Too much for the cost guys. I was pretty pumped to use this. I have most of the books in hardcover already, I am not spending another 125 + a subscription in order to fully utilize the digital tool. You have made a good product, but whoever has set the price point is just flat wrong.
This sums up my feelings as well.
I do feel the Curse team has made a product with great potential, and up until now I was very excited.
However, the initial buy-in is too high and will keep me away.
1) If I'm a DM that has "Master Tier" and I buy all the digital books, can I share them with my players?
How do you regulate that exactly, as my players may change depending on what campaign I'm running and player characters shouldn't be bound to campaigns. For example, if one DM provides access to the PHB for a player to create his character, can that player take that character to another campaign that isn't supported by the DM?
2) If, for whatever reason, I stop paying the "Master Tier", what happens to the digital books I already paid for, or all the other extra features I had during my tenure in "Master Tier"?
3) What sort of ads should we be expecting in the "free" version? For that matter, are you selling ad space to third party publishers?
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David Flor (@BrainClouds on Twitter) President, Darklight Interactive
I *really* hope when this ends up shooting Wizards in the foot, they adjust their pricing accordingly instead of viewing DnDBeyond as a failure and scrapping it. Say $10-15 for the books, with the content being included for free in the subscription. There's a lot of good stuff here - I like the subscription pricing, and will probably take advantage of the reduced price for the books during the first week launch - but I can certainly understand people having a problem with the book pricing, as it shows complete ignorance of the current market.
You do realize that Wizards of the Coast isn't the developer behind D&D Beyond, don't you? Curse has zero incentive to offer their work, development, and services for free to consumers of a different retailer. If not for the intellectual property license alone, they have transcribed, coded, and hyperlinked their way through each of the core books to provide the experience digitally. That work alone is worth charging for. WotC publishes physical books - Curse develops D&D Beyond.
[With] our monster builder, you will be able to scale the creature’s Challenge Rating up or down based on what you need, with all the math happening automatically.
I'm very excited for that and your combat tracking. I apologize if this has been asked elsewhere, but does the features roadmap include incorporating home-brew for races, classes, and subclasses? I imagine they're a great deal more work but those and magic items comprise the vast amount of home-brew that I see floating around the web.
already seeing some rumblings that forcing the "hero" sub on people to use homebrew is you trying to profit off of other people's work, drawing comparison to Bethesda and paid mods.
why can't free users add homebrew content to their game if they can still share what they create or just recreate it as a private homebrew?
Free users can add all the homebrew they want - it's just their own homebrew. You are completely free to re-create anything you want to use for play.
For a regular party running a standard campaign, the DM would pay $29.99 each for the three main rule books, plus $24.99 for an adventure, plus $5.99/month for a subscription. (So ~$115 upfront, plus $72 a year.)
On top of that, each player would be expected to pay $2.99/month.
So that's a total of $115 upfront, plus $252/year for a 5-player party and a DM. Plus $30 when new rule books come out and $25 when new adventures come out. Plus, for many, the cost of physical books as well. That… seems like a lot.
You've misunderstood a couple things.
Neither subscription is required to use D&D Beyond, so those costs are strictly optional. If you do want to go that route, the Master Tier subscription allows a DM to add several players, essentially giving them access equivalent to the Heroic Tier subscription. You don't need and probably shouldn't get both.
And while these costs do seem to fall on the DM, the developers have encouraged groups to work out their own methods for splitting the costs. For a group of 6 with a DM subscription, purchasing the existing 5 rulebooks (PHB, MM, DMG, SCAG, and VGtM) plus 1 adventure, you have a monthly cost of $1 per player, with a one time purchase of $175 split 6 ways at $29-30 per person (or $145 with the founder discount split to $24-25 per person), with a future yearly cost of $80 or less (two adventures and one rules supplement) split to $13-14.
Is there anything to stop me from inputting the things from the books i've already payed for as personal homebrew and using them? I don't know if i can afford to buy all of the sourcebooks again.
Is there anything to stop me from inputting the things from the books i've already payed for as personal homebrew and using them? I don't know if i can afford to buy all of the sourcebooks again.
You can certainly add the entirety of the core rulebooks to your private homebrew and use them as you see fit. These items cannot be published, however.
1) If I'm a DM that has "Master Tier" and I buy all the digital books, can I share them with my players?
How do you regulate that exactly, as my players may change depending on what campaign I'm running and player characters shouldn't be bound to campaigns. For example, if one DM provides access to the PHB for a player to create his character, can that player take that character to another campaign that isn't supported by the DM?
2) If, for whatever reason, I stop paying the "Master Tier", what happens to the digital books I already paid for, or all the other extra features I had during my tenure in "Master Tier"?
3) What sort of ads should we be expecting in the "free" version? For that matter, are you selling ad space to third party publishers?
1. It's up to twelve players, if you need a thirteenth you'll have to boot someone. "For $6/month, the “Master Tier” subscription unlocks the ability to share paid content with up to 12 other players across all of their games, as mentioned above."
2. You keep all of your digital books, you can but all the digital books and never buy a subscription.
What is meant by digital source book? Is this a document or just meaning that the content is available to be browsed/used in the builder and compendium?
A digital sourcebook is a completely digital version of one of the published books, such as the Player's Handbook or adventures like Curse of Strahd.
You will get the book re-created in digital format, as well as unlock all of that book's content for use throughout the toolset - both for current tools and anything on the roadmap (such as encounter building/ combat tracking, etc.).
Here's a page from Curse of Strahd to illustrate a bit:
Personally I don't see why there is not a full access subscription option. Say $15 a month for everything, but you don't keep any paid content if you cancel your subscription. I think those of us with a substantial investment in physical books would find that more attractive.
If I had to guess, it's probablybecause there will be an offline option via the app. Which is a feature most of us want. Pay $15. Get everything. Unsubscribe. Maybe there's some rights management way to prevent that, but I bet it would be a pain in the butt to implement and not worth the effort.
already seeing some rumblings that forcing the "hero" sub on people to use homebrew is you trying to profit off of other people's work, drawing comparison to Bethesda and paid mods.
why can't free users add homebrew content to their game if they can still share what they create or just recreate it as a private homebrew?
Free users can add all the homebrew they want - it's just their own homebrew. You are completely free to re-create anything you want to use for play.
I understand that, but what's the purpose behind not letting the free user just add stuff instead of having to recreate it? free users can already view all the homebrew stuff on the site. what's the point of having them have to recreate things they want to use instead of just allowing them to add it, especially if a free user can share whatever he or she wants to once they create it? you guys aren't compensating people creating homebrews anywhere that I've seen, so there's no real reason for someone who is creating their own content to post it here if the only people that can use it are a paying audience or people who effectively have to recreate something someone else made as a "private homebrew."
I sincerely hope that after I buy multiple books and modules that the information won't be spread out. I want them organized by playable races, backgrounds, spells, monsters, etc. Not by PHB, MM, SCAG, VGtM, etc.
They will be organized in both ways.
For those that want to enter through the source itself, you can do so in the compendium. The content will also be present and accounted for in-context in the compendium, listings, builder, and so on.
Is there anything to stop me from inputting the things from the books i've already payed for as personal homebrew and using them? I don't know if i can afford to buy all of the sourcebooks again.
You can certainly add the entirety of the core rulebooks to your private homebrew and use them as you see fit. These items cannot be published, however.
Well that's something. I don't mind buying the phb again and just inputting monsters and magic items as and when i need them manualy
BadEye, the way this post is written makes this a little unclear... Will subscribers of hero or master tier get access to non-SRD content, such as the stuff in the PHB and Volo's Guide? I seem to remember you saying this would be the case, but this post implies that one would need to pay the sub and buy the sourcebook.
I think it's worth pointing out for those of us with the physical books-- With the homebrew option, we can still enter all the data ourselves from all the sourcebooks. No one is making you buy it twice. You're paying to have someone input all that data and fully integrate it with a digital toolset for you.
In other words, you can still use your physical books with DDB. But if you'd like someone to do the work for you to have it entered into the system, you'll pay for that service.
They are providing the entire toolset for free. And a way to enter all your data from your books. For free. This seems reasonable to me.
I realize there are other points of view on this matter, and I respect that. But I thought I'd share mine.
AD
P.S. As for the price point-- I suspect they've hit it right on. There will be folks who won't buy in. But I think, at these prices with this flexibility, many more will. Especially once they've integrated it with Roll20 and FG. That integration is the killer feature for me these days. Being able to port characters from an easy builder into Roll20 will save me a lot of time.
BadEye, the way this post is written makes this a little unclear... Will subscribers of hero or master tier get access to non-SRD content, such as the stuff in the PHB and Volo's Guide? I seem to remember you saying this would be the case, but this post implies that one would need to pay the sub and buy the sourcebook.
No they will not. You will need to buy the sourcebooks as well. Someone with a master tier can buy the sourcebooks and share with up to twelve player's however. Get your group to chip in.
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So a few questions...
1) If I'm a DM that has "Master Tier" and I buy all the digital books, can I share them with my players?
How do you regulate that exactly, as my players may change depending on what campaign I'm running and player characters shouldn't be bound to campaigns. For example, if one DM provides access to the PHB for a player to create his character, can that player take that character to another campaign that isn't supported by the DM?
2) If, for whatever reason, I stop paying the "Master Tier", what happens to the digital books I already paid for, or all the other extra features I had during my tenure in "Master Tier"?
3) What sort of ads should we be expecting in the "free" version? For that matter, are you selling ad space to third party publishers?
David Flor (@BrainClouds on Twitter)
President, Darklight Interactive
"Omne ignotum pro magnifico"
[ Site Rules & Guidelines ] --- [ Homebrew Rules & Guidelines ]
Send me a message with any questions or concerns
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
Just saw this tidbit on the io9 article:
[With] our monster builder, you will be able to scale the creature’s Challenge Rating up or down based on what you need, with all the math happening automatically.
I'm very excited for that and your combat tracking. I apologize if this has been asked elsewhere, but does the features roadmap include incorporating home-brew for races, classes, and subclasses? I imagine they're a great deal more work but those and magic items comprise the vast amount of home-brew that I see floating around the web.
Artist | Writer | Geek | Dad
Is there anything to stop me from inputting the things from the books i've already payed for as personal homebrew and using them? I don't know if i can afford to buy all of the sourcebooks again.
[ Site Rules & Guidelines ] --- [ Homebrew Rules & Guidelines ]
Send me a message with any questions or concerns
BadEye, the way this post is written makes this a little unclear... Will subscribers of hero or master tier get access to non-SRD content, such as the stuff in the PHB and Volo's Guide? I seem to remember you saying this would be the case, but this post implies that one would need to pay the sub and buy the sourcebook.
I think it's worth pointing out for those of us with the physical books-- With the homebrew option, we can still enter all the data ourselves from all the sourcebooks. No one is making you buy it twice. You're paying to have someone input all that data and fully integrate it with a digital toolset for you.
In other words, you can still use your physical books with DDB. But if you'd like someone to do the work for you to have it entered into the system, you'll pay for that service.
They are providing the entire toolset for free. And a way to enter all your data from your books. For free. This seems reasonable to me.
I realize there are other points of view on this matter, and I respect that. But I thought I'd share mine.
AD
P.S. As for the price point-- I suspect they've hit it right on. There will be folks who won't buy in. But I think, at these prices with this flexibility, many more will. Especially once they've integrated it with Roll20 and FG. That integration is the killer feature for me these days. Being able to port characters from an easy builder into Roll20 will save me a lot of time.