I have been a 'forever DM' for a long time. With my group, I regularly use the Maps VTT for our games, casting the map to the TV in our living room while we play at the table. I am really enjoying the VTT and all the features that are being added to it constantly. So are my players, who can control their characters and measure things etc.
With the Heroes of the Borderlands upcoming starter set, my wife has offered to try DM'ing with it so I can have a chance to play. She's very eager, and happy to pay the subscription to get access to the VTT itself. However, it's at this point that we reach a problem.
I own almost all the content on D&D Beyond. She is my wife, and in all my campaigns with shared content, and therefore doesn't want to purchase a second copy of the Monster Manual just to be able to use the standard monsters in the game. It's also likely that we'll buy Heroes of the Borderlands on my account to keep everything together, especially if she decides DM'ing isn't for her.
That's where the problem comes in. As a "newbie DM", you can't use the shared materials that someone else has in the campaign group, in the Maps VTT. This is a definite showstopper for her eagerness to run the game. While we do have a physical grid map and tokens, the VTT has become part of our playstyle in the group. Not being able to use beautiful, accurate and illustrated maps, and instead using plastic tokens and a whiteboard marker to scribble out a map, is not encouraging her to try our the Dungeon Master role.
D&D has a DM shortage. A big stumbling block to that is convincing people to even try, but the Maps VTT has created another one, because you're presenting a financial burden on taking up the role. The only other 'realistic' option is account sharing, which is against the website terms, and not something we want to do.
Please reconsider your policy on sharing content in a given Campaign on the Maps VTT. Given that the VTT is tied to a given campaign, it shouldn't be a big ask to control that access so that only "within that campaign" the content is shared.
We need more DMs, and simple things like this are how you not only get more DM's but also more subscriptions. People are not going to buy the books again. They're just going to stop using your VTT, which is a big negative for your own business model.
I have been playing with the same group for almost 7 years now. We pitched in and bought the all the books because back then DnDBeyond was really only for reference materials and housing your online character sheets. Since then, we just used content sharing in our campaigns to make our characters from whatever source book we wanted, as it is intended to be used. The DM would buy the module for whatever game we were playing and boom, all the content of that book was shared within the campaign players.
Of the 7 people in the group, 4 of us have held the role of DM. As I am now retaking the role of DM, I WANT to use the Maps VTT. I like the intuitiveness of combining the combat tracker with the map, the ability to just plop down more tokens, etc... but, my game is largely homebrewed. I pull monsters from all different sorts of books. It's way too cost prohibitive to expect my group to buy all the books for every conceivable monster a second, third, or forth time depending on who runs the game. Content sharing already allows me to look up a spell, magic item, monster, feat, or piece of equipment in the normal "Game Rules" section of the site.
The same content sharing should be applied to the Maps VTT.Otherwise, there are less costly VTT options to choose from even if they require a little more work. If left as is, and someone is inclined to spend the money on the books (say for the first time), there are better VTT products on the market that require purchasing all the licensed content. So, the Maps VTT is most marketable as a superior product if they allowed it to utilize content sharing for a campaign because: (1) groups that are already invested in this platform will utilize the tool, meaning more site traffic, more use, and ultimately more incentive to purchase subscriptions and content here (read: money for Wizards); and (2) new groups will be more inclined to use this platform over other VTT options because they can share the cost of the investment among their accounts--which gives wizards an edge over other VTTs where (like Maps VTT is now) one person must absorb cost resulting in a steep barrier to entry.
Additionally, the spirit of DnD has always been content sharing. Groups have always bought the books and passed them around the table for everyone in that group to use when they are playing the game. That includes the DM. Putting the actual use of that info behind a duplicative paywall goes against that tradition.
Thank you user Perringaiden for letting me use your thread to pose my arguments for content sharing.
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I have been a 'forever DM' for a long time. With my group, I regularly use the Maps VTT for our games, casting the map to the TV in our living room while we play at the table. I am really enjoying the VTT and all the features that are being added to it constantly. So are my players, who can control their characters and measure things etc.
With the Heroes of the Borderlands upcoming starter set, my wife has offered to try DM'ing with it so I can have a chance to play. She's very eager, and happy to pay the subscription to get access to the VTT itself. However, it's at this point that we reach a problem.
I own almost all the content on D&D Beyond. She is my wife, and in all my campaigns with shared content, and therefore doesn't want to purchase a second copy of the Monster Manual just to be able to use the standard monsters in the game. It's also likely that we'll buy Heroes of the Borderlands on my account to keep everything together, especially if she decides DM'ing isn't for her.
That's where the problem comes in. As a "newbie DM", you can't use the shared materials that someone else has in the campaign group, in the Maps VTT. This is a definite showstopper for her eagerness to run the game. While we do have a physical grid map and tokens, the VTT has become part of our playstyle in the group. Not being able to use beautiful, accurate and illustrated maps, and instead using plastic tokens and a whiteboard marker to scribble out a map, is not encouraging her to try our the Dungeon Master role.
D&D has a DM shortage. A big stumbling block to that is convincing people to even try, but the Maps VTT has created another one, because you're presenting a financial burden on taking up the role. The only other 'realistic' option is account sharing, which is against the website terms, and not something we want to do.
Please reconsider your policy on sharing content in a given Campaign on the Maps VTT. Given that the VTT is tied to a given campaign, it shouldn't be a big ask to control that access so that only "within that campaign" the content is shared.
We need more DMs, and simple things like this are how you not only get more DM's but also more subscriptions. People are not going to buy the books again. They're just going to stop using your VTT, which is a big negative for your own business model.
I was just looking into this myself.
I have been playing with the same group for almost 7 years now. We pitched in and bought the all the books because back then DnDBeyond was really only for reference materials and housing your online character sheets. Since then, we just used content sharing in our campaigns to make our characters from whatever source book we wanted, as it is intended to be used. The DM would buy the module for whatever game we were playing and boom, all the content of that book was shared within the campaign players.
Of the 7 people in the group, 4 of us have held the role of DM. As I am now retaking the role of DM, I WANT to use the Maps VTT. I like the intuitiveness of combining the combat tracker with the map, the ability to just plop down more tokens, etc... but, my game is largely homebrewed. I pull monsters from all different sorts of books. It's way too cost prohibitive to expect my group to buy all the books for every conceivable monster a second, third, or forth time depending on who runs the game. Content sharing already allows me to look up a spell, magic item, monster, feat, or piece of equipment in the normal "Game Rules" section of the site.
The same content sharing should be applied to the Maps VTT. Otherwise, there are less costly VTT options to choose from even if they require a little more work. If left as is, and someone is inclined to spend the money on the books (say for the first time), there are better VTT products on the market that require purchasing all the licensed content. So, the Maps VTT is most marketable as a superior product if they allowed it to utilize content sharing for a campaign because: (1) groups that are already invested in this platform will utilize the tool, meaning more site traffic, more use, and ultimately more incentive to purchase subscriptions and content here (read: money for Wizards); and (2) new groups will be more inclined to use this platform over other VTT options because they can share the cost of the investment among their accounts--which gives wizards an edge over other VTTs where (like Maps VTT is now) one person must absorb cost resulting in a steep barrier to entry.
Additionally, the spirit of DnD has always been content sharing. Groups have always bought the books and passed them around the table for everyone in that group to use when they are playing the game. That includes the DM. Putting the actual use of that info behind a duplicative paywall goes against that tradition.
Thank you user Perringaiden for letting me use your thread to pose my arguments for content sharing.