This right now is my biggest pet peeve about D&D Beyond. I don't have the money to buy all the content for the game in book form and as online content. For me it's killing using this product in any significant way.
Then just use the free basic rules.
Which is the problem. The free content is basically not significant enough. You're basically telling me that I should limit myself to hardly any content, at which point I say I may as well not use the content.
I understand not wanting to give away their product for free. I am just hoping for a way to prevent having to doubly invest in their product.
WOTC already chooses to give away for free the Basic Rules/SRD/Elemental Evil Player's Companion (which is actually quite a lot of content and sufficient to play the game) to get new individuals interested in the game, which they do here on DDB, too. But, they charge for any additional content. They have broken down the premium digital content into small components so customers can purchase only what they want/are able to afford, but they are not going to give access to anything for free, aside from the already free material. You can always scan your own books if you just want to have PDF copies for your own use, but you will have to pay if you want the content in an interactive digital format.
There is no way to not doubly invest in the product to get premium interactive digital content, if by "doubly invest" you mean pay additional amounts. You either have to be satisfied using what you have in printed format or willing to pay an additional amount to use premium content in DDB.
I would say if you want to use DDB, then save up and purchase the content you want incrementally as you can afford to do so.
WOTC already chooses to give away for free the Basic Rules/SRD/Elemental Evil Player's Companion (which is actually quite a lot of content and sufficient to play the game) to get new individuals interested in the game, which they do here on DDB, too.
They could give everything away for free. They could give dice as well. They could give DM screens, dice trays, gourmet snacks, entire specialised gaming tables that cost thousands of dollars and deliver it all free of charge. And yet, people would still complain.
So my wife and I both play, and each of us has 20+ DDAL characters. I purchased the legendary bundle under my account, and the only way that she can access it for any of her characters is to add one of them to our home campaign and build it there. There's no chance that we will purchase another legendary bundle, so I'm hoping there is something in the works to help "gamer families" like ours use DDB effectively. And yes, we could share the account, but there are significant downsides to that (not having your own list of characters, inability to both join the same campaign, etc.)
So my wife and I both play, and each of us has 20+ DDAL characters. I purchased the legendary bundle under my account, and the only way that she can access it for any of her characters is to add one of them to our home campaign and build it there. There's no chance that we will purchase another legendary bundle, so I'm hoping there is something in the works to help "gamer families" like ours use DDB effectively. And yes, we could share the account, but there are significant downsides to that (not having your own list of characters, inability to both join the same campaign, etc.)
BadEye mentioned they'd like to implement sorting and folders for character management. So when that comes out, it's likely you could share the same account and keep your characters in separate folders.
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So my wife and I both play, and each of us has 20+ DDAL characters. I purchased the legendary bundle under my account, and the only way that she can access it for any of her characters is to add one of them to our home campaign and build it there. There's no chance that we will purchase another legendary bundle, so I'm hoping there is something in the works to help "gamer families" like ours use DDB effectively. And yes, we could share the account, but there are significant downsides to that (not having your own list of characters, inability to both join the same campaign, etc.)
BadEye mentioned they'd like to implement sorting and folders for character management. So when that comes out, it's likely you could share the same account and keep your characters in separate folders.
That could help to some extent, but it wouldn't fix the problem of having an independent identity on DDB (which is important for campaign participation, forum posting, etc.). And given that it would violate the terms of service to share an account, I'm hoping the DDB team will find a way to address this specific class of situation with explicit features/function instead.
So my wife and I both play, and each of us has 20+ DDAL characters. I purchased the legendary bundle under my account, and the only way that she can access it for any of her characters is to add one of them to our home campaign and build it there. There's no chance that we will purchase another legendary bundle, so I'm hoping there is something in the works to help "gamer families" like ours use DDB effectively. And yes, we could share the account, but there are significant downsides to that (not having your own list of characters, inability to both join the same campaign, etc.)
BadEye mentioned they'd like to implement sorting and folders for character management. So when that comes out, it's likely you could share the same account and keep your characters in separate folders.
That could help to some extent, but it wouldn't fix the problem of having an independent identity on DDB (which is important for campaign participation, forum posting, etc.). And given that it would violate the terms of service to share an account, I'm hoping the DDB team will find a way to address this specific class of situation with explicit features/function instead.
One way is for one of you to get a master sub then add the other person to a campaign that has sharing enabled. This only becomes a problem if you are in more than 3 campaigns you want to share with. If character count is an issue then one master and one hero share a campaign and you both get unlimited characters because you both have subs. This way you legendary bundle can be shared with your wife. Not ideal but that is how it is done right now.
So my wife and I both play, and each of us has 20+ DDAL characters. I purchased the legendary bundle under my account, and the only way that she can access it for any of her characters is to add one of them to our home campaign and build it there. There's no chance that we will purchase another legendary bundle, so I'm hoping there is something in the works to help "gamer families" like ours use DDB effectively. And yes, we could share the account, but there are significant downsides to that (not having your own list of characters, inability to both join the same campaign, etc.)
BadEye mentioned they'd like to implement sorting and folders for character management. So when that comes out, it's likely you could share the same account and keep your characters in separate folders.
That could help to some extent, but it wouldn't fix the problem of having an independent identity on DDB (which is important for campaign participation, forum posting, etc.). And given that it would violate the terms of service to share an account, I'm hoping the DDB team will find a way to address this specific class of situation with explicit features/function instead.
One way is for one of you to get a master sub then add the other person to a campaign that has sharing enabled. This only becomes a problem if you are in more than 3 campaigns you want to share with. If character count is an issue then one master and one hero share a campaign and you both get unlimited characters because you both have subs. This way you legendary bundle can be shared with your wife. Not ideal but that is how it is done right now.
Yeah, that was the original plan. However, only the characters assigned to the campaigns have access to the legendary bundle resources, each account can only have one character assigned to a given campaign, and we're using the campaigns for actual campaign tracking. This was what led me to post in the first place.
Yeah, that was the original plan. However, only the characters assigned to the campaigns have access to the legendary bundle resources, each account can only have one character assigned to a given campaign, and we're using the campaigns for actual campaign tracking. This was what led me to post in the first place.
I do not believe that to be the case. My son and I are doing exactly the same thing you want to do with your wife and he has several characters created in a single campaign. The only thing you need to do is reuse the campaign access link each time you want to create a character.
You have the ability to have up to 3 campaigns. So I suggest you create one just for your wife to use and that will allow up to 12 character slots for her in the campaign (It may be limited to only 6 because she has the free tier account). Then create another for the actual campaign itself and enable sharing there. She would then create the character she wants to use in that "real" campaign which you will use for tracking and the like.
Yeah, that was the original plan. However, only the characters assigned to the campaigns have access to the legendary bundle resources, each account can only have one character assigned to a given campaign, and we're using the campaigns for actual campaign tracking. This was what led me to post in the first place.
I do not believe that to be the case. My son and I are doing exactly the same thing you want to do with your wife and he has several characters created in a single campaign. The only thing you need to do is reuse the campaign access link each time you want to create a character.
You have the ability to have up to 3 campaigns. So I suggest you create one just for your wife to use and that will allow up to 12 character slots for her in the campaign (It may be limited to only 6 because she has the free tier account). Then create another for the actual campaign itself and enable sharing there. She would then create the character she wants to use in that "real" campaign which you will use for tracking and the like.
I'll definitely try that out. We didn't realize you could re-use the access link to add additional characters. Thanks for the tip!
This will only take care of just over half of her characters, but that's a lot better than 3. Hopefully by the time she gets around to playing them all again (and entering them), there will be a more comprehensive solution from the DDB team.
Thus far, I've been quite pleased with my purchases with DDB. I've already gotten great use out of the books, and will very likely continue to do so. Here's one thing I think could be interesting, however:
As it stands, subscriptions get you unlimited characters, and the ability to use homebrew content from others. So obviously, the biggest incentive for subscription (aside from the much lesser capital cost) is the unlimited characters. I mean, my group is strongly considering getting a subscription if only because of content sharing. However, it would be interesting in my opinion if simply buying the books gave you extra slots as well. My proposal would be something to the effect of: for every two books bought, you gain one extra character slot. That way, there's that much more incentive to buy additional books, if you've decided against the subscription method. Just an idea.
Yeah, that was the original plan. However, only the characters assigned to the campaigns have access to the legendary bundle resources, each account can only have one character assigned to a given campaign, and we're using the campaigns for actual campaign tracking. This was what led me to post in the first place.
I do not believe that to be the case. My son and I are doing exactly the same thing you want to do with your wife and he has several characters created in a single campaign. The only thing you need to do is reuse the campaign access link each time you want to create a character.
You have the ability to have up to 3 campaigns. So I suggest you create one just for your wife to use and that will allow up to 12 character slots for her in the campaign (It may be limited to only 6 because she has the free tier account). Then create another for the actual campaign itself and enable sharing there. She would then create the character she wants to use in that "real" campaign which you will use for tracking and the like.
I'll definitely try that out. We didn't realize you could re-use the access link to add additional characters. Thanks for the tip!
This will only take care of just over half of her characters, but that's a lot better than 3. Hopefully by the time she gets around to playing them all again (and entering them), there will be a more comprehensive solution from the DDB team.
Yeah, that was the original plan. However, only the characters assigned to the campaigns have access to the legendary bundle resources, each account can only have one character assigned to a given campaign, and we're using the campaigns for actual campaign tracking. This was what led me to post in the first place.
I do not believe that to be the case. My son and I are doing exactly the same thing you want to do with your wife and he has several characters created in a single campaign. The only thing you need to do is reuse the campaign access link each time you want to create a character.
You have the ability to have up to 3 campaigns. So I suggest you create one just for your wife to use and that will allow up to 12 character slots for her in the campaign (It may be limited to only 6 because she has the free tier account). Then create another for the actual campaign itself and enable sharing there. She would then create the character she wants to use in that "real" campaign which you will use for tracking and the like.
I'll definitely try that out. We didn't realize you could re-use the access link to add additional characters. Thanks for the tip!
This will only take care of just over half of her characters, but that's a lot better than 3. Hopefully by the time she gets around to playing them all again (and entering them), there will be a more comprehensive solution from the DDB team.
The other thing to do is just move characters in and out of the campaign as needed. You can create them within the campaign, with access to all the content due to your bundle. Then drop as many temporarily inactive ones from the campaign as you need to to stay within the limit of 12. You wont be able to make any changes to a char "stored" outside the campaign, but even then, the paid content should still be "read only". The characters wont disappear. Youll just need to do some shuffling to keep active characters in the campaign so you can keep them updatedas you play.
Here's the thing, Wizards of the Coast allows many of these other products to license their content provided it is paid for. Given that, if they included a "D&D Beyond code" with physical copies of the book (even at a raised price), they would essentially be giving preferential treatment to one of their licensees. If they made it a code that could be used on any of the various partner applications, the price of the book would likely become unaffordable for many, at which point it may even be cheaper to just buy twice.
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Look at vinyl records for a model on how to not make your customers double dip.
A better analogy is book publishing. If I buy a hardcopy of a book from Amazon, is it reasonable to expect to get that as a Kobo version as well? Should I get a discount on the audible version because I own the paperback (which I bought from Dymocks?) What if I walk into a bricks and mortar FLGS and buy XGTE, and then walk into the next, discover they have the early release edition with the pretty cover, and demand a discount because I have the same content already?
With D&D Beyond, or Roll20 or whatever, it's not just about the content, it's about the added value. I'm not just buying content, I'm buying the ability to search the content (unified search, what's more, with hyperlinked content), manage my character, and eventually manage my campaign. That has to be paid for somehow, and if it's not through content, it will be through higher subscription prices that no one wants to pay.
** WOTC already has created a huge marketplace for home-brew for-sale, or free, content called DMs Guild. There is more content on that site, then anyone could possibly ever use, and while some of it is mediocre, quite a lot of it is of high quality. Also, D&D Beyond allows sharing of home-brew content, and down the road, it will allow the ability to sell home-brew content, too. You mention Skyrim mods, but I am not sure how what Bethesda allows with mods is that much different from what WOTC allows Curse to do with D&D Beyond home-brew sharing, or with Drive-Thru RPG with the DMs Guild website. And, of course, third-parties have long had the ability to create for-sale (or free) content under the Open Game License, too (and many do). So, as long as you follow the terms of WOTC's licenses, you can create and sell or share home-brew content with the general public. Finally, anyone can create home-brew content for their own personal use without worrying about any licensing issues. Yes, WOTC does not allow people/companies to infringe on its IP rights, and neither does any other IP owner. I am not sure how WOTC enforcing its copyright and trademark rights hurts its product, erodes the equity of its brand, or alienates the general public. I can understand how it may alienate a small group of individuals who want to steal and profit off of WOTC's IP, which took many years and a substantial amount of money for WOTC and its predecessors to develop. If you want to innovate, it is pretty easy to do so, you just have to do it legally.
**If you own a physical copy of D&D book, you are allowed to scan it and keep it in digital format for your own personal use. So, if you do not like lugging a book around, scan it. You just cannot distribute your digital copy to others. Also, D&D Beyond is quite a bit more than just a PDF version of the physical books. WOTC licensed the rights to create a digital book of its premium content to Curse. Curse spent several thousands of manpower hours and invested a huge amount of money to come up with the D&D Beyond product, and understandably they have no incentive to subsidize any buyer simply because that buyer previously bought a physical copy of any of the D&D books.
At the end of the day, WOTC did their market research and decided the DDB model was the best way to maximize the profit from the digital book rights for its IP. So, far it seems to have paid off, as all the reports have been that D&D Beyond has far exceeded even the most optimistic projections. WOTC and its business partners, such as Curse, are for-profit ventures. Their sole purpose, as is the case with any for-profit venture, is to (legally) make as much money as possible. So, as long as they are making as much money as they believe they can, they have no incentive to do anything differently.
Deleted my earlier feedback as it wasn't helpful or interesting.
I'm mostly salty RE: losing a PDF my party liked to use and got sucked into the sturm und drang of forum complainers. At the end of the day I'm mostly happy with the marketplace. I wish there was a hardcover + D&D Beyond access bundle. I realize given the economics and IP issues at play this might be an insane request.
My only substantive feedback would be "I wish you could change your credit card info" or "I wish the documentation was clearer about how you can't change your credit card info." I've had to deal with data breaches and identity theft recently and D&D Beyond was the only subscription service that I had to outright cancel, re-up, etc. To be fair! WotC support was on-point.
Okay, maybe I'm missing something... but is the web store screwing up?
So far I've spent $189.93 on content only (does not include a Master subscription). My understanding is that the Legendary Bundle has a listed cost of $335.21, minus the cost of my existing content purchases. So, $335.21 - $189.93 = $145.28. I should have to spend $145.28 to unlock the rest of the Legendary Bundle content.
But the Marketplace is showing that I only need to spend $41.42 to complete the bundle. That can't be right, unless for some reason I'm missing something real obvious (and valuable!) about the bundle DDB is offering. The $41.42 remains when I click "View Purchase Options" and also remains when I add the bundle to my cart -- so it's not a simple display error on the main Marketplace page.
Is the Marketplace incorrectly calculating the cost of the bundle? If so, you guys need to correct this ASAP. Or am I the one who doesn't understand how the price is calculated?
Is the Marketplace incorrectly calculating the cost of the bundle? If so, you guys need to correct this ASAP. Or am I the one who doesn't understand how the price is calculated?
Two things.
1. QUICK! BUY IT! IT'S CHEAP! 2. Actually, it's because the price of the Legendary Bundle is discounted because it's a bundle so using the individual prices won't give you an accurate amount of how much you've got to pay off for the rest of the bundle.
Then again, I haven't checked the math on it. Maybe it is an error and you should buy immediately in order to take advantage of it and deprive the devs of beverage/snack money for gaming?
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WOTC already chooses to give away for free the Basic Rules/SRD/Elemental Evil Player's Companion (which is actually quite a lot of content and sufficient to play the game) to get new individuals interested in the game, which they do here on DDB, too. But, they charge for any additional content. They have broken down the premium digital content into small components so customers can purchase only what they want/are able to afford, but they are not going to give access to anything for free, aside from the already free material. You can always scan your own books if you just want to have PDF copies for your own use, but you will have to pay if you want the content in an interactive digital format.
There is no way to not doubly invest in the product to get premium interactive digital content, if by "doubly invest" you mean pay additional amounts. You either have to be satisfied using what you have in printed format or willing to pay an additional amount to use premium content in DDB.
I would say if you want to use DDB, then save up and purchase the content you want incrementally as you can afford to do so.
So my wife and I both play, and each of us has 20+ DDAL characters. I purchased the legendary bundle under my account, and the only way that she can access it for any of her characters is to add one of them to our home campaign and build it there. There's no chance that we will purchase another legendary bundle, so I'm hoping there is something in the works to help "gamer families" like ours use DDB effectively. And yes, we could share the account, but there are significant downsides to that (not having your own list of characters, inability to both join the same campaign, etc.)
Homebrew Rules || Homebrew FAQ || Snippet Codes || Tooltips
DDB Guides & FAQs, Class Guides, Character Builds, Game Guides, Useful Websites, and WOTC Resources
There really should be a way to get the online (dndb) version of a book at a severely discounted price if you buy the book.
Perhaps new books could include a one-time use code, to get the online version at a significant discount.
That could help to some extent, but it wouldn't fix the problem of having an independent identity on DDB (which is important for campaign participation, forum posting, etc.). And given that it would violate the terms of service to share an account, I'm hoping the DDB team will find a way to address this specific class of situation with explicit features/function instead.
Thus far, I've been quite pleased with my purchases with DDB. I've already gotten great use out of the books, and will very likely continue to do so. Here's one thing I think could be interesting, however:
As it stands, subscriptions get you unlimited characters, and the ability to use homebrew content from others. So obviously, the biggest incentive for subscription (aside from the much lesser capital cost) is the unlimited characters. I mean, my group is strongly considering getting a subscription if only because of content sharing. However, it would be interesting in my opinion if simply buying the books gave you extra slots as well. My proposal would be something to the effect of: for every two books bought, you gain one extra character slot. That way, there's that much more incentive to buy additional books, if you've decided against the subscription method. Just an idea.
Homebrew Rules || Homebrew FAQ || Snippet Codes || Tooltips
DDB Guides & FAQs, Class Guides, Character Builds, Game Guides, Useful Websites, and WOTC Resources
** WOTC already has created a huge marketplace for home-brew for-sale, or free, content called DMs Guild. There is more content on that site, then anyone could possibly ever use, and while some of it is mediocre, quite a lot of it is of high quality. Also, D&D Beyond allows sharing of home-brew content, and down the road, it will allow the ability to sell home-brew content, too. You mention Skyrim mods, but I am not sure how what Bethesda allows with mods is that much different from what WOTC allows Curse to do with D&D Beyond home-brew sharing, or with Drive-Thru RPG with the DMs Guild website. And, of course, third-parties have long had the ability to create for-sale (or free) content under the Open Game License, too (and many do). So, as long as you follow the terms of WOTC's licenses, you can create and sell or share home-brew content with the general public. Finally, anyone can create home-brew content for their own personal use without worrying about any licensing issues. Yes, WOTC does not allow people/companies to infringe on its IP rights, and neither does any other IP owner. I am not sure how WOTC enforcing its copyright and trademark rights hurts its product, erodes the equity of its brand, or alienates the general public. I can understand how it may alienate a small group of individuals who want to steal and profit off of WOTC's IP, which took many years and a substantial amount of money for WOTC and its predecessors to develop. If you want to innovate, it is pretty easy to do so, you just have to do it legally.
**If you own a physical copy of D&D book, you are allowed to scan it and keep it in digital format for your own personal use. So, if you do not like lugging a book around, scan it. You just cannot distribute your digital copy to others. Also, D&D Beyond is quite a bit more than just a PDF version of the physical books. WOTC licensed the rights to create a digital book of its premium content to Curse. Curse spent several thousands of manpower hours and invested a huge amount of money to come up with the D&D Beyond product, and understandably they have no incentive to subsidize any buyer simply because that buyer previously bought a physical copy of any of the D&D books.
At the end of the day, WOTC did their market research and decided the DDB model was the best way to maximize the profit from the digital book rights for its IP. So, far it seems to have paid off, as all the reports have been that D&D Beyond has far exceeded even the most optimistic projections. WOTC and its business partners, such as Curse, are for-profit ventures. Their sole purpose, as is the case with any for-profit venture, is to (legally) make as much money as possible. So, as long as they are making as much money as they believe they can, they have no incentive to do anything differently.
Deleted my earlier feedback as it wasn't helpful or interesting.
I'm mostly salty RE: losing a PDF my party liked to use and got sucked into the sturm und drang of forum complainers. At the end of the day I'm mostly happy with the marketplace. I wish there was a hardcover + D&D Beyond access bundle. I realize given the economics and IP issues at play this might be an insane request.
My only substantive feedback would be "I wish you could change your credit card info" or "I wish the documentation was clearer about how you can't change your credit card info." I've had to deal with data breaches and identity theft recently and D&D Beyond was the only subscription service that I had to outright cancel, re-up, etc. To be fair! WotC support was on-point.
Okay, maybe I'm missing something... but is the web store screwing up?
So far I've spent $189.93 on content only (does not include a Master subscription). My understanding is that the Legendary Bundle has a listed cost of $335.21, minus the cost of my existing content purchases. So, $335.21 - $189.93 = $145.28. I should have to spend $145.28 to unlock the rest of the Legendary Bundle content.
But the Marketplace is showing that I only need to spend $41.42 to complete the bundle. That can't be right, unless for some reason I'm missing something real obvious (and valuable!) about the bundle DDB is offering. The $41.42 remains when I click "View Purchase Options" and also remains when I add the bundle to my cart -- so it's not a simple display error on the main Marketplace page.
Is the Marketplace incorrectly calculating the cost of the bundle? If so, you guys need to correct this ASAP. Or am I the one who doesn't understand how the price is calculated?
1. QUICK! BUY IT! IT'S CHEAP!
2. Actually, it's because the price of the Legendary Bundle is discounted because it's a bundle so using the individual prices won't give you an accurate amount of how much you've got to pay off for the rest of the bundle.