I don't have the answer to that question right now, but the community team and moderators are collecting as much feedback about this as y'all are giving us, so please continue to voice those thoughts!
Please bring back a la carte options. Those are my thoughts.
Bring back a la carte options please. My party and I are all brand new DND players, we are not going to spend hundreds of dollars on sourcebooks to get the few character options we'll need to get into the game. A la carte offered a way to dip our toes in with a smaller financial commitment and the discount on the rest of the sourcebook was incentive to buy it fully down the road. As an unbiased new player with no prior knowledge or opinion on this company's reputation: this feels very scummy.
Just adding another post in support of bringing back the a la carte purchase options. With this removed I'll never spend another cent on D&D Beyond, and this is coming from someone who has spent hundreds. I don't mean to whine or seem unappreciative of the effort that goes into D&D Beyond. But that was one of the core reasons I utilized the store here in the first place. There are other methods of obtaining such information if D&D Beyond decides to go "whole book or nothing" and I can and will utilize them.
I'm obviously jumping to conclusions here but it's starting to sound like they were working on this marketplace update, it wasn't fully finished by deadline, so they released this buggy version and didn't announce it beforehand because it wasn't done.
As to the decision to stop the individual purchase items, just adding my voice to those saying this really sucks. I've made a few purchases that were, for example, just the monsters from a book to use in my own campaign because I don't need the entire setting. I'm sure some execs somewhere have their powerpoints about how this is better for the company's bottom line but from a customer perspective it's just cruddy.
Roll back this change. Individual purchases was the only thing I was still throwing money at using this site, other than my subscription. With that no longer available I'll be forced to join the 'create via homebrew' crowd, which I don't particularly favour.
no problem! I'm just sorry I wasn't in here earlier, but as you can imagine, it's been a bit... much... over the last 36-ish hours, hahaha.
A lot of us are frustrated and upset. Dealing with angry customers is not fun. Thank you for reading and replying back to us, your communication helps. You are doing a good job, and I hope your compensation and pay reflects that.
Moving forward, are there plans to increase communication and transparency with the community? Ever since the original founders left and Hasbro took over, communication has been going down hill and that is not okay. Community engagement is a difficult and thankless task that needs to be done, and that task is just as important as software development, marketing, accounting, etc. There is an undeniable night-and-day difference in enthusiam, excitement, and hope in Beyond's community between five years ago when I first joined this site and right now. With timely communication, it will be easier for the community to self regulate and to increase brand loyalty.
What sets D&D apart from other TTRPGs is not just the marketing and name recognition. What sets D&D apart is the level of convenience and quality of life features that comes with being part of a big corporation. Having physical and digital books is the easy part, any modern TTRPG these days got that. What D&D got that others do not is the plethora of physical and digital tools (mats, minis, book tabs, GM screens, monster cards, Beyond's whole suite of tools, à la carte purchases, content sharing, etc.) that brings the game alive for players and makes running the game easier on GMs. Having timely communication, community engagement, and a sense of belonging and purpose is also a big part of that.
D&D's closest competitor is Pathfinder, and as far as I can tell, they do not drop the ball in community engagement. Not only are they able to rally the TTRPG consumer base, they are also able to rally a portion of the industry, to take advantage of Wizard's abysmal PR response to the OGL incident. Beyond, Wizards, and Hasbro should not be neglecting communicating with its community over big changes like removing à la carte purchases. We will not like the changes, and we will probably still be up in arms anyways, but at least give us a reason to be empathetic and understanding so the cooler heads among us can nip misinformation in the bud and maintain a more positive outlook. The reason can be as simple as being greedy, and Hasbro better be. Last I checked, Hasbro is not performing so well. When Beyond discontinued further development in multilingual support some years ago, they said that the Italian PHB compendium did not sell very well, and while the community is not happy about it, we understand and can empathesize with the situation.
I do not know the exact steps that needs to be taken, but I wish to see the level of enthusiam, excitement, and hope that Beyond once had.
Throw in my vote to bring back à la carte purchases too. And sorry to slam you with an essay, but I hope you and the rest of the Beyond team to have a good day or night wherever y'all may be.
I think doing this was a huge mistake to be honest. I used to buy whole (physical) sourcebooks just for my own enjoyment, as well as individual piecemeal digital options for specific characters. WoTC already have been disappointing us and ruining their own reputation time and time again. I kept using dndbeyond and regularly spending money on books and piecemeal options honestly because it was convenient and i do enjoy dnd a lot, but I'm not going to buy a whole book I'm not even interested in for one damn subclass.
My friend switched to just making and calculating their own character sheets using all the content easily available for free elsewhere online a while ago and i think I'm going to have to start doing the same.
The convenience is no longer even slightly enough for the price they've now made it. And doing this without any announcement beforehand has degraded what was left of the trust so i don't think I'll be buying any more physical sourcebooks either. Just super disappointing and a terrible business move as far as i can tell.
Where is this "free" official content, I would wager it is illegal, and if that is ok with you you might rethink posting promotion of theft.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I don't have the answer to that question right now, but the community team and moderators are collecting as much feedback about this as y'all are giving us, so please continue to voice those thoughts!
Thanks for checking in. I do hope that these teams are paying attention. I can’t imagine being the messenger in this situation is fun, so I sincerely appreciate the time you’ve taken to engage.
This move away from a la carte purchasing seems nonsensical and tone-deaf at best; sneaky and avaricious at worst. Sounds like it wasn’t even fully ready for implementation. More communication would have eased the sting a little, but it would not change the fact that this is a clear message that people who play this game and pay for its products are among the least important parts of the equation. Corporations gonna corporation, but WOW.
I don’t tend to complain much, but my goodness, this rubbed me the wrong way.
Where is this "free" official content, I would wager it is illegal, and if that is ok with you you might rethink posting promotion of theft.
This point brings up another important aspect of the situation that is, at the very least, worth briefly noting.
The sad truth is that many folks aren’t realistically going to follow the rules. People, especially kids, will often fall back to theft/piracy when the price isn’t worth the hassle, especially when the “free” content is readily available on the numerous sites I won’t name.
It’s easy to dodge the elephant in the room by saying “shucks, now everyone will have to use the homebrew tools instead of buying piecemail.” And it’s a nice, safe alternative to offer — but the fact is that very few people are taking the time out of their day to reenter purchased content into DDB’s homebrew creator, in part because DDB’s homebrew creator flippin’ sucks. No, folks will fall back to less desirable methods of acquiring content.
I’m not endorsing theft or piracy by any means, only trying to provide context to the issue. Purchasing à la carte was a happy medium between paying a lot and paying nothing, and all the WotC hate floating around isn’t exactly pressuring players to choose the former.
I don't have the answer to that question right now, but the community team and moderators are collecting as much feedback about this as y'all are giving us, so please continue to voice those thoughts!
I was in the process of starting a new campaign and just found out about this change. I cannot tell you how disappointed I am, as I was very used to getting items as needed. I have a new player joining my gaming group, and was going to buy her any background or class stuff she needed as a welcome gesture. I can no longer do that.
I also second the notion another player said. This was a good option not just for players to offset cost for DMs, but also to dip their feet into online character creation. I can't see how this change benefits anyone in the long run.
Please bring back the option to buy what we need. Especially those of us that have the physical books already, and who also have any module purchased on a VTT. We simply are not going to buy all of the content a third time at full price. At the bare minimum let us send proof of purchase of our physical copy for some kind of discount. Us DMs spend enough money as it is.
no problem! I'm just sorry I wasn't in here earlier, but as you can imagine, it's been a bit... much... over the last 36-ish hours, hahaha.
A lot of us are frustrated and upset. Dealing with angry customers is not fun. Thank you for reading and replying back to us, your communication helps. You are doing a good job, and I hope your compensation and pay reflects that.
Moving forward, are there plans to increase communication and transparency with the community? Ever since the original founders left and Hasbro took over, communication has been going down hill and that is not okay. Community engagement is a difficult and thankless task that needs to be done, and that task is just as important as software development, marketing, accounting, etc. There is an undeniable night-and-day difference in enthusiam, excitement, and hope in Beyond's community between five years ago when I first joined this site and right now. With timely communication, it will be easier for the community to self regulate and to increase brand loyalty.
What sets D&D apart from other TTRPGs is not just the marketing and name recognition. What sets D&D apart is the level of convenience and quality of life features that comes with being part of a big corporation. Having physical and digital books is the easy part, any modern TTRPG these days got that. What D&D got that others do not is the plethora of physical and digital tools (mats, minis, book tabs, GM screens, monster cards, Beyond's whole suite of tools, à la carte purchases, content sharing, etc.) that brings the game alive for players and makes running the game easier on GMs. Having timely communication, community engagement, and a sense of belonging and purpose is also a big part of that.
D&D's closest competitor is Pathfinder, and as far as I can tell, they do not drop the ball in community engagement. Not only are they able to rally the TTRPG consumer base, they are also able to rally a portion of the industry, to take advantage of Wizard's abysmal PR response to the OGL incident. Beyond, Wizards, and Hasbro should not be neglecting communicating with its community over big changes like removing à la carte purchases. We will not like the changes, and we will probably still be up in arms anyways, but at least give us a reason to be empathetic and understanding so the cooler heads among us can nip misinformation in the bud and maintain a more positive outlook. The reason can be as simple as being greedy, and Hasbro better be. Last I checked, Hasbro is not performing so well. When Beyond discontinued further development in multilingual support some years ago, they said that the Italian PHB compendium did not sell very well, and while the community is not happy about it, we understand and can empathesize with the situation.
I do not know the exact steps that needs to be taken, but I wish to see the level of enthusiam, excitement, and hope that Beyond once had.
Throw in my vote to bring back à la carte purchases too. And sorry to slam you with an essay, but I hope you and the rest of the Beyond team to have a good day or night wherever y'all may be.
I want to second everything said here. D&D is a hard community to manage - our players span multiple generations, both culturally and in terms of the game itself. As a game of fantasy escapism, it attracts people from all walks of life - and of all different, often diametrically opposed viewpoints. And, as players of a fantasy game, perhaps sometimes we are a little prone to fantasy ourselves, running down the path of hyperbole and exaggeration, turning a wyrmling sized problem into a Greatwyrm.
We are not an easy group to address and, given its eclectic makeup, folks are always going to be angry. Finding the right answer is often impossible - and finding the best bad option can be almost as hard. But there is one option that is always wrong - silence. It is in that silence the player base turns to its imagination. While imagination might be great for playing the game, it is extremely dangerous from a PR stance.
All of which brings me to another point almost never addressed, but which must be acknowledged. When Wizards, Hasbro, of Beyond is silent on an issue, the burden of keeping the peace, of telling people to avoid speculation and rely on tangible evidence, the burden of doing the job of Wizards/Hasbro PR, often falls on members of the community.
Take this thread. XXXGammaRay went out of their way to find information buried on the support pages and put out an announcement to players hours and hours before anything was meaningfully announced from the Beyond team. It is not the first time this user has tried to cast Calm Emotions due to lack of communication from Wizards; it will not be their last. And they are not alone - there are countless folks in the same boat, trying to steer the ship through a storm while the captain is conspicuously missing.
All the things that make y’all’s job difficult? The different opinions, all of which can be hard to balance? The aggressive and violent rhetoric by those who would rather be angry now than wait for more information? The personal attacks and accusations? Everything that makes D&D PR hard is doubly true for your dedicated players who lack the gravitas and authority (and sometimes anonymity) of an official statement. Except, those players have an additional burden - they do not know what is going on either, and, often, they are just as concerned and scared as everyone else. Their concern and fear does not manifest as anger, nor does it superseded their caution and dedication to rendering opinions based on actual evidence and speculation - but it does not mean their fear is not real. And, far too often, it means they have to be careful in voicing their true feelings or fears, lest they inadvertently spur the very confusion and anger they wish to avoid.
Your job is hard, and I do not want to diminish that in the slightest. But it is your job—not your players’. By getting behind stories, by ambushing (either in actuality or in perception) your community and delaying in providing a meaningful response… all of that does not only make your job harder long-term—it also drops the responsibility of the initial public relations damage control on those of your players with the levelest of heads. Players who, far too often, find themselves on the receiving end of all the vitriolic horror the internet has to offer. Players who, even knowing they will get insulted, attacked, and ridiculed, still repeatedly step up to the plate because they love this game and they want what is best for it.
Placing the burden on them—some of your most loyal and best players—especially for things like this the D&D team knew was occurring well in advance? That is hardly fair.
The lack of a la carte options prevented me from buying the Book of Many Things, despite buying most books in full available on the site. I assumed this whole time that there was something wrong with the coding for the book and steered clear of it, but in any case, I won't be buying books on here until there's a change. I have the master sub and the legendary bundle, and have been faithfully forking over money for the full books for years. But if this site won't give people options when they're not able to do that, especially not now, then why would anyone trust or support the future of this website? For all I know, there's a staggered plan to eliminate homebrewing, too, which is why it would be so lucrative to suddenly start making a bunch of contracts with third party content creators to sell on here with little fanfare before release. Just as dndbeyond has begun doing. Since we know they can't be trusted to announce sweeping changes, which they will make without warning, like assassins killing "customer value" in the dead of night, they've lost all credibility to me as a leisure investment. It will take time, but I'm finally convinced that it's a good idea to divest and look into alternatives to this site, and game, for my ttrpg needs. Before things get even worse and more profit-maximizing strategies are implemented on here to my inconvenience.
This latest act of antagonism towards an already precariously loyal base, who will warn new customers away, will cost WotC money, and I don't mean because of customers like me. This is a digital tool, not a physical one, and the people who would use this site are largely acclimated to internet tools. I can only shake my head at the short-sighted greed on display. I swear these corporations must be consulting the snake oil investment bro equivalent of the traveling con-man cheerleading coach from "Bring It On" to believe that people will still trust in dndbeyond and WotC, and that their secret plans will result in victory and profit.
Being able to make those individual small purchases kept me buying! I’ll be home brewing the items more so now. As a DM I would often buy the thing a player wanted so they could access it and add it to my collection. Cheap and convenient. I’ve always balked at the price of digital books, this won’t make me more likely to buy them. I’ll be keeping those toonies to myself now. Sigh!
I am also very disappointed by this decision. I have a master tier subscription and have purchased plenty of physical books. I thought the ability to buy individual items etc. was one of the best features of DnD Beyond and has helped keep me loyal to the site.
I was going to buy some monsters from Candlekeep Mysteries tonight for an upcoming game but now I'll just use them out of the physical book which I already own. I'm certainly not going to buy the whole book.
I made this video to show the changes. From 10 minute mark I go over my personal thoughts and why I think D&D Beyond might be doing this.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I don't have the answer to that question right now, but the community team and moderators are collecting as much feedback about this as y'all are giving us, so please continue to voice those thoughts!
Thank you for your honesty, it is appreciated. The thoughts I'll voice are thus:
This is not the first time, nor do I reckon shall it be the last, that Wizards of the Coast has failed to adequately communicate a change in how players engage with the game and the purchase of it. Most problems in D&D, be it between participants or the company, can be resolved or at least calmed through communication. This should have been communicated long in advance, because it is a massive change that affects how people interact with D&D Beyond. I feel lessons have not been learned with the OGL situation and the multiple blog posts that followed which insisted things like "we’re going to do this a better way: more open and transparent, with our entire community of creators. With the time to iterate, to get feedback, to improve."
The individual purchase options are of great importance. Knowing that I could not only play a Minotaur, but also be able to purchase that option without having to buy an entire book (a waste of both money and paper before converting to use of DDB), was what made me a D&D player rather than an outside observer. I've since spent what must be hundreds of pounds on the game as a result, simply because a feature I wanted was a foothold into the hobby. I feel a great many people are the same, but I can't prove that. I've no doubt there's data that shows how many people purchase things differently. Were that data available, it might alleviate some of the issues. Again, communication is key.
I used to be able to see what individual items were in the book. That is no longer possible. What magic items are in the Book of Many Things? I don't know, I have to buy the book now. What spells are there? I don't know, I have to buy the book now. While previously I could only guess based on the name or ask someone else who had owned it, I could at least be inspired to bite the bullet and go with something that sounds cool. Again, I didn't know what the minotaur did. I didn't care, I just wanted to play a minotaur. The 'Ruined' Background sounds like it would be interesting, I'd love to purchase it individually without having to buy the entire book.
I would prefer to own the physical book now individual purchases are gone. Finding information on this site can be a pain, and the readability has not improved in my years of using it (is dark mode still not a thing without browser plugins?). With one of its two advantages gone (the other being a lot of the automation that comes through dice rolls and modifiers, HP, and so on), I could easily go to the tabletop with used, cheaper copies of the books that I can share with the in-person group. I could use the money I'd save from the subscription fee to buy said books second-hand, too.
Finally, and this is the most important thing I'll say because you and the team are human, I don't have a problem with you personally for not having the answers, that's not your fault. But I do have a problem that nobody in the chain of command deemed it necessary for you to have the answers before being subject to this. It should be blindingly obvious that this change was going to spark controversy, and if it wasn't, then that highlights greater problems with the higher-ups.
I know for a fact that any communication before this change was implemented would've gone down poorly because there is no benefit to the hobbyist, so naturally it's going to be negatively received, but if we were informed long before this we would've been able to voice our thoughts and your team would've been able to pass them on to whoever needs to know. This is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, only now said horse has disappeared into Elminster's Encyclopedia of of Equines for $29.99 because it can't be found on its own.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
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Please bring back a la carte options. Those are my thoughts.
Bring back a la carte options please. My party and I are all brand new DND players, we are not going to spend hundreds of dollars on sourcebooks to get the few character options we'll need to get into the game. A la carte offered a way to dip our toes in with a smaller financial commitment and the discount on the rest of the sourcebook was incentive to buy it fully down the road. As an unbiased new player with no prior knowledge or opinion on this company's reputation: this feels very scummy.
Just adding another post in support of bringing back the a la carte purchase options. With this removed I'll never spend another cent on D&D Beyond, and this is coming from someone who has spent hundreds. I don't mean to whine or seem unappreciative of the effort that goes into D&D Beyond. But that was one of the core reasons I utilized the store here in the first place. There are other methods of obtaining such information if D&D Beyond decides to go "whole book or nothing" and I can and will utilize them.
I'm obviously jumping to conclusions here but it's starting to sound like they were working on this marketplace update, it wasn't fully finished by deadline, so they released this buggy version and didn't announce it beforehand because it wasn't done.
As to the decision to stop the individual purchase items, just adding my voice to those saying this really sucks. I've made a few purchases that were, for example, just the monsters from a book to use in my own campaign because I don't need the entire setting. I'm sure some execs somewhere have their powerpoints about how this is better for the company's bottom line but from a customer perspective it's just cruddy.
Roll back this change. Individual purchases was the only thing I was still throwing money at using this site, other than my subscription. With that no longer available I'll be forced to join the 'create via homebrew' crowd, which I don't particularly favour.
A lot of us are frustrated and upset. Dealing with angry customers is not fun. Thank you for reading and replying back to us, your communication helps. You are doing a good job, and I hope your compensation and pay reflects that.
Moving forward, are there plans to increase communication and transparency with the community? Ever since the original founders left and Hasbro took over, communication has been going down hill and that is not okay. Community engagement is a difficult and thankless task that needs to be done, and that task is just as important as software development, marketing, accounting, etc. There is an undeniable night-and-day difference in enthusiam, excitement, and hope in Beyond's community between five years ago when I first joined this site and right now. With timely communication, it will be easier for the community to self regulate and to increase brand loyalty.
What sets D&D apart from other TTRPGs is not just the marketing and name recognition. What sets D&D apart is the level of convenience and quality of life features that comes with being part of a big corporation. Having physical and digital books is the easy part, any modern TTRPG these days got that. What D&D got that others do not is the plethora of physical and digital tools (mats, minis, book tabs, GM screens, monster cards, Beyond's whole suite of tools, à la carte purchases, content sharing, etc.) that brings the game alive for players and makes running the game easier on GMs. Having timely communication, community engagement, and a sense of belonging and purpose is also a big part of that.
D&D's closest competitor is Pathfinder, and as far as I can tell, they do not drop the ball in community engagement. Not only are they able to rally the TTRPG consumer base, they are also able to rally a portion of the industry, to take advantage of Wizard's abysmal PR response to the OGL incident. Beyond, Wizards, and Hasbro should not be neglecting communicating with its community over big changes like removing à la carte purchases. We will not like the changes, and we will probably still be up in arms anyways, but at least give us a reason to be empathetic and understanding so the cooler heads among us can nip misinformation in the bud and maintain a more positive outlook. The reason can be as simple as being greedy, and Hasbro better be. Last I checked, Hasbro is not performing so well. When Beyond discontinued further development in multilingual support some years ago, they said that the Italian PHB compendium did not sell very well, and while the community is not happy about it, we understand and can empathesize with the situation.
I do not know the exact steps that needs to be taken, but I wish to see the level of enthusiam, excitement, and hope that Beyond once had.
Throw in my vote to bring back à la carte purchases too. And sorry to slam you with an essay, but I hope you and the rest of the Beyond team to have a good day or night wherever y'all may be.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
Where is this "free" official content, I would wager it is illegal, and if that is ok with you you might rethink posting promotion of theft.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Thanks for checking in. I do hope that these teams are paying attention. I can’t imagine being the messenger in this situation is fun, so I sincerely appreciate the time you’ve taken to engage.
This move away from a la carte purchasing seems nonsensical and tone-deaf at best; sneaky and avaricious at worst. Sounds like it wasn’t even fully ready for implementation. More communication would have eased the sting a little, but it would not change the fact that this is a clear message that people who play this game and pay for its products are among the least important parts of the equation. Corporations gonna corporation, but WOW.
I don’t tend to complain much, but my goodness, this rubbed me the wrong way.
This point brings up another important aspect of the situation that is, at the very least, worth briefly noting.
The sad truth is that many folks aren’t realistically going to follow the rules. People, especially kids, will often fall back to theft/piracy when the price isn’t worth the hassle, especially when the “free” content is readily available on the numerous sites I won’t name.
It’s easy to dodge the elephant in the room by saying “shucks, now everyone will have to use the homebrew tools instead of buying piecemail.” And it’s a nice, safe alternative to offer — but the fact is that very few people are taking the time out of their day to reenter purchased content into DDB’s homebrew creator, in part because DDB’s homebrew creator flippin’ sucks. No, folks will fall back to less desirable methods of acquiring content.
I’m not endorsing theft or piracy by any means, only trying to provide context to the issue. Purchasing à la carte was a happy medium between paying a lot and paying nothing, and all the WotC hate floating around isn’t exactly pressuring players to choose the former.
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I was in the process of starting a new campaign and just found out about this change. I cannot tell you how disappointed I am, as I was very used to getting items as needed. I have a new player joining my gaming group, and was going to buy her any background or class stuff she needed as a welcome gesture. I can no longer do that.
I also second the notion another player said. This was a good option not just for players to offset cost for DMs, but also to dip their feet into online character creation. I can't see how this change benefits anyone in the long run.
Please bring back the option to buy what we need. Especially those of us that have the physical books already, and who also have any module purchased on a VTT. We simply are not going to buy all of the content a third time at full price. At the bare minimum let us send proof of purchase of our physical copy for some kind of discount. Us DMs spend enough money as it is.
I want to second everything said here. D&D is a hard community to manage - our players span multiple generations, both culturally and in terms of the game itself. As a game of fantasy escapism, it attracts people from all walks of life - and of all different, often diametrically opposed viewpoints. And, as players of a fantasy game, perhaps sometimes we are a little prone to fantasy ourselves, running down the path of hyperbole and exaggeration, turning a wyrmling sized problem into a Greatwyrm.
We are not an easy group to address and, given its eclectic makeup, folks are always going to be angry. Finding the right answer is often impossible - and finding the best bad option can be almost as hard. But there is one option that is always wrong - silence. It is in that silence the player base turns to its imagination. While imagination might be great for playing the game, it is extremely dangerous from a PR stance.
All of which brings me to another point almost never addressed, but which must be acknowledged. When Wizards, Hasbro, of Beyond is silent on an issue, the burden of keeping the peace, of telling people to avoid speculation and rely on tangible evidence, the burden of doing the job of Wizards/Hasbro PR, often falls on members of the community.
Take this thread. XXXGammaRay went out of their way to find information buried on the support pages and put out an announcement to players hours and hours before anything was meaningfully announced from the Beyond team. It is not the first time this user has tried to cast Calm Emotions due to lack of communication from Wizards; it will not be their last. And they are not alone - there are countless folks in the same boat, trying to steer the ship through a storm while the captain is conspicuously missing.
All the things that make y’all’s job difficult? The different opinions, all of which can be hard to balance? The aggressive and violent rhetoric by those who would rather be angry now than wait for more information? The personal attacks and accusations? Everything that makes D&D PR hard is doubly true for your dedicated players who lack the gravitas and authority (and sometimes anonymity) of an official statement. Except, those players have an additional burden - they do not know what is going on either, and, often, they are just as concerned and scared as everyone else. Their concern and fear does not manifest as anger, nor does it superseded their caution and dedication to rendering opinions based on actual evidence and speculation - but it does not mean their fear is not real. And, far too often, it means they have to be careful in voicing their true feelings or fears, lest they inadvertently spur the very confusion and anger they wish to avoid.
Your job is hard, and I do not want to diminish that in the slightest. But it is your job—not your players’. By getting behind stories, by ambushing (either in actuality or in perception) your community and delaying in providing a meaningful response… all of that does not only make your job harder long-term—it also drops the responsibility of the initial public relations damage control on those of your players with the levelest of heads. Players who, far too often, find themselves on the receiving end of all the vitriolic horror the internet has to offer. Players who, even knowing they will get insulted, attacked, and ridiculed, still repeatedly step up to the plate because they love this game and they want what is best for it.
Placing the burden on them—some of your most loyal and best players—especially for things like this the D&D team knew was occurring well in advance? That is hardly fair.
Please bring back the a la carte options! This is not cool.
Please bring back a la carte and bundle options. They were great ways to reward new and old users.
The lack of a la carte options prevented me from buying the Book of Many Things, despite buying most books in full available on the site. I assumed this whole time that there was something wrong with the coding for the book and steered clear of it, but in any case, I won't be buying books on here until there's a change. I have the master sub and the legendary bundle, and have been faithfully forking over money for the full books for years. But if this site won't give people options when they're not able to do that, especially not now, then why would anyone trust or support the future of this website? For all I know, there's a staggered plan to eliminate homebrewing, too, which is why it would be so lucrative to suddenly start making a bunch of contracts with third party content creators to sell on here with little fanfare before release. Just as dndbeyond has begun doing. Since we know they can't be trusted to announce sweeping changes, which they will make without warning, like assassins killing "customer value" in the dead of night, they've lost all credibility to me as a leisure investment. It will take time, but I'm finally convinced that it's a good idea to divest and look into alternatives to this site, and game, for my ttrpg needs. Before things get even worse and more profit-maximizing strategies are implemented on here to my inconvenience.
This latest act of antagonism towards an already precariously loyal base, who will warn new customers away, will cost WotC money, and I don't mean because of customers like me. This is a digital tool, not a physical one, and the people who would use this site are largely acclimated to internet tools. I can only shake my head at the short-sighted greed on display. I swear these corporations must be consulting the snake oil investment bro equivalent of the traveling con-man cheerleading coach from "Bring It On" to believe that people will still trust in dndbeyond and WotC, and that their secret plans will result in victory and profit.
Being able to make those individual small purchases kept me buying! I’ll be home brewing the items more so now. As a DM I would often buy the thing a player wanted so they could access it and add it to my collection. Cheap and convenient. I’ve always balked at the price of digital books, this won’t make me more likely to buy them. I’ll be keeping those toonies to myself now. Sigh!
I am also very disappointed by this decision. I have a master tier subscription and have purchased plenty of physical books. I thought the ability to buy individual items etc. was one of the best features of DnD Beyond and has helped keep me loyal to the site.
I was going to buy some monsters from Candlekeep Mysteries tonight for an upcoming game but now I'll just use them out of the physical book which I already own. I'm certainly not going to buy the whole book.
I suspect many of us will be doing that now! That option was one of the selling points I always gave to people about using Beyond!
I made this video to show the changes. From 10 minute mark I go over my personal thoughts and why I think D&D Beyond might be doing this.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
This is dumb - bring it back.
Thank you for your honesty, it is appreciated. The thoughts I'll voice are thus:
I know for a fact that any communication before this change was implemented would've gone down poorly because there is no benefit to the hobbyist, so naturally it's going to be negatively received, but if we were informed long before this we would've been able to voice our thoughts and your team would've been able to pass them on to whoever needs to know. This is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, only now said horse has disappeared into Elminster's Encyclopedia of of Equines for $29.99 because it can't be found on its own.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft