This may seem sarcastic buy it's an honest question. Why is this better than using my physical books and/or PDFs of those books?
And I don't mean because the tables are a bit of a mess or because the links to sections within a page all take you to the top if the page or because "basic rules only" means "useless for most practical purposes." I mean even if this was beautiful, complete and worked perfectly, what would be the advantage over my books and PDFs?
Please sell me. I want to love this but I just don't see how it's meant to make my life easier.
It’s not really better than books and PDF’s, it’s just a different way to play. I believe this should be used as a companion to the Paper versions, not necessarily a replacement. As for its pluses, its searchable and accessible. I can only imagine the suprises they haven’t told us about. Think about a DM being able to have all of the players stats, skills, and inventory at their fingertips. I believe this will only benefit the game as a whole, in speed and immersion.
It's not even "a different way to play" its a supplement to go along side the books. As its being built think of it as a digital DM's screen. It puts the stuff you need within easy access while playing. It doesn't replace the books because its not supposed to. Don't think about player stats, skills, and stuff like that. think about the practical stuff you reference during a campaign. being able to pull up monster stats and have them side by side for complex encounters or loading item lists dynamically without flipping through pages to find the listing you want. Its not meant to replace the books, its meant to shave minutes off of game and preparation time. I don't think most groups will really sit there looking at each other's character sheets most of the time. I think this will generally be a supplement collecting all the stuff you already deal with into a streamlined interface. It has a learning curve but its ultimately faster.
It's also just more convenient for some people. I have very limited space for example, so not taking up a shelf with a large number of books when I could instead have all the same information stored digitally will be helpful. It's also more transportable (as an IOS device like a phone is much easier to carry than a stack of 2-4 books), and for some people it's easier to search through. Add in some of the additional functionality the DnD Beyond team has hinted and confirmed and it's looking like it will be a very solid option for some people.
Oh this question is easy. Let's say you own all the books AND all the books are on here. Your question is why is this better... at least in theory.
Let's say you wanted to play a barbarian... for that you'd have to look up information in one book. Then you come across a monster that you have to fight. Now you are at 2 books. Then when you get your loot from killing that monster, you'd be in a 3rd book. As the dungeon goes on you could be in more and more books depending on how the adventure goes. Then there is the issue of finding the information, it takes time and can take you out of the adventure.
Just looking up a simple spell will take seconds on here whereas with the books you have to figure out which book is it in.. is this a core class or an expanded class, which book, tome, scroll, cave scratching is it on.
Now alternatively DM's will go to great lengths to compile together all this information before hand, but then what is the first thing a player will do when faced with a finely crafted dungeon? They decide they want to go someplace else and do something else. With the online tools it becomes much quicker to improvise because you can lookup things on the fly.
That is the potential of having all your data like this.
There's another advantage too, once the various other features start to be available - ease of play.
Say the opportunity for an impromptu session arises on a Saturday, with friends that I play with, but this happens while I am at a friend's house and I don't have my books. And I am the DM. It's cool - everyone has their characters on their phones and all the rules we need available - all we need are a few dice. :)
There are lots of other reasons though - I currently use a combination of physical books and D&D Beyond to run my games.
For me I love the idea of having a single place where the rules are listed _AND_ there's a place to discuss them (with the ability to cross-link). And, with the prospect of having all the source material here, where else would that be possible?
I guess I'm old school because I like my physical books. But I also like knowing a place like DDB exists to assist not only me, but my players. For me, it's another tool at my disposal, but one with growing importance, and dependence.
All of us players (and DM's) have pretty well every book ever printed since the game was invented decades ago, every accessory, thousands of miniatures, hundreds of dice...you name it.
But I pretty well live off of a Chromebook now for everything so the faster I can STOP having to lug books etc around the better. Unless the price is outrageous, I'm in...but I sure hope there is a system to link purchased materials to electronic etc. (Though, not holding my breath).
Well, this site ended up being *almost* useful to me at my last (our group's first) session - we only had one PHB for three people creating their characters. There were a few things I was able to look up here, though given the fact that my players were going for the stuff not available in the SRD there wasn't much. Were the Beta over and all content available, I would have gladly plunked down a reasonable amount of money then and there to get things moving a little smoother (assuming I hadn't already).
That said, I like what I see so far, and eagerly look forward to Phase 2 and Phase 3 things to play around with. I'm hoping that Phase 2 and Phase 3 will turn DnDBeyond into a "one-stop" site for all my campaign needs - spell cards, encounter calculation, encounter tracking, etc, whereas now I have to visit various sites or open two or three different apps to get the job done. If that's the case, once things reach full release, I'm sold.
It won't replace my books, of course - for me it's much easier to make a quick reference or ruling by flipping through the book or glancing at my custom DM screen than, open another tab (because I guarantee the player question will have nothing to do with what happens to be on-screen at the moment!). Also, there's nothing quite like sitting down for the evening flipping idly through the books and having inspiration strike.
Speak for yourself. I have PDFs of every D&D book I own. No, you can't see them. I own a license (granted by ownership of the physical book) to that content for my own personal use. It would be illegal for me to share it with anyone who doesn't own the same book.
Really good points from everyone that I mostly hadn't considered. Like I said: with a new product, I'm immediately looking for "why is this better than the way I already do things?" Without all the content, it's really not. It's a cute little proof of concept that has almost no practical value. BUT the ability to add "homebrew" content might make up for that.
Ihaven't played with that yet. If the homebrew content integrates seamlessly with the SRD content, then I think it probably will convince me to use this full-time and only break out a book when I absolutely need one. I play a UA Ranger. That's not SRD. But if I can just input all the class data into the homebrew interface, it's not a problem.
Oh. Can't do homebrew races or classes. The only player options you can add are spells. Huh. That's an odd decision. Well, once they add the ability to add homebrew classes (races aren't so important to me personally), I'm in. Until then, I'll keep toying with it but it can't currently support any game I've ever run or played in.
Keep in mind that during beta they really want to avoid us being able to work around the SRD restriction. After beta all this stuff will be available either through purchase or other means as determined by WotC.
Right now, the cool toys they've given us are just that - toys we're supposed to play around with and break. If it's useful, great! But this really won't be a "tool" for most of us until they release it later this summer.
Keep in mind that during beta they really want to avoid us being able to work around the SRD restriction. After beta all this stuff will be available either through purchase or other means as determined by WotC.
Right now, the cool toys they've given us are just that - toys we're supposed to play around with and break. If it's useful, great! But this really won't be a "tool" for most of us until they release it later this summer.
Yeah I get that. It's just frustrating that it's still going to just be SRD content unless I pay for it. I've already bought the books, so I can either buy them again or homebrew all the content into my online campaign. Neither of those seems like fun to me. I'll definitely jump on Beyond when the next edition is available but for 5e, I really don't see myself paying a monthly subscription of more than a few dollars. $100 per year is not even remotely viable, ESPECIALLY if I also have to purchase all the content again. I wouldn't do it for Fantasy Grounds (which seemed REALLY cool) and I won't do it for WotC's own "not Fantasy Grounds" application.
There is the options with subscription to share the books within a gaming group. Or you can buy the books for a one-time payment. The prices are still unknown.
There is the options with subscription to share the books within a gaming group. Or you can buy the books for a one-time payment. The prices are still unknown.
Yeah; I've already bought the books that I share with my gaming group. So if Beyond delivers SPECTACULARLY on everything they promise (and I'm fully ready to believe that it will), it might be worth a subscription to have all the content without having to also make content purchases. I mean I paid around $300 for all of my 5e source books (including the red box) and I figure my group of four players (plus one DM) will use them for about five years. So to me, $300 is a reasonable price for five years of D&D, including all sourcebook content (I could take or leave the adventures; I'm willing to buy them separately). Would I go to $400? Maybe. But my baseline of "I will pay that" is $300 for five years. And that's for me and four players to have unlimited access to everything.
BUT the ability to add "homebrew" content might make up for that.
Now, Sit a notebook at your side on the table, and a question comes up in game? Your PCs ask to talk to that strange bartender with the missing left eye? Want to buy a widget of wounding +3? Can't remember if that was in the PHB? or the DMG? or was it in one of the adventure paths? Or did I make it up 7 sessions ago? Doesn't matter, just type a search in the master search field and (hopefully) you're continuing to cruise through your game without getting bogged down trying to find something.
But... still, even with all that, in my opinion, the "killer app" will be if they actually incorporate a real campaign management tool. I'm talking like Realm Works, but having it automatically linked to the content you've paid for. (sure... make me pay again to use the same content, but in a different way.. uggh) NOW... imagine having just a scrapbook, your dice, and a notebook behind a DM screen instead of the like 10-12 various books/binders/stack of papers/boxes of notecards I have now... that would be nice.
Sure, someone is going to bring up any of the "social" stuff. That's cool and all, but I'm betting that most groups are like me and my friends. I don't think we really need anything more than text messaging to arrange what our start time is this week or who's bringing the Cheetos.
Lastly, I should throw in that, for anyone who streams games, this will be pretty awesome. That seems to be the "in" thing right now. Though, surely anyone can notice that for each group streaming their game, there's probably a thousand that's not. So, even though it's a super cool thing to have your character sheets linked to your name on-screen on Twitch, it really demands the question of really how important is that for a table top game? There is a huge group who play online via VTT (may I recommend Fantasy Grounds which is by far the best!), but without direct integration with DDB, I'm not sure how the experience changes much from the table top experience as well.
But then again, I'm just a quasi-grognard Gen-X-er. I'm probably missing something huge that's important to these young millennial whipper snappers...
For me, the downside is the Twitch integration (assuming that's going to be a thing). I don't use Twitch and have no desire to. Everyone already has a Google account and Google Hangouts is solid across all platforms. I want everyone to have DDB sitting next to their Hangouts window on their desktop, or have the DDB mobile app (please tell me that's going to be a thing) also open on their phone/tablet.
But I totally agree: a virtual tabletop will be the thing that sells me on this. Maps, NPC portraits and dynamic combat tracking are the features I want. Yup; Fantasy Grounds is great. Unfortunately, you have to buy all your books again at pretty close to the same price you already paid for them. Honestly, I'd rather use Tabletop Simulator (check it out on Steam). No content; just literally what it says. It's a virtual tabletop with no game rules coded in. It's a physics engine and nothing more. You can roll dice, move figures around on a map and even throw things up on a big screen on the wall in the virtual room. You can design things like LCD counters and you can give each player what basically amounts to an iPad so they can browse documents and web pages without leaving the TTS window. What you CAN'T do is tell the engine "when I roll the purple d20, add my Charisma modifier and report the total in the chat line as "Steve rolled a 17 on his Charisma check."
So anything that (a) doesn't make me re-buy all my books at a ridiculously inflated price, (b) actually integrates homebrew content (making it work EXACTLY like official content) and (c) let's me click a button to roll an attack, a save or a skill check will be an improvement over what's already available and will therefore be worth considering. If the price is right (less than $100 per year for me and four players to have access to all official content).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This may seem sarcastic buy it's an honest question. Why is this better than using my physical books and/or PDFs of those books?
And I don't mean because the tables are a bit of a mess or because the links to sections within a page all take you to the top if the page or because "basic rules only" means "useless for most practical purposes." I mean even if this was beautiful, complete and worked perfectly, what would be the advantage over my books and PDFs?
Please sell me. I want to love this but I just don't see how it's meant to make my life easier.
It’s not really better than books and PDF’s, it’s just a different way to play. I believe this should be used as a companion to the Paper versions, not necessarily a replacement. As for its pluses, its searchable and accessible. I can only imagine the suprises they haven’t told us about. Think about a DM being able to have all of the players stats, skills, and inventory at their fingertips. I believe this will only benefit the game as a whole, in speed and immersion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
twitch.tv/PGKarieo
It's not even "a different way to play" its a supplement to go along side the books. As its being built think of it as a digital DM's screen. It puts the stuff you need within easy access while playing. It doesn't replace the books because its not supposed to. Don't think about player stats, skills, and stuff like that. think about the practical stuff you reference during a campaign. being able to pull up monster stats and have them side by side for complex encounters or loading item lists dynamically without flipping through pages to find the listing you want. Its not meant to replace the books, its meant to shave minutes off of game and preparation time. I don't think most groups will really sit there looking at each other's character sheets most of the time. I think this will generally be a supplement collecting all the stuff you already deal with into a streamlined interface. It has a learning curve but its ultimately faster.
It's also just more convenient for some people. I have very limited space for example, so not taking up a shelf with a large number of books when I could instead have all the same information stored digitally will be helpful. It's also more transportable (as an IOS device like a phone is much easier to carry than a stack of 2-4 books), and for some people it's easier to search through. Add in some of the additional functionality the DnD Beyond team has hinted and confirmed and it's looking like it will be a very solid option for some people.
RAIKARIS
My Caard || Join URPG!
First, we don't have PDFs of the books. But even if we had, the searching tools of DDB are far better than a classic PDF.
For the comparison against the books, well having all the books in one place, when with a click you can search everything, it is very very convenient.
Moreoevr, we will have all the books here in DDB. It is just a matter for the price to be announced.
Oh this question is easy. Let's say you own all the books AND all the books are on here. Your question is why is this better... at least in theory.
Let's say you wanted to play a barbarian... for that you'd have to look up information in one book. Then you come across a monster that you have to fight. Now you are at 2 books. Then when you get your loot from killing that monster, you'd be in a 3rd book. As the dungeon goes on you could be in more and more books depending on how the adventure goes. Then there is the issue of finding the information, it takes time and can take you out of the adventure.
Just looking up a simple spell will take seconds on here whereas with the books you have to figure out which book is it in.. is this a core class or an expanded class, which book, tome, scroll, cave scratching is it on.
Now alternatively DM's will go to great lengths to compile together all this information before hand, but then what is the first thing a player will do when faced with a finely crafted dungeon? They decide they want to go someplace else and do something else. With the online tools it becomes much quicker to improvise because you can lookup things on the fly.
That is the potential of having all your data like this.
Marav(Druid/Ranger) -Storm Kings ThunderDontontion(Rogue/Warlock) - Storm Kings Thunder
DM - Stormpoint Mountains :: A Critical Role Adventure ( Map of Trunau )
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersThere's another advantage too, once the various other features start to be available - ease of play.
Say the opportunity for an impromptu session arises on a Saturday, with friends that I play with, but this happens while I am at a friend's house and I don't have my books. And I am the DM. It's cool - everyone has their characters on their phones and all the rules we need available - all we need are a few dice. :)
There are lots of other reasons though - I currently use a combination of physical books and D&D Beyond to run my games.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
For me I love the idea of having a single place where the rules are listed _AND_ there's a place to discuss them (with the ability to cross-link). And, with the prospect of having all the source material here, where else would that be possible?
I guess I'm old school because I like my physical books. But I also like knowing a place like DDB exists to assist not only me, but my players. For me, it's another tool at my disposal, but one with growing importance, and dependence.
I wear pants, short pants.
I also ask a lot of questions; insatiably curious
I like the standard books, dmg, phb and mm, the rest just because too much to lug around. I will say, price will play a huge roll here.
Marav(Druid/Ranger) -Storm Kings ThunderDontontion(Rogue/Warlock) - Storm Kings Thunder
DM - Stormpoint Mountains :: A Critical Role Adventure ( Map of Trunau )
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
twitch.tv/PGKarieo
All of us players (and DM's) have pretty well every book ever printed since the game was invented decades ago, every accessory, thousands of miniatures, hundreds of dice...you name it.
But I pretty well live off of a Chromebook now for everything so the faster I can STOP having to lug books etc around the better. Unless the price is outrageous, I'm in...but I sure hope there is a system to link purchased materials to electronic etc. (Though, not holding my breath).
Well, this site ended up being *almost* useful to me at my last (our group's first) session - we only had one PHB for three people creating their characters. There were a few things I was able to look up here, though given the fact that my players were going for the stuff not available in the SRD there wasn't much. Were the Beta over and all content available, I would have gladly plunked down a reasonable amount of money then and there to get things moving a little smoother (assuming I hadn't already).
That said, I like what I see so far, and eagerly look forward to Phase 2 and Phase 3 things to play around with. I'm hoping that Phase 2 and Phase 3 will turn DnDBeyond into a "one-stop" site for all my campaign needs - spell cards, encounter calculation, encounter tracking, etc, whereas now I have to visit various sites or open two or three different apps to get the job done. If that's the case, once things reach full release, I'm sold.
It won't replace my books, of course - for me it's much easier to make a quick reference or ruling by flipping through the book or glancing at my custom DM screen than, open another tab (because I guarantee the player question will have nothing to do with what happens to be on-screen at the moment!). Also, there's nothing quite like sitting down for the evening flipping idly through the books and having inspiration strike.
Speak for yourself. I have PDFs of every D&D book I own. No, you can't see them. I own a license (granted by ownership of the physical book) to that content for my own personal use. It would be illegal for me to share it with anyone who doesn't own the same book.
Really good points from everyone that I mostly hadn't considered. Like I said: with a new product, I'm immediately looking for "why is this better than the way I already do things?" Without all the content, it's really not. It's a cute little proof of concept that has almost no practical value. BUT the ability to add "homebrew" content might make up for that.
Ihaven't played with that yet. If the homebrew content integrates seamlessly with the SRD content, then I think it probably will convince me to use this full-time and only break out a book when I absolutely need one. I play a UA Ranger. That's not SRD. But if I can just input all the class data into the homebrew interface, it's not a problem.
Oh. Can't do homebrew races or classes. The only player options you can add are spells. Huh. That's an odd decision. Well, once they add the ability to add homebrew classes (races aren't so important to me personally), I'm in. Until then, I'll keep toying with it but it can't currently support any game I've ever run or played in.
Keep in mind that during beta they really want to avoid us being able to work around the SRD restriction. After beta all this stuff will be available either through purchase or other means as determined by WotC.
Right now, the cool toys they've given us are just that - toys we're supposed to play around with and break. If it's useful, great! But this really won't be a "tool" for most of us until they release it later this summer.
There is the options with subscription to share the books within a gaming group. Or you can buy the books for a one-time payment. The prices are still unknown.
Be careful what you Wish for... your DM may just give it to you!
DrGerm:
For me, the downside is the Twitch integration (assuming that's going to be a thing). I don't use Twitch and have no desire to. Everyone already has a Google account and Google Hangouts is solid across all platforms. I want everyone to have DDB sitting next to their Hangouts window on their desktop, or have the DDB mobile app (please tell me that's going to be a thing) also open on their phone/tablet.
But I totally agree: a virtual tabletop will be the thing that sells me on this. Maps, NPC portraits and dynamic combat tracking are the features I want. Yup; Fantasy Grounds is great. Unfortunately, you have to buy all your books again at pretty close to the same price you already paid for them. Honestly, I'd rather use Tabletop Simulator (check it out on Steam). No content; just literally what it says. It's a virtual tabletop with no game rules coded in. It's a physics engine and nothing more. You can roll dice, move figures around on a map and even throw things up on a big screen on the wall in the virtual room. You can design things like LCD counters and you can give each player what basically amounts to an iPad so they can browse documents and web pages without leaving the TTS window. What you CAN'T do is tell the engine "when I roll the purple d20, add my Charisma modifier and report the total in the chat line as "Steve rolled a 17 on his Charisma check."
So anything that (a) doesn't make me re-buy all my books at a ridiculously inflated price, (b) actually integrates homebrew content (making it work EXACTLY like official content) and (c) let's me click a button to roll an attack, a save or a skill check will be an improvement over what's already available and will therefore be worth considering. If the price is right (less than $100 per year for me and four players to have access to all official content).