The thing is that it's entirely possible for them to have the mechanics/editions separate. Roll20 is pretty much throwing shade on them by saying they will have the rules and mechanics separate for us to choose what to use. They are making me wish I discovered roll20 first to spend my money on. Maybe roll20 just have a digital team.
For me this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Putting no effort into fleshing out the encounter builder/tracker and leaving it in beta for this long, while introducing sigil so they can sell us fake minis (that we don’t own). Removing a la carte purchases. Charging as much as they do for digital only books with limited integration to the website, and now taking down a large chunk of the content that was integrated (items and spells).
Cut your losses, move on to another game, and never give these fools another penny. Lots of other game companies out there that will gladly take your money in exchange for a good product. Paizo even has all their stuff online, for free, to include a robust character generator. And if you don't have the physical 2014 books yet, start looking, at your local used book stores, various online forums, anything to pick up a copy, and yet not put a single copper in their coffer. I have all the books I want and need, and have since 2020. So for me, YARRR!!! Project Black Flag and Tales of the Valiant! As the Kobolds like to point out, it's 5e adjacent, and for a DM, only a small bit (if any) of conversion opens up all 5e adventure content you already own.
To add, check out HumbleBundle frequently, and get on their mailing list. I've picked up a LOT of stuff off there. A few years back, I picked up a huge chunk of PF2e core book PDFs, as well as the LOTR 5e game by Cubicle7. They periodically have bundles of other TTRPG stuff on there for a good price, and a good cause.
Cancelled my subscription and both my DMs have too. We are moving to Foundry.
I've heard good things about Foundry. I bought a lifetime Fantasy Grounds license a few years ago, but it's pretty complex to set things up from scratch. When I was still using DDB, before the Days of Scandal, I ran an online campaign using that and AboveVTT, which can be system agnostic on its own, but also uses an API from DDB to pull in information from there. Like tokens, monster stats, character sheets. And it is free. ToV is going to have a presence on Foundry, so I might head over there soonish.
I'm just here to add my voice on the "wtf" train. I'm sure everything has been already said. This force is going to negate my need for the master tier.
Been running Foundry campaigns since last year. I do a lot of coding. There are tons of community modules for automation, but there is a learning curve to all the add-ons.
Used a community module to import DnDB content into foundry, but with the changes as well, that will become useless.
Owlbear Rodeo is free and system agnostic. There are dice rolling apps for your phones, and a dice rolling bot you can add to your Discord server. And yes, Discord is free too. Google Drive can be set up to share and view files, like character sheets or homebrew. The SRD is free, so any new players don't have to invest in books to access the rules of the game. Assuming everybody is playing remotely. If everybody is at the table, Owlbear Rodeo is still a fantastic tool, and Discord and Google Drive can be great ways to disseminate information between sessions.
Roll20 allows you to copy and paste information from any 5e source into the freely provided character sheets. All SRD things are drag-and-drop from a search field as well.
Roll20 allows you to copy and paste information from any 5e source into the freely provided character sheets. All SRD things are drag-and-drop from a search field as well.
Only issue I have with Roll20 is they keep getting breached.... I don't trust them with any of my information.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription 01/12/23 because of OGL 1.1
All sales are final on digital via support/tos. Don’t like the changes and practices of Hasbro/WoTC stop paying subs/buying their products. That’s what I am doing now.
WHAT THE F***. IS IT NOT AN EASY SOLUTION TO JUST MARK IT AS LEGACY CONTENT AND ALLOW US TO USE 2014 SPELLS AND ITEMS?????
It's more than just that. This change is going to alter all the tooltips and links between the sourcebooks. Clicking on goblin in Lost Mines of Phandelver will take you to the 5e24 goblin, not the 5e14 goblin. Mousing over something like exhaustion will also show the 5e24 rules, not the 5e14. It's a bigger mess than just being able to use the 5e14 spells and items on character sheets.
As I understand it the source books will still link to the legacy version of the monster, however if that monster is a spellcaster they will have links to the new spells rather than the old.
Any link within the text to spells or (when the DMG is released) items will also link to the new versions.
Speaking of which, how many adventures have spells used outside of monsters, e.g. as traps etc? If those spells have changed then the balancing of the adventure has changed. The only example I can think of offhand is Glyph of Warding (which hasn't changed afaik) on doors, but there must be others. Not only could it alter the difficulty, but some spells now have completely different effects.
The thing is that it's entirely possible for them to have the mechanics/editions separate. Roll20 is pretty much throwing shade on them by saying they will have the rules and mechanics separate for us to choose what to use. They are making me wish I discovered roll20 first to spend my money on. Maybe roll20 just have a digital team.
Yeah, but Roll20 support 100's* of systems, DDB can't even manage one.
(* they claim something like 1200 systems, but I assume most of them must be extremely similar or very simple)
I'm just another subscription that will go away if this happens. Maybe even if it doesn't; why sit around and wait for the next drama from this company?
I honestly didn't think WotC/Hasbro had any feet left to shoot themselves in, and yet here we are.
I already cancelled. We luckily just finished a multi-year campaign. We've decided as a group to move to Pathfinder. I still love D&D, but not this company. Late stage capitalism at its best. Alienating fans, open hostility towards customers, backwards corpo PR BS at every turn... I gave them a second chance after the OGL debacle. Turns out I was a fool.
This certainly isn't the worst thing they've done, but just as with the OGL, they've signalled their intent. They are telling you what kinds of actions they will take absent massive community backlash. Dont think this will be the last time. When a company shows you who they really are, take note. I have no intention of letting this blow over and waiting for the next screw up, even if they walk it back.
It's truly sad that this awful company is the steward of such a well loved game. There's nothing that greed can't ruin.
I was hoping that the more I had time to sit with this, the more I could come to terms with it. Unfortunately, I've only discovered more ways that this change makes D&D Beyond useless for my workflow.
I'm helping kids learn how to play this game! I use D&D Beyond to maintain copies of their character sheets that I can easily tap to see how their spells and abilities work without digging through physical books or searching the compendium. (A gal can only have so many tabs open.) They have the books next to them for reference and physical copies of their character sheets, and what I access from the digital sheet needs to match what's in the physical book. Due to all sorts of reasons (aka they're kids) switching to all digital would never work, even if we wanted to. We can't afford to buy new books or even print off that many copies of the 2024 SRD. We will be playing 2014 and can't be expected to switch to 2024 anytime soon.
Cancelled my Master subscription already, because what good will it do me without 2014 character sheet integration? Seriously considering cancelling my preorders for the 2024 rulebooks. D&D has name recognition, but if the powers that be aren't going to keep their players in mind, we can absolutely switch gears to a different system. The kids have enjoyed some of the others we'd tried out over the summer!
Absolutely bizarre (and in the case of ala carte purchases, horrific) decision on D&D Beyond's part. It needs to be fixed.
Just cancelled my sub as well and have told my friends to do so. There's not really anything you can do in a situation like this besides vote with your wallet
I have purchased hundreds of dollars worth of sourcebooks and have maintained a subscription for years -- specifically for the ability to have the ruleset we use for our campaign integrated with the digital character sheets and builder. The solution here is obvious -- just give folks a toggle (or several) that allows them to choose which version of classes, spells, conditions, etc. they want to use in the builder and sheets.
Once my purchased sourcebooks are no longer integrated with the character builder/sheets (including spells and items), I'll be cancelling my subscription. There are plenty of other digital solutions these days, so it's unlikely I'll be back.
This move by DDB is just mind-numbingly stupid, as I was open to moving to 5.5 and continuing to be a future customer. But since DDB has decided that my purchases can be unilaterally removed at any moment, investing my money in future versions makes no sense. (To be clear, allowing me to separately access older rulebooks in not sufficient. The real value is in the integration, and forcefully breaking that is functionally equivalent to revoking my purchases.)
- A frustrated (soon-to-be-former) customer
EDIT 8/26: First, I do appreciate that our voices have been heard and DDB has revised their plan. 2014 content will remain available in the builder for those that have purchased it, and therefore I'll remain a subscriber so long as I have an active campaign. That being said, it's a shame that folks had to start cancelling subscriptions in order for DDB to realize how anti-customer their original plan was.
One concern with all of this. Whats to stop wtfbro, I mean hasbro, from buying out the vtt I switch to and removing access to 2014 rules there?
The VTT company has to agree. Some companies like Shard Tabletop were set up specifically out of hatred of WotC's actions to provide an alternative to their stupidity. Another like Foundry is something you get and not even that company can revoke it - you have it forever and even Foundry themselves can't change that.
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.
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The thing is that it's entirely possible for them to have the mechanics/editions separate. Roll20 is pretty much throwing shade on them by saying they will have the rules and mechanics separate for us to choose what to use. They are making me wish I discovered roll20 first to spend my money on. Maybe roll20 just have a digital team.
For me this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Putting no effort into fleshing out the encounter builder/tracker and leaving it in beta for this long, while introducing sigil so they can sell us fake minis (that we don’t own). Removing a la carte purchases. Charging as much as they do for digital only books with limited integration to the website, and now taking down a large chunk of the content that was integrated (items and spells).
No. Time for an upgrade to a third party tool.
Cut your losses, move on to another game, and never give these fools another penny. Lots of other game companies out there that will gladly take your money in exchange for a good product. Paizo even has all their stuff online, for free, to include a robust character generator. And if you don't have the physical 2014 books yet, start looking, at your local used book stores, various online forums, anything to pick up a copy, and yet not put a single copper in their coffer. I have all the books I want and need, and have since 2020. So for me, YARRR!!! Project Black Flag and Tales of the Valiant! As the Kobolds like to point out, it's 5e adjacent, and for a DM, only a small bit (if any) of conversion opens up all 5e adventure content you already own.
To add, check out HumbleBundle frequently, and get on their mailing list. I've picked up a LOT of stuff off there. A few years back, I picked up a huge chunk of PF2e core book PDFs, as well as the LOTR 5e game by Cubicle7. They periodically have bundles of other TTRPG stuff on there for a good price, and a good cause.
Cancelled my subscription and both my DMs have too. We are moving to Foundry.
I've heard good things about Foundry. I bought a lifetime Fantasy Grounds license a few years ago, but it's pretty complex to set things up from scratch. When I was still using DDB, before the Days of Scandal, I ran an online campaign using that and AboveVTT, which can be system agnostic on its own, but also uses an API from DDB to pull in information from there. Like tokens, monster stats, character sheets. And it is free. ToV is going to have a presence on Foundry, so I might head over there soonish.
I'm just here to add my voice on the "wtf" train. I'm sure everything has been already said. This force is going to negate my need for the master tier.
Been running Foundry campaigns since last year. I do a lot of coding. There are tons of community modules for automation, but there is a learning curve to all the add-ons.
Used a community module to import DnDB content into foundry, but with the changes as well, that will become useless.
Owlbear Rodeo is free and system agnostic. There are dice rolling apps for your phones, and a dice rolling bot you can add to your Discord server. And yes, Discord is free too. Google Drive can be set up to share and view files, like character sheets or homebrew. The SRD is free, so any new players don't have to invest in books to access the rules of the game. Assuming everybody is playing remotely. If everybody is at the table, Owlbear Rodeo is still a fantastic tool, and Discord and Google Drive can be great ways to disseminate information between sessions.
Roll20 allows you to copy and paste information from any 5e source into the freely provided character sheets. All SRD things are drag-and-drop from a search field as well.
Only issue I have with Roll20 is they keep getting breached.... I don't trust them with any of my information.
Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription 01/12/23 because of OGL 1.1
All sales are final on digital via support/tos. Don’t like the changes and practices of Hasbro/WoTC stop paying subs/buying their products. That’s what I am doing now.
As I understand it the source books will still link to the legacy version of the monster, however if that monster is a spellcaster they will have links to the new spells rather than the old.
Any link within the text to spells or (when the DMG is released) items will also link to the new versions.
Speaking of which, how many adventures have spells used outside of monsters, e.g. as traps etc? If those spells have changed then the balancing of the adventure has changed. The only example I can think of offhand is Glyph of Warding (which hasn't changed afaik) on doors, but there must be others. Not only could it alter the difficulty, but some spells now have completely different effects.
Yeah, but Roll20 support 100's* of systems, DDB can't even manage one.
(* they claim something like 1200 systems, but I assume most of them must be extremely similar or very simple)
I'm just another subscription that will go away if this happens. Maybe even if it doesn't; why sit around and wait for the next drama from this company?
This is the best take right here.
I was hoping that the more I had time to sit with this, the more I could come to terms with it. Unfortunately, I've only discovered more ways that this change makes D&D Beyond useless for my workflow.
I'm helping kids learn how to play this game! I use D&D Beyond to maintain copies of their character sheets that I can easily tap to see how their spells and abilities work without digging through physical books or searching the compendium. (A gal can only have so many tabs open.) They have the books next to them for reference and physical copies of their character sheets, and what I access from the digital sheet needs to match what's in the physical book. Due to all sorts of reasons (aka they're kids) switching to all digital would never work, even if we wanted to. We can't afford to buy new books or even print off that many copies of the 2024 SRD. We will be playing 2014 and can't be expected to switch to 2024 anytime soon.
Cancelled my Master subscription already, because what good will it do me without 2014 character sheet integration? Seriously considering cancelling my preorders for the 2024 rulebooks. D&D has name recognition, but if the powers that be aren't going to keep their players in mind, we can absolutely switch gears to a different system. The kids have enjoyed some of the others we'd tried out over the summer!
Absolutely bizarre (and in the case of ala carte purchases, horrific) decision on D&D Beyond's part. It needs to be fixed.
Just cancelled my sub as well and have told my friends to do so. There's not really anything you can do in a situation like this besides vote with your wallet
I have purchased hundreds of dollars worth of sourcebooks and have maintained a subscription for years -- specifically for the ability to have the ruleset we use for our campaign integrated with the digital character sheets and builder. The solution here is obvious -- just give folks a toggle (or several) that allows them to choose which version of classes, spells, conditions, etc. they want to use in the builder and sheets.
Once my purchased sourcebooks are no longer integrated with the character builder/sheets (including spells and items), I'll be cancelling my subscription. There are plenty of other digital solutions these days, so it's unlikely I'll be back.
This move by DDB is just mind-numbingly stupid, as I was open to moving to 5.5 and continuing to be a future customer. But since DDB has decided that my purchases can be unilaterally removed at any moment, investing my money in future versions makes no sense. (To be clear, allowing me to separately access older rulebooks in not sufficient. The real value is in the integration, and forcefully breaking that is functionally equivalent to revoking my purchases.)
- A frustrated (soon-to-be-former) customer
EDIT 8/26:
First, I do appreciate that our voices have been heard and DDB has revised their plan. 2014 content will remain available in the builder for those that have purchased it, and therefore I'll remain a subscriber so long as I have an active campaign. That being said, it's a shame that folks had to start cancelling subscriptions in order for DDB to realize how anti-customer their original plan was.
One concern with all of this. Whats to stop wtfbro, I mean hasbro, from buying out the vtt I switch to and removing access to 2014 rules there?
+1 to simply making it a toggle to switch between versions. Not sure how that isn't the obvious answer but 🤷🏼♂️
The VTT company has to agree. Some companies like Shard Tabletop were set up specifically out of hatred of WotC's actions to provide an alternative to their stupidity. Another like Foundry is something you get and not even that company can revoke it - you have it forever and even Foundry themselves can't change that.
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.