" game. Heck, our current campaign doesn't have any humans, fighters, clerics, or rogues. Two half-elves, and elf, and a dwarf, but one half-elf is a half-drow, and the dwarf is a mystic with sorcerer flavor.
We would probably just play something else before playing in a phb only game with no optional rules/content. In fact, we didn't switch to 5e, as a group, until after Volo's. Some of us played 5e before that, but our main game was still in the game I'm building. The switch to 5e is giving me the chance to table that game for a while while I create a new iteration of the beta rules, which is nice, but if 5e hadn't expanded a bit, we'd never have picked it up.
From what I have read the campaign management is not limited to the paid tier. It is my understanding you will still be able to make and manage a campaign with the content you have purchased. I guess we shall see when we hit phase three. They have said there will be no future in the beta that will not be free at launch so we should be able to tell when we hit phase three. Also, we have no idea when any of the encounter/adventure builder stuff is coming and even less of an idea whether or not it will require a subscription. The problem is that if they hamstring the use of the materials people buy by putting useful features behind a subscription paywall it will decrease the likelihood of people purchasing their stuff at all.
You are right though that every group is different with its own dynamics. Luckily for me, my players don't crave ten thousand options when a hundred will do. Even your players picked two half-elves, an elf, and a dwarf all part of the SRD content. Race is one area where my players can pick whatever they want (although most people still stick to the basics) because race effects role playing more than adding much complexity. I encourage my players to make their characters unique by creating a cool backstory and interesting character idiosyncrasies rather than through feats or multiclassing. In my experience feats and multiclassing lead more toward min/maxing (which I hate) and less toward roleplaying (which I love). I have no problem with the fact that other DMs/players want more complexity and options. I am not someone who believes everything needs to cater to me and my tastes. For me it is a matter time and for me to DM I need to keep the rules lean and mean.
Out of curiosity what did Volo's guide add that made you switch to 5th ed.? I like Volo's guide and I don't feel it added any new or more complex rules. Sure it added some character classes, but it's mostly monsters and fun monster lore.
Reading all the speculation in this thread is interesting. I don't think I am the target audience for D&D Beyond. All I want is digital rulebooks. I don't really want character or campaign management, or at least I don't think that I want them.
I'm hoping WoTC gets their act together and uses dmsguild to start selling some core digital content.
Reading all the speculation in this thread is interesting. I don't think I am the target audience for D&D Beyond. All I want is digital rulebooks. I don't really want character or campaign management, or at least I don't think that I want them.
I'm hoping WoTC gets their act together and uses dmsguild to start selling some core digital content.
Digital rulebooks are exactly what will be delivered here - with the added layer of that content being fully-functional within the character builder, digital character sheet, campaign management, and all future tools we build.
The entirety of the PHB, DMG, MM, VGtM, SCAG, and every published adventure module will be available in digital format. A couple of previews to help illustrate:
Or maybe they could do something where we scan the bar codes of our existing books to unlock those features on the site
I have also payed multiple times for 5th edition content. Hardcover copies of all core rule books and supplements along with purchasing the full digital bundle through Fantasy Grounds has resulted in a significant investment. I love the game enough to invest money, however at some point there has to be a medium model that allows integrating these resources across the physical/digital barrier. Repetitive purchase of the same game content in effort to access on different applications or devices is not ethical nor affordable.
"It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."
-Tolkien on Faerie Stories
Well...it may not be affordable and a bad business model, but it is completely ethical. I agree that I hope there is a middle ground, at least for the players!
I have no problem paying a one time fee as long as the content is available and not additional costs and the site is maintained and updated.
I don't mind paying for the use of the site, but it bothers me that if I already own the books that I'll have to buy them again just for the site use.
I am not sure which billing method will be the best for the platform.
One time fee is my preference.
Even if the price point is identical to the physical books. So far I have only used the 3 core books. Repurchase is not a problem for me, if it allows me to transcend to pretty much all digital.
Overall I love 5th editions trend of less books, and less rule and mechanic bloat.
Oh, definitely. The glut of options is one of the reasons I eventually dropped 3.5E. I'm in no way saying that I want a return to that in 5E. I do, however, love to see different takes on things and ways to get more flavor out of rules. And "flavor" doesn't equate to "I fight moar better", IMO. I'm both looking forward to the 2017 "book o' crunch" and nervous about it.
I'm looking forward to it because I want to see a final cut of the Mystic and some of the various sub-classes that have been floated in UA. On the other hand, I'm afraid (near certainty) that it'll be a big dump of random rules -- a PHB2, regardless of actual name (which will probably actually be pulled from some Realms lore, such as "Volo's Guide to Adventuring").
This might have been discussed already, but when we refer to "one-time fee" are we talking about "You buy the 5e PHB for $x.xx and it's now always available to you", or "You pay $x.xx and all content ever added or available is already paid for and ready for you to use"?
- Stu
#6321 on Discord.
Keep in mind we've been told what some of the features are inside the known tiers of subscription.
Site Rules & Guidelines --- Focused Feedback Mega Threads --- Staff Quotes --- Homebrew Tutorial --- Pricing FAQ
Please feel free to message either Sorce or another moderator if you have any concerns.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Reading all the speculation in this thread is interesting. I don't think I am the target audience for D&D Beyond. All I want is digital rulebooks. I don't really want character or campaign management, or at least I don't think that I want them.
I'm hoping WoTC gets their act together and uses dmsguild to start selling some core digital content.
Wow, that is really nice!