So, I had asked a question earlier and failed to get a satisfying answer, but I think I've figured out a better way to ask it. On launch day, if I subscribe to Master Tier, but DO NOT buy the PHB, MM DMG, etc... will I still have access to SRD content, i.e. spells, monsters, and the compendium? Has that been clarified and I missed it?

Quote from Corvinus >>

So, I had asked a question earlier and failed to get a satisfying answer, but I think I've figured out a better way to ask it. On launch day, if I subscribe to Master Tier, but DO NOT buy the PHB, MM DMG, etc... will I still have access to SRD content, i.e. spells, monsters, and the compendium? Has that been clarified and I missed it?

Yeah FG is a nice digital tool.. but as it is build for several game systems.. it is lacking in some area. That this site is way better in. ( character building and am predicting exporting of characters sheets though haven't  seen how tis will look like yet).

And yes in the end agree with you. Although having just purchased most books for FG just few months before this was announce is a bit ouch..  Guess I rolled a 1 on  Perception oh well guess it time to start saving. 

Quote from Janet_Van_Dyne >>

How does Unearthed Arcana fit into this? Is that considered official or more like homebrew level

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The thing I think a lot of people are missing is that no one is EXPECTING or FORCING anyone to pay for anything they have already bought multiple times.

If you already use r20 or FG and are happy with those products, you are likely not the target customer for this product. I'm not familiar with those platforms, but I assume they offer a similar level of searchability and convenience as DDB. Complaining about DDB is like complaining about a store selling shirts because you already own shirts. Other people might need or just want those shirts. If you don't need or want the shirt or can't afford a new shirt, you don't need to poke your head in the door and shout at the employees and other customers about it.

If you already own the books, well yeah, they do expect you to pay for the new platform for that content. You aren't being forced to buy it, as the books still work as well as they always have by themselves, but the new platform provides convenience. And as other people have exhaustingly said over and over again, you can always pay nothing and put in the work and add everything from your books as homebrew and still get the same end benefits of the new platform.

If your financial situation doesn't allow you to buy new products to aide in your gaming experience, that's unfortunate and I'm sorry for your misfortune. I am not trying trying to be too condescending, but it does get frustrating following this thread and seeing people who don't care to read what's already been discussed ad nauseam chime in with silly complaints or defiant stances that are now honestly obsolete.

 EXACTLY! No one is holding a gun to anyone's head going, "Give us money or we will make what you have useless". Honestly unless I end up needing/wanting faster access to the info in the books on here, I will probably just spend a couple nights adding stuff as needed for now through homebrew.

 Well, there is a certain degree in which a gun is being held to people's heads: this, roll20, and fantasy grounds are the *only* legal digital resources for d&d 5e. I've stated earlier in this thread that I think a lot of the sticker shock here is due to WotC not providing legal access to reasonably priced pdf or kindle formats. For the player/dm that just wants digital access to the book contents and doesn't care about the character builder, forthcoming DM tools, and twitch integration there is some understandable disappointment, and a lot of that is being directed at the Curse team right now. 

 There is still no gun.

That analogy implies you can not play D&D without digital tools. A better analogy for someone not giving you quite what you want is WotC being an older kid at school bullying you. He has what you want but is taller and he is holding it juuuuuust out of your reach.

End of the day your life goes on without what he's got. You can still play on the monkey bars without what he has, but it would be cooler and more convenient if he gave it to you.

If all people want is a pdf let's get together and email and tweet WotC en masse requesting they release them! I am sure if they realize the demand is there they will fill the supply role?

 Except in this case WotC isn't the bully in the playground. They own the playground- or actually are the caretakers of the playground, which is owned by Hasbro- and can tell you exactly how and when you can access those monkey bars. The gun in this case is WotC's legal department acting as security guards (likely at Hasbro's direction).

I'm fairly sure Wizards is well aware of the demand for pdfs, as they offered them for past editions until the fear of piracy ended up outweighing the desire for customer satisfaction. Their current policy regarding digital content (published in - house, not the DMGuild material) resembles too much the backward DRM attempts of older AAA game publishers and music companies. And much the same ends up promoting piracy rather than curtailing it- if I so desired, I could have pdfs of all their content for 5e for absolutely free. For people who want legal digital content but don't need all the bells and whistles of this site and others, it is understandably disappointing that WotC hasn't addressed that particular demand. 

I'm not one of those people - I like what's being offered here, and (especially as we get more info on bundles) am quite happy with the price. But I can certainly understand how someone can feel that this is just another way WotC is screwing them over.

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How does Unearthed Arcana fit into this? Is that considered official or more like homebrew level

 I'm definitely curious about this as well. My favorite character is a pirate barbarian based from Unearthed Arcana so I'd definitely like to see things like the Path of the Storm Herald officially integrated in, or at the very least be something I could homebrew up and add to my character!

Quote from Druuk_the_Powerful >>

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Quote from IanDaTrapLord >>

The thing I think a lot of people are missing is that no one is EXPECTING or FORCING anyone to pay for anything they have already bought multiple times.

If you already use r20 or FG and are happy with those products, you are likely not the target customer for this product. I'm not familiar with those platforms, but I assume they offer a similar level of searchability and convenience as DDB. Complaining about DDB is like complaining about a store selling shirts because you already own shirts. Other people might need or just want those shirts. If you don't need or want the shirt or can't afford a new shirt, you don't need to poke your head in the door and shout at the employees and other customers about it.

If you already own the books, well yeah, they do expect you to pay for the new platform for that content. You aren't being forced to buy it, as the books still work as well as they always have by themselves, but the new platform provides convenience. And as other people have exhaustingly said over and over again, you can always pay nothing and put in the work and add everything from your books as homebrew and still get the same end benefits of the new platform.

If your financial situation doesn't allow you to buy new products to aide in your gaming experience, that's unfortunate and I'm sorry for your misfortune. I am not trying trying to be too condescending, but it does get frustrating following this thread and seeing people who don't care to read what's already been discussed ad nauseam chime in with silly complaints or defiant stances that are now honestly obsolete.

 EXACTLY! No one is holding a gun to anyone's head going, "Give us money or we will make what you have useless". Honestly unless I end up needing/wanting faster access to the info in the books on here, I will probably just spend a couple nights adding stuff as needed for now through homebrew.

 Well, there is a certain degree in which a gun is being held to people's heads: this, roll20, and fantasy grounds are the *only* legal digital resources for d&d 5e. I've stated earlier in this thread that I think a lot of the sticker shock here is due to WotC not providing legal access to reasonably priced pdf or kindle formats. For the player/dm that just wants digital access to the book contents and doesn't care about the character builder, forthcoming DM tools, and twitch integration there is some understandable disappointment, and a lot of that is being directed at the Curse team right now. 

 There is still no gun.

That analogy implies you can not play D&D without digital tools. A better analogy for someone not giving you quite what you want is WotC being an older kid at school bullying you. He has what you want but is taller and he is holding it juuuuuust out of your reach.

End of the day your life goes on without what he's got. You can still play on the monkey bars without what he has, but it would be cooler and more convenient if he gave it to you.

If all people want is a pdf let's get together and email and tweet WotC en masse requesting they release them! I am sure if they realize the demand is there they will fill the supply role?

 Except in this case WotC isn't the bully in the playground. They own the playground- or actually are the caretakers of the playground, which is owned by Hasbro- and can tell you exactly how and when you can access those monkey bars. The gun in this case is WotC's legal department acting as security guards (likely at Hasbro's direction).

I'm fairly sure Wizards is well aware of the demand for pdfs, as they offered them for past editions until the fear of piracy ended up outweighing the desire for customer satisfaction. Their current policy regarding digital content (published in - house, not the DMGuild material) resembles too much the backward DRM attempts of older AAA game publishers and music companies. And much the same ends up promoting piracy rather than curtailing it- if I so desired, I could have pdfs of all their content for 5e for absolutely free. For people who want legal digital content but don't need all the bells and whistles of this site and others, it is understandably disappointing that WotC hasn't addressed that particular demand. 

I'm not one of those people - I like what's being offered here, and (especially as we get more info on bundles) am quite happy with the price. But I can certainly understand how someone can feel that this is just another way WotC is screwing them over.

 There is still no gun to anyone's head. That was the point of my post. They simply aren't offering the product in that fashion. At no point is anyone forced to choose an option or die (in this case dying is not being able to play DnD anymore).

People are phrasing their concerns in a way that makes it seem as though their choices are pay for DDB or die, which I disagree with, that is the extent of my involvement in that particular thread.

I don't doubt WotC is being protective of their content (perhaps overly) but at the end of the day the worst thing that could happen for us is D&D to become unprofitable and WotC to decide it's not worth the cost of producing. If pdfs are what people desire, all they can do is ask for legitimate ones, and organizing that request can only help.

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How does Unearthed Arcana fit into this? Is that considered official or more like homebrew level

 I'm definitely curious about this as well. My favorite character is a pirate barbarian based from Unearthed Arcana so I'd definitely like to see things like the Path of the Storm Herald officially integrated in, or at the very least be something I could homebrew up and add to my character!

 I think one reason they're not talking about UA's role is because a fair chunk of current UA material is due to be released shortly in refined form as official material once Xanathar's Guide hits.

Quote from Aerchon >>

That being said, has there been any discussion about some sort of "ultimate" package at launch.  All available in print/digital releases for a discounted price.  Obviously buying the 3 core books for $60 is mandatory, but since I am the DM, I would rather just shell out the cost up front, and work with my groups to have people pitch in what they want since I will be holding the master tier.  

Also, any word on annual subscriptions?

That's not quite right.

Let's give DnDBeyond some credit and assume we're starting with this from week one. That's $20.00 for each rulebook, plus $24.99 for an adventure, as you said. $85 so far.

Players do not need to pay anything, a DM can pay the $5.99 monthly fee and share all of the content with his players. So that's an $85 buy-in with a $72/year upkeep. That's not entirely unreasonable for a paid, quality service, which this is shaping up to be.

In addition, I've already made an agreement with my group that we'll split the buy-in cost evenly as long as I pay for the monthly cost, and we're buying Volo's on top which breaks down to less than $15 a person for the buy-in. For a whole campaign's worth of gameplay, that's not bad at all.

I think this might work out to be fair, especially when you consider that the adventures have all the functionality of something like roll20, just with no maps. That's perfectly agreeable for an in-person party, at least to me, especially when you consider the fact that you can get the books cheap on amazon, usually for $20 off. Currently, you could buy a physical amazon copy and a DnDBeyond copy with all of its added functionality for the same price as a story copy. I think this will be an excellent tool for new groups.

Is there any way that we can have a detente with the argument about whether it's fair that Curse is charging for the books or not?  I get it.

The people who are complaining feel frustrated by the fact that there's yet another tool out there that's adding functionality that's charging a significant amount of money, and they don't want to be left out of this amazing new tool, but it's becoming really expensive to keep up.  I fully get that.  Tabletop RPGs, especially D&D, are trying to adapt to the digital era, and it feels like there are a lot of forced errors going on.  I really wanted to get Fantasy Grounds, despite their ridiculous pricing scheme ($350 to get the bundle with everything on Steam, which is still a 25% discount from buying it all individually), but they don't offer native apps on macOS or iOS (which is what I have), and I got frustrated and fed up trying to get Wine to work for me.  Roll20 is equally frustrating, because it's really expensive, and their service is (in my opinion) a total mess, even if I appreciate their attempts at supporting independent designers.  Then comes along D&D Beyond, which yet another service.  It feels like WotC doesn't know what it's doing, which is partially because they keep putting their name on all of these different services that's fracturing the fanbase.  Perhaps when Sixth Edition come out, they'll have learned from their mistakes and do it right, but that's likely to be many years away, so for now we're going to have to deal with all of this, especially since there's no guarantee that Curse will be the last company that produces official digital D&D content.  It's frustrating, and I get it.

For those that are trying to counterpoint those who are frustrated with the way that WotC is dealing with the digital tools, you're going about it the wrong way.  Don't get me wrong, you're making some very valid points, and I'm going to be fully buying into D&D Beyond on August 15th (I mean, I was sold ages ago), but you're taking the wrong approach.  I might suggest taking some rhetorical criticism classes.  What we have here are emotional appeals (pathos) from those who are frustrated by yet another service that's charging a lot of money.  You're countering with puring informational and factual appeals (logos).  The problem (which is a very common problem in many different debates) is that both sides aren't having the same argument.  They are two different arguments being made in the same space, which is why both sides can feel like they're right, and why no progress is being made.  A better approach would be to listen to the complaints they have, and to address their grievances instead of telling them that they're wrong for feeling the way that they are.  It is very frustrating that they're being asked to buy the content again.  They don't have to do what they're asked, but when you're as emotionally involved in the game as you are, it's like having your spouse ask you to do something that you can't.  It hurts.  Trust me, my ex-wife asked me for more than I could give, and I gave it to her anyway, but it hurt a lot, and it caused a lot of strain on our marriage (hence the "ex" part).

Having said all of that, the arguments have run their course.  The points have been made, and now we're just on an infinite loop.  So, please stop it.  All of you.  There are other legitimate questions being asked that can't be answered because they get flushed out to quickly.  As an example, a few times I've seen people ask if purchasing a micro-bundle, like the Paladin class, will mean that when they're ready to buy the whole book that those micro-bundles be factored into the whole purchase (the way that iTunes does it), or are they considered a different product, like buying a short story when there's an anthology from that author out there?  There have been others, but that's a good example.

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Players do not need to pay anything, a DM can pay the $5.99 monthly fee and share all of the content with his players. So that's an $85 buy-in with a $72/year upkeep. That's not entirely unreasonable for a paid, quality service, which this is shaping up to be.

Ok, would love to see lower prices, but this is not a deal breaker.  Little frustrated there is not a family model, but my 15 year old will have to do an extra choice for $2.99/month.

One thing I have not seen.  Help text in campaign setup hints there is a limit on how many free accounts a DM can add, but unlimited hero adds.  Is this correct and what is the Max on free?

Quote from Rubahak >>

Is there any way that we can have a detente with the argument about whether it's fair that Curse is charging for the books or not?  I get it.

The people who are complaining feel frustrated by the fact that there's yet another tool out there that's adding functionality that's charging a significant amount of money, and they don't want to be left out of this amazing new tool, but it's becoming really expensive to keep up.  I fully get that.  Tabletop RPGs, especially D&D, are trying to adapt to the digital era, and it feels like there are a lot of forced errors going on.  I really wanted to get Fantasy Grounds, despite their ridiculous pricing scheme ($350 to get the bundle with everything on Steam, which is still a 25% discount from buying it all individually), but they don't offer native apps on macOS or iOS (which is what I have), and I got frustrated and fed up trying to get Wine to work for me.  Roll20 is equally frustrating, because it's really expensive, and their service is (in my opinion) a total mess, even if I appreciate their attempts at supporting independent designers.  Then comes along D&D Beyond, which yet another service.  It feels like WotC doesn't know what it's doing, which is partially because they keep putting their name on all of these different services that's fracturing the fanbase.  Perhaps when Sixth Edition come out, they'll have learned from their mistakes and do it right, but that's likely to be many years away, so for now we're going to have to deal with all of this, especially since there's no guarantee that Curse will be the last company that produces official digital D&D content.  It's frustrating, and I get it.

For those that are trying to counterpoint those who are frustrated with the way that WotC is dealing with the digital tools, you're going about it the wrong way.  Don't get me wrong, you're making some very valid points, and I'm going to be fully buying into D&D Beyond on August 15th (I mean, I was sold ages ago), but you're taking the wrong approach.  I might suggest taking some rhetorical criticism classes.  What we have here are emotional appeals (pathos) from those who are frustrated by yet another service that's charging a lot of money.  You're countering with puring informational and factual appeals (logos).  The problem (which is a very common problem in many different debates) is that both sides aren't having the same argument.  They are two different arguments being made in the same space, which is why both sides can feel like they're right, and why no progress is being made.  A better approach would be to listen to the complaints they have, and to address their grievances instead of telling them that they're wrong for feeling the way that they are.  It is very frustrating that they're being asked to buy the content again.  They don't have to do what they're asked, but when you're as emotionally involved in the game as you are, it's like having your spouse ask you to do something that you can't.  It hurts.  Trust me, my ex-wife asked me for more than I could give, and I gave it to her anyway, but it hurt a lot, and it caused a lot of strain on our marriage (hence the "ex" part).

Having said all of that, the arguments have run their course.  The points have been made, and now we're just on an infinite loop.  So, please stop it.  All of you.  There are other legitimate questions being asked that can't be answered because they get flushed out to quickly.  As an example, a few times I've seen people ask if purchasing a micro-bundle, like the Paladin class, will mean that when they're ready to buy the whole book that those micro-bundles be factored into the whole purchase (the way that iTunes does it), or are they considered a different product, like buying a short story when there's an anthology from that author out there?  There have been others, but that's a good example.

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As many before have stated, I've already purchased physical copies of the core books and I refuse to pay a penny more for material, until possibly an unearthed arcana bit that's debatable, and if this site requires money to use, this account will just sit. Period.

 It's been beaten to death in this thread that D&D Beyond does not require money to use.

You are free to use the current tools with SRD/Basic Rules, supplementing whatever you want - FOR FREE - with private homebrew you create.

Quote from Windrunner >>

Ok, would love to see lower prices, but this is not a deal breaker.  Little frustrated there is not a family model, but my 15 year old will have to do an extra choice for $2.99/month.

One thing I have not seen.  Help text in campaign setup hints there is a limit on how many free accounts a DM can add, but unlimited hero adds.  Is this correct and what is the Max on free?

Just going to pop in and say that I'd honestly rather have something like the spotify subscription model, where I pay a set fee each month for everything and if I ever go offline with that device, I only have access to things I've selected to have access to and the device will go back online within my subscription period to confirm that I'm still using it so I can be charged appropriately. It'll net Curse and WotC more money in the long run, and it means that I don't have to repurchase books I already own. This way, once I either end my subscription or WotC comes out with 6e that makes all of this no longer applicable, I haven't shelled out a lot of money for things I no longer have access to. I'm paying for functionality more so than the content, because it's easier to simply look up a spell or a monster in a search bar than flipping through one of the hard copies of the books. I already have all the content, I just want a streamlined online giant searchable, really. 

Will there be offline application for PC?

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It honestly seems like everyone is upset for the simple fact they perceive it as repurchasing the same product they already have. That's not what this is though, yes you receive a digital copy of a book at the end of the day but what you are actually paying for is a service.

Curse combed through each book, annotating, tagging, and the cataloging the information into a really well done database that has been made so easy to use that the game is really no longer a frightening undertaking for a new player. You are paying for the time it took them to do all that work, as someone who does that work as part of his job, it's not easy and honestly pretty tedious. It's hours of intently reading pages over and over again to make sure everything is properly referenced and accurately portrayed. I applaud them for what they have done here. Not to mention after all of that they are giving you the digital copies they helped produce as part of this process, since we all know WotC probably didn't do a lot with that. Now is that a lot of money for some of us that barely make a livable wage? Hell yes, but they also gave us an out for that as well and they offer that for free.

Curse opened up 80% of the content for free, they did a lot of work just to get that up and aren't charging us a damn thing for it. That 80% is more than enough to start off any campaign and keep it alive for quite awhile. Not to mention for those who still need info from those books, they gave us the ability to add it ourselves for our personal use without the need to even join in on a subscription. 

So for those crying foul, you are not paying for a book, you are paying for a upgraded access to an open database that we have seen has tremendous potential.

Quote from harrisben >>

The other fantasy I'd like to clear up, but can't find the post for, is that Curse are not making money on the books. This is ludicrous, of course they are! Having said that, it's not likely to be much.