So it's been well over a year since we were told combat tracker etc would come to the campaign manager, it's currently still just a notepad
It has also been over a year that they have been repeating that the campaign manager additional tools are planned for as mid/long term plans, as they are still focusing on the short-term goals, which currently are the revised character sheet and the granular filtering (white/blacklisting of resources for sharing, i.e.).
They never gave a timeline for when the combat tracker or the encounter builder would be coming, but they've been very clear they were not at any moment focusing on those tools for the time being.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Honestly, my players would be greatly happy if the exported character sheet from the desktop version printed out with some details. Meaning, of course, that when my Monk player prints her character sheet she'd like it to print out with some than just a one-liner that says "Monk abilities" and the Battlemaster player would be happy if her character sheet said something more than "Maneuvers." Yes, we have equal numbers of females playing at our table as males. We even have a transsexual person. Does that pull the heart-strings a little somehow to get something done for them? No? Didn't think so. ;)
Based on the overt attitude given by DnDB staff during Origins they are nearly abandoning the desktop version to give their sweet sweet loving to the mobile version. I'd be ecstatic if I could just use the desktop version offline. We tend to play at a friend's house where there is an awesome amount of space but he doesn't have WiFi.
Honestly, my players would be greatly happy if the exported character sheet from the desktop version printed out with some details. Meaning, of course, that when my Monk player prints her character sheet she'd like it to print out with some than just a one-liner that says "Monk abilities" and the Battlemaster player would be happy if her character sheet said something more than "Maneuvers." Yes, we have equal numbers of females playing at our table as males. We even have a transsexual person. Does that pull the heart-strings a little somehow to get something done for them? No? Didn't think so. ;)
Based on the overt attitude given by DnDB staff during Origins they are nearly abandoning the desktop version to give their sweet sweet loving to the mobile version. I'd be ecstatic if I could just use the desktop version offline. We tend to play at a friend's house where there is an awesome amount of space but he doesn't have WiFi.
They actually focused entirely on the desktop version first. There are previews of it on all of the previous Q&A streams before Origins over the past few months. I think the May one actually has a preview of the new PDF, which was confirmed to be finished already.
Would like to see the ability for a player to trade items with another player. This would be helpful to avoid situations were one player forgot to add or remove the item from their inventory.
Would like to see the ability for a player to trade items with another player. This would be helpful to avoid situations were one player forgot to add or remove the item from their inventory.
I think this has been said, before, but building on this a simple overall trade/barter system would be nice. Some basic interface (which I know does not equate to basic coding) for the GM to give an item to a player for a set amount of gold (adjustable from the GM's side of the screen for haggling) would be really cool. A similar interface could be used for the trade between players, even with the gold portion. I would assume this would be even easier once the make a pass at the Party Inventory Management system they've spoken about a few times. This is something I would be interested in hearing more about in detail, especially as the guy who ends up holding party funds/materials very often.
Somewhat related, but less of a campaign option would be if there was a section for costly consumable material components that are used or spent when casting a particular spell. I can imagine this level of coding might be difficult, but at the very least a section in the inventory would be useful for spellcasters.
The campaign management is sort of useless. I can get better results from one note. Or note pad.
The developers have been clear from the beginning that the current "campaign management" element is a place holder, whose primary function is to allow the creation of campaigns so folks with the Master Tier can share content and so that DMs can see players' sheets. Hopefully, they will be able to begin work on designing more campaign management tools this year (though we may not see them as users until later). One of the challenges is that there are a wide variety of definitions of "campaign management." Different DMs want different tools in that regard. The developers do pay attention to comments made here. If you can be specific about what kinds of tools and capabilities would be helpful to you, that would be wonderful.
It seems many people want a lot more out of this campaign tool. A bandaid but not fix would be to be able to put spoilers inside spoilers. This way you could make your notes collapsible.
It seems many people want a lot more out of this campaign tool. A bandaid but not fix would be to be able to put spoilers inside spoilers. This way you could make your notes collapsible.
I just wish the table management system (content management) that has been talked about for almost a year was finally put in place. I understand that at the get go DND beyond campaign manager was not structured to compete with virtual tabletop, but rather as a way to share unlocked content... so... We should be able to manage understand why the ability to manage the content we are sharing.... Only reason I can think is the back end code was not designed for this and they would have to re-work the entire database structure to allow this. Though this shouldn't be the case since content is blocked behind a paywall, so there is a technical way to block access to the data. There are a lot of valid scenarios where you would want to restrict access to various content. Obviously this has been discussed many many times and I'm lamenting rather than asking a question.
I feel like all this complaining about blacklisting/whitelisting is a waste of time. They have already said it is coming in the Dev Updates. I understand not everyone has watched those, fortunately it has repeatedly been mentioned here in the last few days, for some reason people are still complaining.
From memory, feel free to correct me, but I actually believe it is the next thing to be released. So instead of being salty, why don't we all just be patient?
I feel like there's a general annoyance at the pace at which DDB can add or update features
I've been paying monthly for this service for nearly half a year, and members of my group have spent collectively several hundred dollars on E-books through the client, while the only real changes to the service so far have been an incredibly bare bones app and a revamp to the character sheets.
It seems to me that the team is always focusing on small issues, while huge glaring holes in the service are kicked down the road. Have they truly been working on a redesign of the character sheet for months while their campaign management tools are still just a notepad? And now they promise that after they work out the kinks on how to display checkboxes for Ki points, they'll begin worrying about thinking on the ways that a campaign manager might function.
Here's a concept, if your monetization structure is built in a way that assures that most of your money is coming from DMs, why not prioritize tools that would help out a DM? It's honestly shameful that in the 6 months I've been using this service they haven't even begun to work on something as simple as an initiative tracker, or an encounter builder. Why can't I have a character sheet for monster stats to keep track of conditions and health? Why do I have to have 5 tabs open on my browser to look through the compendium every time I run an encounter? I understand that it's a small team, and I'm happy that they're hiring additional staff to work on updates, but seeing how the company prioritizes its workload is annoying to say the least.
I feel like there's a general annoyance at the pace at which DDB can add or update features
I've been paying monthly for this service for nearly half a year, and members of my group have spent collectively several hundred dollars on E-books through the client, while the only real changes to the service so far have been an incredibly bare bones app and a revamp to the character sheets.
It seems to me that the team is always focusing on small issues, while huge glaring holes in the service are kicked down the road. Have they truly been working on a redesign of the character sheet for months while their campaign management tools are still just a notepad? And now they promise that after they work out the kinks on how to display checkboxes for Ki points, they'll begin worrying about thinking on the ways that a campaign manager might function.
Here's a concept, if your monetization structure is built in a way that assures that most of your money is coming from DMs, why not prioritize tools that would help out a DM? It's honestly shameful that in the 6 months I've been using this service they haven't even begun to work on something as simple as an initiative tracker, or an encounter builder. Why can't I have a character sheet for monster stats to keep track of conditions and health? Why do I have to have 5 tabs open on my browser to look through the compendium every time I run an encounter? I understand that it's a small team, and I'm happy that they're hiring additional staff to work on updates, but seeing how the company prioritizes its workload is annoying to say the least.
The new character sheet has been by far the most requested improvement to the site, as that is the one thing that virtually every user uses, either to create characters or in active play, and it has been a huge undertaking for a small team as the DDB one.
Now, I would be certainly interested in more/better DM tools, but to be honest I prefer my players to have the best experience possible first, I can make do with the current textboxes offered by the Campaign tool. Tools to make the DM's life easier would certainly be nice, but you can perfectly run a campaign with the tools offered atm, everything else is a commodity that can make preparation and running of the game lighter. Having everything I might need a search or a couple of clicks away is already a vast improvement on the usual way to prepare a session, imho.
I would also like to point out that the maintenance of such a database surely is not something simple, and every new update/tool is accompanied by the need of fixes, fine-tuning and careful managing of everything else, involved in the actual new update/tool or not, because even something that is not even remotely connected to a new feature might get screwed up for whatever reason and there is need to provide quick reply and fix, if that is at all possible with an hotfix rather than another update.
You also say that "6 months I've been using this service they haven't even begun to work on something as simple as an initiative tracker, or an encounter builder.", how can you be sure of this? Couldn't they be in the research and ideation process since a while, and did not tell us (very possible scenario)? Just because they are not telling us exactly what they are working at any given moment doesn't mean that they are only and exclusively focus on the things that they do tell us they are actively working on.
I believe the best way to make the process quicker (as limited as our involvement might seem) is to constructively let the team know what we would like to have, not by bashing the efforts and work they are doing, but by presenting what we think would make for a good tool or update we feel is needed, giving them ideas and helping them better define what the community wants. Since the launch of the new character sheet I have seen several messages from people that did not actively participate in the feedback threads complaining about anything and everything, a lot of them claiming they had no clue this update was coming. While I am all for freedom of speech and ideas, if you do not interest yourself with what is going on with something you use, your outrage is at least irrespectful when something comes out after MONTHS of discussion, forum threads and livestreams showing off what they were doing and what the plan was.
If one wants things to change for the better of what his vision is, they should get involved, let their voice be heard and keep updated, instead of complaining when all is said and done.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Here's a concept, if your monetization structure is built in a way that assures that most of your money is coming from DMs, why not prioritize tools that would help out a DM?
One could argue that making character sheets more usable (both for digital and pdf export) so that players can understand and use them does help DM's. Also, DM's (while more likely to be paying) most likely make up a much smaller percentage (probably around 25%) of their user base, so in terms of sheer number of people, the sheet revamp made sense to go with first as the largest amount of people would be impacted.
As a DM, I understand your frustration (especially having been here since the beta); but as a software developer myself, I understand that these things can take time and that there is data that is guiding their decisions. In the mean-time, a wet-erase notepad and pen have sufficed for encounter tracking for me, though I look forward to the eventual release of more DM tools.
I would like the ability to set a list of banned races for my campaign, so when people crate a character attached to the campaign, they cannot choose those races.
Quote from LukeS7>>As a DM, I understand your frustration (especially having been here since the beta); but as a software developer myself, I understand that these things can take time and that there is data that is guiding their decisions. In the mean-time, a wet-erase notepad and pen have sufficed for encounter tracking for me, though I look forward to the eventual release of more DM tools.
Seconded. I'd also love to see some DM tools released, but having well-organised players is huge boon, and the character builder/sheet really helps with that. Also, just having access to a well-maintained compendium has improved my game planning. My adventure notes for each game include a bunch of links to D&D Beyond. For each encounter, I have all the links to each monster, trap, treasure item and/or NPC character sheet ready to click as I need them during the game.
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So it's been well over a year since we were told combat tracker etc would come to the campaign manager, it's currently still just a notepad
It has also been over a year that they have been repeating that the campaign manager additional tools are planned for as mid/long term plans, as they are still focusing on the short-term goals, which currently are the revised character sheet and the granular filtering (white/blacklisting of resources for sharing, i.e.).
They never gave a timeline for when the combat tracker or the encounter builder would be coming, but they've been very clear they were not at any moment focusing on those tools for the time being.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Honestly, my players would be greatly happy if the exported character sheet from the desktop version printed out with some details. Meaning, of course, that when my Monk player prints her character sheet she'd like it to print out with some than just a one-liner that says "Monk abilities" and the Battlemaster player would be happy if her character sheet said something more than "Maneuvers." Yes, we have equal numbers of females playing at our table as males. We even have a transsexual person. Does that pull the heart-strings a little somehow to get something done for them? No? Didn't think so. ;)
Based on the overt attitude given by DnDB staff during Origins they are nearly abandoning the desktop version to give their sweet sweet loving to the mobile version. I'd be ecstatic if I could just use the desktop version offline. We tend to play at a friend's house where there is an awesome amount of space but he doesn't have WiFi.
--> Been playing D&D since 1987. - - - - My Blog: Children of the Ampersand - - - - Storyteller For Hire (DuBois, PA) - - - - My Stuff at DM's Guild - - - ->
They actually focused entirely on the desktop version first. There are previews of it on all of the previous Q&A streams before Origins over the past few months. I think the May one actually has a preview of the new PDF, which was confirmed to be finished already.
Would like to see the ability for a player to trade items with another player. This would be helpful to avoid situations were one player forgot to add or remove the item from their inventory.
I think this has been said, before, but building on this a simple overall trade/barter system would be nice. Some basic interface (which I know does not equate to basic coding) for the GM to give an item to a player for a set amount of gold (adjustable from the GM's side of the screen for haggling) would be really cool. A similar interface could be used for the trade between players, even with the gold portion. I would assume this would be even easier once the make a pass at the Party Inventory Management system they've spoken about a few times. This is something I would be interested in hearing more about in detail, especially as the guy who ends up holding party funds/materials very often.
Somewhat related, but less of a campaign option would be if there was a section for costly consumable material components that are used or spent when casting a particular spell. I can imagine this level of coding might be difficult, but at the very least a section in the inventory would be useful for spellcasters.
The campaign management is sort of useless. I can get better results from one note. Or note pad.
The developers have been clear from the beginning that the current "campaign management" element is a place holder, whose primary function is to allow the creation of campaigns so folks with the Master Tier can share content and so that DMs can see players' sheets. Hopefully, they will be able to begin work on designing more campaign management tools this year (though we may not see them as users until later). One of the challenges is that there are a wide variety of definitions of "campaign management." Different DMs want different tools in that regard. The developers do pay attention to comments made here. If you can be specific about what kinds of tools and capabilities would be helpful to you, that would be wonderful.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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It seems many people want a lot more out of this campaign tool. A bandaid but not fix would be to be able to put spoilers inside spoilers. This way you could make your notes collapsible.
example:
People
A: Spoiler John
B:Sspoiler Jill
C : Spoiler Jess
Place
Thing
It seems many people want a lot more out of this campaign tool. A bandaid but not fix would be to be able to put spoilers inside spoilers. This way you could make your notes collapsible.
example:
People
A: Spoiler John
B:Sspoiler Jill
C : Spoiler Jess
Place
Thing
I just wish the table management system (content management) that has been talked about for almost a year was finally put in place. I understand that at the get go DND beyond campaign manager was not structured to compete with virtual tabletop, but rather as a way to share unlocked content... so... We should be able to manage understand why the ability to manage the content we are sharing.... Only reason I can think is the back end code was not designed for this and they would have to re-work the entire database structure to allow this. Though this shouldn't be the case since content is blocked behind a paywall, so there is a technical way to block access to the data. There are a lot of valid scenarios where you would want to restrict access to various content. Obviously this has been discussed many many times and I'm lamenting rather than asking a question.
My biggest desire as a dm for ddb is the option to have character race/class hidden from other characters in the campaign.
I feel like all this complaining about blacklisting/whitelisting is a waste of time. They have already said it is coming in the Dev Updates. I understand not everyone has watched those, fortunately it has repeatedly been mentioned here in the last few days, for some reason people are still complaining.
From memory, feel free to correct me, but I actually believe it is the next thing to be released. So instead of being salty, why don't we all just be patient?
I feel like there's a general annoyance at the pace at which DDB can add or update features
I've been paying monthly for this service for nearly half a year, and members of my group have spent collectively several hundred dollars on E-books through the client, while the only real changes to the service so far have been an incredibly bare bones app and a revamp to the character sheets.
It seems to me that the team is always focusing on small issues, while huge glaring holes in the service are kicked down the road. Have they truly been working on a redesign of the character sheet for months while their campaign management tools are still just a notepad? And now they promise that after they work out the kinks on how to display checkboxes for Ki points, they'll begin worrying about thinking on the ways that a campaign manager might function.
Here's a concept, if your monetization structure is built in a way that assures that most of your money is coming from DMs, why not prioritize tools that would help out a DM? It's honestly shameful that in the 6 months I've been using this service they haven't even begun to work on something as simple as an initiative tracker, or an encounter builder. Why can't I have a character sheet for monster stats to keep track of conditions and health? Why do I have to have 5 tabs open on my browser to look through the compendium every time I run an encounter? I understand that it's a small team, and I'm happy that they're hiring additional staff to work on updates, but seeing how the company prioritizes its workload is annoying to say the least.
The new character sheet has been by far the most requested improvement to the site, as that is the one thing that virtually every user uses, either to create characters or in active play, and it has been a huge undertaking for a small team as the DDB one.
Now, I would be certainly interested in more/better DM tools, but to be honest I prefer my players to have the best experience possible first, I can make do with the current textboxes offered by the Campaign tool. Tools to make the DM's life easier would certainly be nice, but you can perfectly run a campaign with the tools offered atm, everything else is a commodity that can make preparation and running of the game lighter.
Having everything I might need a search or a couple of clicks away is already a vast improvement on the usual way to prepare a session, imho.
I would also like to point out that the maintenance of such a database surely is not something simple, and every new update/tool is accompanied by the need of fixes, fine-tuning and careful managing of everything else, involved in the actual new update/tool or not, because even something that is not even remotely connected to a new feature might get screwed up for whatever reason and there is need to provide quick reply and fix, if that is at all possible with an hotfix rather than another update.
You also say that "6 months I've been using this service they haven't even begun to work on something as simple as an initiative tracker, or an encounter builder.", how can you be sure of this? Couldn't they be in the research and ideation process since a while, and did not tell us (very possible scenario)?
Just because they are not telling us exactly what they are working at any given moment doesn't mean that they are only and exclusively focus on the things that they do tell us they are actively working on.
I believe the best way to make the process quicker (as limited as our involvement might seem) is to constructively let the team know what we would like to have, not by bashing the efforts and work they are doing, but by presenting what we think would make for a good tool or update we feel is needed, giving them ideas and helping them better define what the community wants.
Since the launch of the new character sheet I have seen several messages from people that did not actively participate in the feedback threads complaining about anything and everything, a lot of them claiming they had no clue this update was coming. While I am all for freedom of speech and ideas, if you do not interest yourself with what is going on with something you use, your outrage is at least irrespectful when something comes out after MONTHS of discussion, forum threads and livestreams showing off what they were doing and what the plan was.
If one wants things to change for the better of what his vision is, they should get involved, let their voice be heard and keep updated, instead of complaining when all is said and done.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
One could argue that making character sheets more usable (both for digital and pdf export) so that players can understand and use them does help DM's. Also, DM's (while more likely to be paying) most likely make up a much smaller percentage (probably around 25%) of their user base, so in terms of sheer number of people, the sheet revamp made sense to go with first as the largest amount of people would be impacted.
As a DM, I understand your frustration (especially having been here since the beta); but as a software developer myself, I understand that these things can take time and that there is data that is guiding their decisions. In the mean-time, a wet-erase notepad and pen have sufficed for encounter tracking for me, though I look forward to the eventual release of more DM tools.
I would like the ability to set a list of banned races for my campaign, so when people crate a character attached to the campaign, they cannot choose those races.
Seconded. I'd also love to see some DM tools released, but having well-organised players is huge boon, and the character builder/sheet really helps with that. Also, just having access to a well-maintained compendium has improved my game planning. My adventure notes for each game include a bunch of links to D&D Beyond. For each encounter, I have all the links to each monster, trap, treasure item and/or NPC character sheet ready to click as I need them during the game.