I have limited programming experience, but I'm sure some people on here might be able to answer the question of how difficult it is to integrate homebrew/custom classes into the site? I'm sure you'd have to build some kind of infrastructure that allows for the numerous options a class could add and I'm assuming the slow roll-out is because they're hardcoded instead of dynamically added. Does anyone with experience adding the new published material to the site have a take on how difficult it would be to get the site into a shape that would allow 3rd party publishing to be more open? Maybe a space for "partner content", but can integrate into homebrew and DMsGuild purchases maybe. To protect the people who published with DMsGuild from having their content swiped, but at the same time opening the game site up so the digital players can bring the content they legally purchased into their DDB campaigns. Is there a roadmap or something I haven't been able to find? I know SRD projects like DungeonMastersVault can do it in Java, but can't handle some of the stuff from Tasha's. Does the programming implementation of DDB create a hard limit on what we'll be able to do with it?
I have limited programming experience, but I'm sure some people on here might be able to answer the question of how difficult it is to integrate homebrew/custom classes into the site? I'm sure you'd have to build some kind of infrastructure that allows for the numerous options a class could add and I'm assuming the slow roll-out is because they're hardcoded instead of dynamically added. Does anyone with experience adding the new published material to the site have a take on how difficult it would be to get the site into a shape that would allow 3rd party publishing to be more open? Maybe a space for "partner content", but can integrate into homebrew and DMsGuild purchases maybe. To protect the people who published with DMsGuild from having their content swiped, but at the same time opening the game site up so the digital players can bring the content they legally purchased into their DDB campaigns. Is there a roadmap or something I haven't been able to find? I know SRD projects like DungeonMastersVault can do it in Java, but can't handle some of the stuff from Tasha's. Does the programming implementation of DDB create a hard limit on what we'll be able to do with it?
My advice:take a look under the hood of Beyond using a browser than can, look at how weirdly it's coded, and imagine that on a massive scale.
Once you've done that, you'll see why it's MUCH harder to maintain the integrity of the whole site by having every random person making a class.
According to Ghostfire Gaming, trying to add Grim Hollow Transformations nearly brought down the site multiple times. & Ghostfire have ZERO reason to lie, so I think that's good evidence.
If a class doesn't fit into Beyond's strict setup(Nonstandard Leveling, requiring excess customization, modifying too many existing pieces, etc), it can and would bring the whole house down.
It's why I suspect that the devs, behind the scenes, had/are having a lot of trouble with remaining Heliana's Guide & Valda's Spire of Secrets content, & that's why they haven't been sold/weren't part of the initial contracts.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Most of the code on the page is dynamically added these days, so the size of it isn't much of an indicator for me. The Homebrew section is far more clunky than I think it has to be, so it makes me wonder if a good UI person just needs to come in and design a cleaned up layout, but the underlying structure is there. There are a lot of classes or schools of magic that could probably function off the existing site. I guess they have to reach out to individual creators to see if they want to get added as there's no FAQ or anything for publishers who want on the platform and they figure out if they can do it from there. It is unfortunate that there are thousands to tens of thousands of pieces of content on DMsGuild that aren't or can't be brought into the digital game space.
Most of the code on the page is dynamically added these days, so the size of it isn't much of an indicator for me. The Homebrew section is far more clunky than I think it has to be, so it makes me wonder if a good UI person just needs to come in and design a cleaned up layout, but the underlying structure is there. There are a lot of classes or schools of magic that could probably function off the existing site. I guess they have to reach out to individual creators to see if they want to get added as there's no FAQ or anything for publishers who want on the platform and they figure out if they can do it from there. It is unfortunate that there are thousands to tens of thousands of pieces of content on DMsGuild that aren't or can't be brought into the digital game space.
It's not the size of the coing:It's the spaghettiform.
Random strands, going out in bunches, seemingly nowhere, like bunches of pasta.
1 person couldn't rewrite an entire site that is held together with Ragu.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Most classes special abilities are bespoke coding. To allow the same sort of capability with any other class (and 99% of "homebrew classes" would require some sort of special ability) would require them to either provide a development sandbox, or provide a completely different way of building elements.
Both of the above would require basically a complete rewrite of the website, because it was never designed for it and doesn't lend itself to it easily.
The third point that is more of "People understand the way a business works" is that Hasbro/WOTC doesn't have an incentive to spend millions of dollars in limited dev hours, to rewrite the site with the sole goal of making it easier for people to use the site without paying. They have a vested financial interest in providing content for people to buy, and thus the current status quo works in their favour. New classes are only implemented when a third party publisher wishes to provide the funding to do so, and results in sales and revenue.
The simple answer is "Complete rewrite of how the site works AKA not easy/cheap".
It definitely could be done. It could not be done cheaply, and they don't have an incentive to spend the kind of money it would take. When they get to the point that the site can't support what WOTC wants to do with it, that's when the rewrite will become viable. When they need it, not us.
And as a reminder, this is a service they provide for subscribers that unpaid users get to also use. It's not a community project, or an open source system. Ultimately, D&D doesn't require any of this, and all those homebrew classes can very easily be played using a piece of paper and a pencil.
D&D Beyond is an additional platform, not the core of the hobby.
EDIT: Also most of your points about "code that's happening locally" describes subclasses. Things that extend the core classes and use the core classes mechanics and framework, and DDB supports them. There's a LOT more to building a new class like Illrigger or Gunslinger.
Thanks Maedra, so it sounds like they didn't plan on making it modular enough from the beginning to add new classes and will have to rewrite a whole new toolset and framework from scratch to make it work. If there's enough money in the partnered content then maybe they'll do it. Until then we'll be limited to just people with a big YouTube following that also have $1mil+ crowdfunding. That is regrettable. I'll keep on the lookout for a better platform that allows the use of a greater amount of the content I've already purchased and would like to in the future.
They don't need to rewrite the whole site. Just give us a blank class and let us fill in features using the existing homebrew options. It won't work for everyone, but it's at least something.
They don't need to rewrite the whole site. Just give us a blank class and let us fill in features using the existing homebrew options. It won't work for everyone, but it's at least something.
This wouldn't work for anyone though. For a class to work, it needs to be able to define what aspects it has. Even if we ignore bespoke features (like invocations, infusions, wild shape etc), it would still need to be able to define subclasses. So you'd have to allow people to build out that and the subclass templating. If you leave that out as another "blank field" you end with a character sheet that boils down to a bunch of blank fields to write stuff in and no actually digital features like rules linking, dice rolling, etc. You know what that is? A form fillable PDF. Those already exist.
I have limited programming experience, but I'm sure some people on here might be able to answer the question of how difficult it is to integrate homebrew/custom classes into the site? I'm sure you'd have to build some kind of infrastructure that allows for the numerous options a class could add and I'm assuming the slow roll-out is because they're hardcoded instead of dynamically added. Does anyone with experience adding the new published material to the site have a take on how difficult it would be to get the site into a shape that would allow 3rd party publishing to be more open? Maybe a space for "partner content", but can integrate into homebrew and DMsGuild purchases maybe. To protect the people who published with DMsGuild from having their content swiped, but at the same time opening the game site up so the digital players can bring the content they legally purchased into their DDB campaigns. Is there a roadmap or something I haven't been able to find? I know SRD projects like DungeonMastersVault can do it in Java, but can't handle some of the stuff from Tasha's. Does the programming implementation of DDB create a hard limit on what we'll be able to do with it?
My advice:take a look under the hood of Beyond using a browser than can, look at how weirdly it's coded, and imagine that on a massive scale.
Once you've done that, you'll see why it's MUCH harder to maintain the integrity of the whole site by having every random person making a class.
According to Ghostfire Gaming, trying to add Grim Hollow Transformations nearly brought down the site multiple times. & Ghostfire have ZERO reason to lie, so I think that's good evidence.
If a class doesn't fit into Beyond's strict setup(Nonstandard Leveling, requiring excess customization, modifying too many existing pieces, etc), it can and would bring the whole house down.
It's why I suspect that the devs, behind the scenes, had/are having a lot of trouble with remaining Heliana's Guide & Valda's Spire of Secrets content, & that's why they haven't been sold/weren't part of the initial contracts.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Most of the code on the page is dynamically added these days, so the size of it isn't much of an indicator for me. The Homebrew section is far more clunky than I think it has to be, so it makes me wonder if a good UI person just needs to come in and design a cleaned up layout, but the underlying structure is there. There are a lot of classes or schools of magic that could probably function off the existing site. I guess they have to reach out to individual creators to see if they want to get added as there's no FAQ or anything for publishers who want on the platform and they figure out if they can do it from there. It is unfortunate that there are thousands to tens of thousands of pieces of content on DMsGuild that aren't or can't be brought into the digital game space.
It's not the size of the coing:It's the spaghettiform.
Random strands, going out in bunches, seemingly nowhere, like bunches of pasta.
1 person couldn't rewrite an entire site that is held together with Ragu.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
It's been answered many times by the Mods.
The third point that is more of "People understand the way a business works" is that Hasbro/WOTC doesn't have an incentive to spend millions of dollars in limited dev hours, to rewrite the site with the sole goal of making it easier for people to use the site without paying. They have a vested financial interest in providing content for people to buy, and thus the current status quo works in their favour. New classes are only implemented when a third party publisher wishes to provide the funding to do so, and results in sales and revenue.
The simple answer is "Complete rewrite of how the site works AKA not easy/cheap".
It definitely could be done. It could not be done cheaply, and they don't have an incentive to spend the kind of money it would take. When they get to the point that the site can't support what WOTC wants to do with it, that's when the rewrite will become viable. When they need it, not us.
And as a reminder, this is a service they provide for subscribers that unpaid users get to also use. It's not a community project, or an open source system. Ultimately, D&D doesn't require any of this, and all those homebrew classes can very easily be played using a piece of paper and a pencil.
D&D Beyond is an additional platform, not the core of the hobby.
EDIT: Also most of your points about "code that's happening locally" describes subclasses. Things that extend the core classes and use the core classes mechanics and framework, and DDB supports them. There's a LOT more to building a new class like Illrigger or Gunslinger.
Thanks Maedra, so it sounds like they didn't plan on making it modular enough from the beginning to add new classes and will have to rewrite a whole new toolset and framework from scratch to make it work. If there's enough money in the partnered content then maybe they'll do it. Until then we'll be limited to just people with a big YouTube following that also have $1mil+ crowdfunding. That is regrettable. I'll keep on the lookout for a better platform that allows the use of a greater amount of the content I've already purchased and would like to in the future.
They don't need to rewrite the whole site. Just give us a blank class and let us fill in features using the existing homebrew options. It won't work for everyone, but it's at least something.
This wouldn't work for anyone though. For a class to work, it needs to be able to define what aspects it has. Even if we ignore bespoke features (like invocations, infusions, wild shape etc), it would still need to be able to define subclasses. So you'd have to allow people to build out that and the subclass templating. If you leave that out as another "blank field" you end with a character sheet that boils down to a bunch of blank fields to write stuff in and no actually digital features like rules linking, dice rolling, etc. You know what that is? A form fillable PDF. Those already exist.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here