Hi All. I’m currently having problems with page references. At present there is no way of cross referencing between DeadTree copies and D&D Beyond. Many websites (e.g. Donjon), channels (Critical Roll, Take 20, Dungeon Dudes) and many players reference by page number. This makes using Beyond a bit cumbersome. This is particularly problematic if a player tries to refer the DM to a passage, mid-game.
Sure, it can be located with some searching but that misses the point. As a digital source, Beyond has the advantage of being more efficient. That advantage is lost if we cannot pick up these references.
I understand as a digital source it doesn’t have physical page numbers but a solution can still be easily implemented.
Other page readers have a location point (eg Kindle) and physical page numbers can easily be pegged to the first word of that location. A search facility by page number would then allow for ease of cross referencing.
Please please implement. It would make life so much easier.
Page numbering, while incalculably useful, would be difficult to implement and time consuming at that. DDB converts chapters into (in most cases) single web pages, so you'd need someway of:
Identifying where someone is looking/accessing the page and convert that into a page number
Actually making that page number available to the user
Making it possible to quickly and accurate transcribe that data (considering how many books there are, it'd be very time consuming to divert resources from other features)
Other page readers have a location point (eg Kindle) and physical page numbers can easily be pegged to the first word of that location
The kindle doesn't actually give you a 'true' page number. It instead gives you a page number based on your current font size. For example, the same location might be page 33/200 in a small font, or 66/400 at a bigger font. That's why it also offers the 'location' (an arbitrary measurement unique to e-readers) and percentage as options.
Just a couple of points, re the Kindle example, Kindle uses location points to also replicate page numbers. So for example, you can display the Page Number (which replicates the physical book) or the location number (which depends upon the character display). This is done relatively simply, based on characters. You can then automatically correlate the location number with the physical page number. Any decent referencing software could do this automatically within minutes. Also, its only really that important for the 10 reference books.
We both seem to agree this would be "incalculably useful". I'd go as far as to say, without it there is little reason for me to use D&D Beyond. I'd be far better of purchasing PDFs.
We both seem to agree this would be "incalculably useful". I'd go as far as to say, without it there is little reason for me to use D&D Beyond. I'd be far better of purchasing PDFs.
Obviously just my 2p worth.
It is not possible to (legally) purchase pdfs of the 5e sourcebooks.
Please don't ever assume that something would be "easy to implement" 😊
Adding page number references in this way is not something that is currently planned - "incalculably useful" seems to be something that a relatively small number of people care about according to feedback. If that changes, then we may reconsider.
4 responses in support, 16 upvotes. Additional discussion of errata creating issues, and pointing out how that was solved in 4e electronic resources by WOTC.
6 upvotes, 1 response from Stormknight saying that it's not easy to implement and that we should make everyone who's citing page number cite chapter and subheading instead. And to use the search function on DDB, which they acknowledge is not good. To say nothing of the fact that DDB breaks the books up into multiple pages, not all of them part of a compendium. And then compendiums can include multiple sources (such as on a race or class page) without citing its sources, such that you can't tell someone with a book where you got your citation.
4 agreements, including one pointing out that page numbers might not be the same in non-english translations, 4 upvotes, 1 response from Stormknight saying that it's not easy to implement and time-intensive, so low priority over new features. Mentions that they added page citations on spell pages. Later response in November from Stormknight says that being able to look up by page number (ie, having an index) is not planned.
Requests on Zendesk: 1(62 upvotes, 4 agreements with 27 additional upvotes) 2 (2 upvotes, 1 comment from the person who made the mega index on DMs Guild offering their resources) 3 (33 upvotes, 2 agreements with 4 additional upvotes)
I agree that adding this information is not necessarily simple. However, considering how many 'discussions' players have over different rule interpretations, I think we can all agree that citation is very important to a large number of people beyond the people above that I managed to find with 10 seconds of Googling. Definitely there are things that are going to be higher priority, but it is not going to go away as an issue or request, and the amount of catch-up work will only increase as the number of books increase -- WOTC isn't going to stop publishing print editions.
I have no idea how DDB gets its content from WOTC to input onto the site, and I don't know if this has been tried, but I would suggest seeing if WOTC can provide any of the metadata formats that do contain page information, such that they can at least be converted to divs in compendiums, as another starting place akin to the addition of the information to spell pages. I would also personally love it if pages like race or class, which combine multiple sources, could include a citation for any information outside of the main source (eg, in the header for 'Sea Elf' it would also tell you that it comes from MToF, possibly also with a page number or range).
I agree that I don't think it's large, it's all the way on the second page of the zendesk, with 20% of the votes that DDB has been working on for just as long, and also haven't managed to put out, like character sheets in the mobile app, the top hit. But it's also not going to go away, and they're adding to their technical debt by putting it on a 'to be dealt with later' pile. But they have also proven that they can add partial solutions to some areas, and I am hoping that they'll at least keep working on incremental progress. There have definitely been other cases where Adam's said he wasn't even aware of [thing that multiple queries have been posted about in the forums] is an issue for anyone, and with the dispersed feedback system DDB has, that doesn't surprise me one whit.
You may not have appreciated how contemptuous of yours customer base that response sounded. I will do you the courtesy of believing it was unintentional.
Any business that think that way, is doomed. Here’s why
- It is not 1% who support, it is 1% who have articulated support. That is huge (ask any pollster);
- it is likely 1% of _existing_ customers. Others may think may as well use DT/ Roll20/ FantasyGrounds etc. Same ability to share purchases, more functionality with some.
Its a significant USP weakness, its easily fixed and it has (I’ve now discovered) wide support. It really is a no-brainer.
DDB has access to more data than we do. The comment from pocketmouse shows a very small sample size of visible interest compared to the large pool of visible requests made. So even within the vocal community, the demand is low.
DDB has a better still insight than we do, so they have the metrics to weigh risk vs reward and ROI. No one said DDB thinks that way, that was another user.
Any business that think that way, is doomed. Here’s why
- It is not 1% who support, it is 1% who have articulated support. That is huge (ask any pollster);
- it is likely 1% of _existing_ customers. Others may think may as well use DT/ Roll20/ FantasyGrounds etc. Same ability to share purchases, more functionality with some.
Its a significant USP weakness, its easily fixed and it has (I’ve now discovered) wide support. It really is a no-brainer.
I'm not saying that 1% is completely dismissible, I'm just saying if they have 20 different requests that have more articulated support, as much as 3 to 5 times as much, these request should naturally get priority right?
That’s only one part of the equation. Other factors include:
- intensity of desire for request;
- overall value of change; and
- ease and cost to implement.
Suppose you have a request from 4% (4x as much), but the request is luke warm (“it’d kinda be nice if you could...”), would only benefit a small proportion of the community (“Can we have better support for Linux”) and was difficult and costly to implement. Well, simply saying it has 4x as much support would be a flawed analysis (I know you’re not saying it’s that simple btw).
Here you have the following:
- a request articulated by a very significant portion of the community,
- a change that would benefit just about every user and improve the platform no end; and
- a change that is exceptionally easy and cheap to implement. It’s not even a tiny bit difficult.
It really really is a no-brainer. The only possible reason not to do it is if Wizards have put some kind of block on it (which would be pretty shitty of them if that’s the case).
- a request articulated by a very significant portion of the community,
- a change that would benefit just about every user and improve the platform no end; and
- a change that is exceptionally easy and cheap to implement. It’s not even a tiny bit difficult.
None of these statements are accurate really
- The request is being articulated by a small fraction (not even 1%) of the vocal members of the community, which is a small fraction in of itself. And even then, the traction on the request is lower than many other request
- It would only benefit users who frequently need to reference the same information between digital and physical in real time using only page number reference. This seems isolated to non-play situations; online play you can just share the link, and physical play the person with the digital version can just relay the information.
- it is by no means easy or cheap to implement. I mean, on cost alone you're looking at updating every book on the site to somehow reference pages. Then there's the UX design to make it so the page information is placed somewhere accessible, intuitive and useful. No feature that requires overhauling the majority of your database is ever cheap or easy.
I consider it something to be "nice to have" but not essential. I have wanted to tell someone where exactly to find something in the physical book when the person doesn't have DDB, but it's not that big of a deal to me. It's been only the PHB so far, and I'm familiar enough with my physical book to have a general idea what section to find something I'm seeing on DDB's edition of PHB.
I'd throw it on the "nice to have" pile.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I agree, it'd be a nice QoL improvement for those users that need to translate between physical and digital, but I think that's an edge case. I'm able to find stuff easily enough just by knowing the chapter and section.
Hi All. I’m currently having problems with page references. At present there is no way of cross referencing between DeadTree copies and D&D Beyond. Many websites (e.g. Donjon), channels (Critical Roll, Take 20, Dungeon Dudes) and many players reference by page number. This makes using Beyond a bit cumbersome. This is particularly problematic if a player tries to refer the DM to a passage, mid-game.
Sure, it can be located with some searching but that misses the point. As a digital source, Beyond has the advantage of being more efficient. That advantage is lost if we cannot pick up these references.
I understand as a digital source it doesn’t have physical page numbers but a solution can still be easily implemented.
Other page readers have a location point (eg Kindle) and physical page numbers can easily be pegged to the first word of that location. A search facility by page number would then allow for ease of cross referencing.
Please please implement. It would make life so much easier.
Many thanks for reading.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/35037-page-references-d-d-beyond-to-core-rules
Made by the hero we needed.
Page numbering, while incalculably useful, would be difficult to implement and time consuming at that. DDB converts chapters into (in most cases) single web pages, so you'd need someway of:
The kindle doesn't actually give you a 'true' page number. It instead gives you a page number based on your current font size. For example, the same location might be page 33/200 in a small font, or 66/400 at a bigger font. That's why it also offers the 'location' (an arbitrary measurement unique to e-readers) and percentage as options.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Hi Dave, thank you for your reply.
Just a couple of points, re the Kindle example, Kindle uses location points to also replicate page numbers. So for example, you can display the Page Number (which replicates the physical book) or the location number (which depends upon the character display). This is done relatively simply, based on characters. You can then automatically correlate the location number with the physical page number. Any decent referencing software could do this automatically within minutes. Also, its only really that important for the 10 reference books.
We both seem to agree this would be "incalculably useful". I'd go as far as to say, without it there is little reason for me to use D&D Beyond. I'd be far better of purchasing PDFs.
Obviously just my 2p worth.
It is not possible to (legally) purchase pdfs of the 5e sourcebooks.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
Check your entitlements here. | Support Ticket LInk
Some 5e PDF titles are available to purchase from DriveThru RPG (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/247882/Wayfinders-Guide-to-Eberron-5e?src=hottest_filtered).
Nearly missed this post. That’s really helpful. Thank you. Although, kinda underscores how easy it would be to implement ;)
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D&D Beyond FoundersPlease don't ever assume that something would be "easy to implement" 😊
Adding page number references in this way is not something that is currently planned - "incalculably useful" seems to be something that a relatively small number of people care about according to feedback. If that changes, then we may reconsider.
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"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Wow, look at that: multiple pages of Google search results (since using internal search tools is an exercise in frustration) with just that.
Requests on Zendesk: 1(62 upvotes, 4 agreements with 27 additional upvotes) 2 (2 upvotes, 1 comment from the person who made the mega index on DMs Guild offering their resources) 3 (33 upvotes, 2 agreements with 4 additional upvotes)
The issue has gotten so bad and is so desired that we have this forum thread converting book sections to the nearest available div, which is close but even the creator of those references points out that not all topic headings have divs. They ended up making an external webtool to do lookup.
I agree that adding this information is not necessarily simple. However, considering how many 'discussions' players have over different rule interpretations, I think we can all agree that citation is very important to a large number of people beyond the people above that I managed to find with 10 seconds of Googling. Definitely there are things that are going to be higher priority, but it is not going to go away as an issue or request, and the amount of catch-up work will only increase as the number of books increase -- WOTC isn't going to stop publishing print editions.
I have no idea how DDB gets its content from WOTC to input onto the site, and I don't know if this has been tried, but I would suggest seeing if WOTC can provide any of the metadata formats that do contain page information, such that they can at least be converted to divs in compendiums, as another starting place akin to the addition of the information to spell pages. I would also personally love it if pages like race or class, which combine multiple sources, could include a citation for any information outside of the main source (eg, in the header for 'Sea Elf' it would also tell you that it comes from MToF, possibly also with a page number or range).
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
So like 1% of users have requested it. I think that counts as relatively small.
I agree that I don't think it's large, it's all the way on the second page of the zendesk, with 20% of the votes that DDB has been working on for just as long, and also haven't managed to put out, like character sheets in the mobile app, the top hit. But it's also not going to go away, and they're adding to their technical debt by putting it on a 'to be dealt with later' pile. But they have also proven that they can add partial solutions to some areas, and I am hoping that they'll at least keep working on incremental progress. There have definitely been other cases where Adam's said he wasn't even aware of [thing that multiple queries have been posted about in the forums] is an issue for anyone, and with the dispersed feedback system DDB has, that doesn't surprise me one whit.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
You may not have appreciated how contemptuous of yours customer base that response sounded. I will do you the courtesy of believing it was unintentional.
Also, please do not assume I am assuming.
Any business that think that way, is doomed. Here’s why
- It is not 1% who support, it is 1% who have articulated support. That is huge (ask any pollster);
- it is likely 1% of _existing_ customers. Others may think may as well use DT/ Roll20/ FantasyGrounds etc. Same ability to share purchases, more functionality with some.
Its a significant USP weakness, its easily fixed and it has (I’ve now discovered) wide support. It really is a no-brainer.
DDB has access to more data than we do. The comment from pocketmouse shows a very small sample size of visible interest compared to the large pool of visible requests made. So even within the vocal community, the demand is low.
DDB has a better still insight than we do, so they have the metrics to weigh risk vs reward and ROI. No one said DDB thinks that way, that was another user.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I'm not saying that 1% is completely dismissible, I'm just saying if they have 20 different requests that have more articulated support, as much as 3 to 5 times as much, these request should naturally get priority right?
That’s only one part of the equation. Other factors include:
- intensity of desire for request;
- overall value of change; and
- ease and cost to implement.
Suppose you have a request from 4% (4x as much), but the request is luke warm (“it’d kinda be nice if you could...”), would only benefit a small proportion of the community (“Can we have better support for Linux”) and was difficult and costly to implement. Well, simply saying it has 4x as much support would be a flawed analysis (I know you’re not saying it’s that simple btw).
Here you have the following:
- a request articulated by a very significant portion of the community,
- a change that would benefit just about every user and improve the platform no end; and
- a change that is exceptionally easy and cheap to implement. It’s not even a tiny bit difficult.
It really really is a no-brainer. The only possible reason not to do it is if Wizards have put some kind of block on it (which would be pretty shitty of them if that’s the case).
None of these statements are accurate really
- The request is being articulated by a small fraction (not even 1%) of the vocal members of the community, which is a small fraction in of itself. And even then, the traction on the request is lower than many other request
- It would only benefit users who frequently need to reference the same information between digital and physical in real time using only page number reference. This seems isolated to non-play situations; online play you can just share the link, and physical play the person with the digital version can just relay the information.
- it is by no means easy or cheap to implement. I mean, on cost alone you're looking at updating every book on the site to somehow reference pages. Then there's the UX design to make it so the page information is placed somewhere accessible, intuitive and useful. No feature that requires overhauling the majority of your database is ever cheap or easy.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I consider it something to be "nice to have" but not essential. I have wanted to tell someone where exactly to find something in the physical book when the person doesn't have DDB, but it's not that big of a deal to me. It's been only the PHB so far, and I'm familiar enough with my physical book to have a general idea what section to find something I'm seeing on DDB's edition of PHB.
I'd throw it on the "nice to have" pile.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I agree, it'd be a nice QoL improvement for those users that need to translate between physical and digital, but I think that's an edge case. I'm able to find stuff easily enough just by knowing the chapter and section.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Plus there is that pinned thread I linked in the first comment for the very, very few people who do need it sometimes.