I prefer to be brutally honest than see something getting out of rails. I've been silent these last 7 months i decided i had to speak because i've reasoned about this.
This is going to be very long. Tristam Shandy long. And it's going to be layered. Not Inception layered. That's for kids. Frankenstein layered. And probably as well told as Tristam Shandy and Frankensten. (that is: by modern standards it will be nigh unreadable.)
But i ask you to bear with me.
So. Let's rip the worst right away and then let me explain why. I hope you don't sue me. But i also hope i can explain and reason why i do what i do and why i think it's unfair.
"I think prices are too high right now" [REDACTED]
Let's talk about work. "This is copying/pasting content" i heard that excuse a lot and for anybody making any kind of site is obvious, but for others: NO! even in best case scenario a character builder is not copied/pasted. You have to program stuff. You have to tag items, class powers, spells, whatever. you have to make people be able to use such tags to build their characters, you have to make the interface that allows to chose said choices, you have to account for choices which will break your interface because they will do stuff you did not account for up until the moment they come up. So you have to study the rules thoroughly. and i'm not talking about simply reading the manuals twice or trice. you really need to pour a lot of man hour to think about "okay but what happens if this power/feat/spell/item gets selected? How do i represent this in my current interface design? What does it break." It's never the simple stuff that breaks your system, it's the weird stuff. And this is a fantasy game, there's a lot of stuff that "does not follow the normal rules".
This is a lot of work. I've bought "only" 5 manuals and i can already see that a team would need hundred of man hours to go through all that stuff. Even if those people were paid monkey-like just setting up a "what we need to do" before even starting coding is going to cost thousands of dollars. And that is if it gets accepted by the people in charge of reviewing your project. Which is the Wizards team. Which is not the people making this specific site. Surprise! The people making the game "only" speak to those making the site. They are not the same people. It's how work gets done. You can't have geniuses doing all the work alone.
Actually making this game. Even with the precious "free feedback" we're providing. Well. The team has been working at least since March 20th, that's almost 7 months. Assuming a 10 people team from the forum administration and management to actually making compendium and builder. If they were to be paid like an average data-entry code monkey a measly 1,200$ each that's 12,000$ each month or... well up until now a "measly" 84,000$. And that's "best case scenario" in a game where everybody loses.
Then there's maintenance. Because, as i just said every new thing added might break old stuff. Overtime. Even PHP updates will break stuff. And then there's hackers. Security is essential. Work hours spent like crazy madmen in front of a computer. Looking and reading messages by trolls like me [REDACTED]
So... yeah. It costs a lot. I can see that. And we are still in "preview mode". Not all the content is here yet. So for now everything is a default waiting for future income.
[REDACTED]
Because if i guess that much is how much it is costing right now this stuff (which has not yet started asking for money) and i do concur that's a black hole where the only light going inside is paying customers, there must be a [CENSORED] good excuse for me not putting my money on the table and telling you to shut up and keep it.
This was the end of the first layer. Now onto the second layer.
To understand my excuse let me do the part of Tristam Shandy and let me start when i started playing D&D.
I started in '92 with Advanced. Then i went to the red box my friends had (yes, i went "backwards"). Then came back to advanced. I liked advanced. Bought about 17 manuals and the best ones are undoubtedly the "Chronomancer" handbook (which is the only one book that presents time travel in a way that is actually playable, not just fun to think about, and even at low levels at that, and it's a pity that it has never been reprinted for newer editions ever since) and "Spelljammer" boxed set (Where finally somebody made a fantasy setting in space which is not just the usual "and then aliens came and it's the future over there") and also the "complete humanoid handbook" was a lot of fun and the "legends and lore" allowed for more "common" mythology to be played, finally "Psionics" in AD&D were not a powered thing like right now where they just replaced "spell levels" with "power points"... they were really weird and flexible things not based on pure damage but allowing people to do weird stuff. But then they made those books. I don't name those "optional" books that ended AD&D.
Then came 3.0 and i ... was not sure about 3.0. Sure it was... streamlined...? But it was also deeeply unbalanced, especially the multiclassing system. I was used to the old AD&D multiclassing and this seemed just a "cash grab" for players to nip and pick whatever from any class. Sure, really fun, but also a balancing nightmare. And yes it became a balancing nightmare. I only played by borrowing books. The only ones i bought were the 4 books they ever translated here in italian for the Eberron series because aside from the fact that i liked warforged. Then 3.5 came out i was excited... but as i read the books taken by a friend... i understood that i would never play it. I still have the eberron playbooks because i liked them but... yeah. Never actually playerd them. I soldiered on. Only guy using AD&D with his group of players until D&D 4.0 arrived.
Another company made pathfinder. I did end up starting playing pathfinder... about 4 years ago. Long after D&D 4 had (undeservingly) died. And just because by then i found nobody else to play D&D 4 with.
Then came D&D 4. I loved D&D 4. I loved it soooo much that i bought all 24 books ever printed in italian. Especially Dark Sun and Eberron. I avoided like the plague that stuff regarding forgotten realms but that's just because forgotten realms is my most hated setting after dragonlance. If when i was young i could be brought to the use of fists at the mere question of "what color are the mage's robes?" by the time D&D 4 was around i was tempted to buy the chronicles of drizz't just to burn them and then film as the slowly burned and kindle them every now and then and even naming that mage which shall remain unnamed makes me puke. I cannot stand people quoting them anymore. Just stop. I never played Dark Sun in AD&D. Mostly because it was either untranslated here in Italy or if it ever got released i never saw it. But i liked this D&D 4e take and of course i liked Eberron a lot. Also: finally multiclassing done well. I did not like at all the hybrid class rules, but the rest of the multiclassing i really liked it a lot.
Problem was that by the time i finished buying it... i also understood why nobody played it. If you wanted to play it... you really needed all 24 book to just choose what to do and then another 5 books on average to make a character. Sooooo WotC made the character builder. It was perfect. It was offline and thus it was even more perfect for me. Because i really needed it to be offline as... welll... bringing a 17 inch notebook is much lighter than 24 books. Problem is. I bought the books okay. The notebook i got a loan from my parents (could not afford it on 750 euros per month)... but paying a subscription at that time...?
Call me an idiot but working part time 750 euros per month from 2002 to 2013 doing side courses to keep myself updated and not lose the hard earned master degree because of a "lack of professional updates" and also dealing with a partial disability (luckily here in Italy hospitals are "free")... i found myself thinking that at least for a program i could very well skirt the costs. after all... well... i already bought the books. and when you have to pay rent, bills and everything else with 750 euros, i had around 200 euros to work with lunches and entertainment each month. Not really gold-engraved stuff.
I understood my situation was the same as that of a lot of people.
And this is also why the old offline character builder was discontinued.
Because everybody was pirating it.
And the problem here is... well... it's not WotC that was making the character builder. Sure their name was there. Printed all big. Even in the credits. But the way i understand now how the world works at age nearly 39 is that the people making that builder were just subcontractors. And subcontractors might get a share (depending on the contract) of whatever revenue came from the subscriptions system, but nothing else. WotC went with an online thing which was unuseable.
But at least anybody who used it had to pay since it was hosted on their servers and short of reverse engineering what was shown to the users there was little downloaded information to work with. [REDACTED]
I could not use the online character builder because more than half the time the places where i went to play did not have internet. I'm not saying they did not have wi-fi. They literally did not have internet. They were "ludo-teques" as they are called here in italy. Places where people go play board games. Internet is not given as a principle since people should play without checking online, just with the books and what's in the boxes. "If you wanted to play online either play at home or at an internet cafe". That kind of place. Cool for all the old stuff shown in "reliquaries" of sorts (more like cheap glass cabinets) where people stored miniatures and small sculptures of famous games and fantasy/sci-fi stuff. Not so cool for people having to use a character builder or log around several books.
I worked myself into reasoning that if i continued to buy the books i should not have paid the price for also an online subscription to make characters.
After 2013 i finally got a job that payed "normally" for the master degree i had. Also my parents were finally able to buy me an house so i should not have to continue paying rent.
About 3 years later, age 37 by now, once i got settled and finally bought a car, a decent computer and i finally had money to actually spend. I started dwelling on Patreon, Steam and Gog, RPGNow, bundle of holding, humble bundle, you name it. [REDACTED]
On my last birthday i went to the dmsguild site and spent around 800$ on buying all the available for D&D 4rth edition in PDF. They had a sale. It was my birthday. I finally had the money. I loved that 4rth edition. I had never paid for the subscription. So why not get the PDFs? I still have my AD&D compendium CD in a box. I bought that one again too as the old CD had become unreadable, due to the fact i was an idiot kid and put a scratch too many on it. Or maybe it's true that even printed CDs after a while become unreadable. The new CD is readable, but with the compendium in the old *.hlp format it's still... unreadable.
I will need a windows '98 virtual machine to read that compendium.
End of second layer, entering third layer.
But the fact remains that even now. After all those years when i was a kid with very little money and then a teenager that had to beg to get something bought and then an adult that had to get around paying bills each month... right now. Even though i now pay for everything whenever i can. Because i finally can. I pay for webcomics even thought they are free. I pay for games i never have the time to play because i like what they did from the few videos i saw of people playing those games...
But: this is stuff i keep here with me. I have Steam and GOG backup of digital downloads. Every now and then i re-download the new versions. I have each PDF i bought on RPGNow and humble bundle and bundle of holding.
I even have multiple versions of some stuff. Like games i was able to play and like on steam i also bought on GOG and viceversa, or i bought audiobooks of books i had read and i still have.
But about D&D 4e and AD&D... buying the PDFs and the CD were something: they were my choice to give again for something that gave me nice and fuzzy memories.
Nobody demanded me to give them my money by giving me nothing i could hold onto.
They just told me "hey you want something you can keep?". Merchandise, basically. I was showing respect and i got something in return. When i was little i bought around 17 AD&D physical books plus a red box (white, actually, where it got sold here in italy). Later when AD&D was not a thing anymore but i was still teenager i bought the AD&D compendium CD for a whopping... i don't remember how much but i remember for me it was a lot. I re-bought the CD again for "only" 50 dollars plus overseas shipping. I don't remember the original price but i'm preeeeeeetty sure this one i have right now i paid less even with overseas shipping over the 50$ price tag.
So right now. I see the new D&D Beyond and i ask: "Why, again, should i pay twice for each book plus a subscription in order to have the right to make my character?"
Wait?! Hold on. What?!
Problem is: With D&D insider i see nothing i can keep.
This is no AD&D compendium to try and make use with a virtual machine or emulator. There is no *.HLP file to covert into a new *.CHM format or try and run in a windows '95 virtual machine. D&D Insider is not a PDF file which i can keep or a builder i can try and make it work again in later years with a virtual machine or emulator.
In fact right now the only PDFs that are available are adventures (which i never bought used or read anyway) or free stuff. There is not a single PDF of the books you want to sell me.
All i get is an access to a database. True: that database and the site accompanying it is a work of labour. But it's something "external". Something i cannot access whenever i want. Something you can take away.
I would pay D&D Beyond's asking price if you gave me PDFs at least with the access to that database.
But you aren't.
You aren't offering me an offline character builder whose database i can use when i cannot access internet, and that is: when i actually get out and go and play D&D.
You aren't even telling me: "Listen the 6 dollars is an entry fee. You can make your character but everything you haven't bought is just a placeholder which references manuals you actually have bought, also the PDF output will be editable and you can insert the missing info with the manual and page number we're giving you, but you have to do it by hand."
All you're telling me is you want my money for something which *will* disappear. It is inevitable. Only it wont' be an accident and it won't be recoverable. It will be planned obsolescence.
So even if now i can afford it. I look at the 250 euro receipt for buying the manuals i already have of 5th edition and i ask myself why should i buy them again and also pay a subscription. To "have the privilege to make a character". You are basically asking me money to access different portions of a database you've already making me pay a subscription to use.
I get it. Your work is not free. Each single manual is distilled blood sweat from the foreheads of the people trying to make everything work now and before and in the future. I have reasoned above all that this thing is costing to you people. My estimates are just a guss, and if i have to be honest i even think my estimates were on the low side. Even just PR is a nightmare. I don't know how many people from the team are working on this forum. Dealing with trolls like me.
But the fact remains... well... I get nothing.
There is nothing that remains after D&D Beyond will inevitably be closed. Look at D&D Insider. Even if i wanted to use it now that i can pay for it they are not only not accepting new subscriptions, but the old D&D insider is a mess due to silverlight updates which are unsupported. [REDACTED]
But the fact is that right now. If i wanted to start playing D&D 5th edition i would need to pay at least 150 euros in manuals for the three base manuals because this is what i paid here in italy, for english manuals. Not even italian translated ones. And also, by your pricing, another 90 dollars (i hope i misread that). If i wanted to buy the 5 manuals i am working with right now i would have to pay 150 dollars. In addition to the 250 i already spent.
Plus six dollars per month.
To use your service.
Enter layer four.
On one side part of me says: "It's a fair price. You know how much work goes there and 6 dollars per month barely covers the upkeep. This is not a multibillion industry like Netflix. We're talking roleplaying games here. They cover the costs. But not so much as to light cigars with dollar bills." That is my rational side. My rational side also tells me: "This is a *SERVICE*, you pay for service every time you go to a dinner or you go to a theater or even when you use an email. Today's world is filled with services."
And then my primal side says: "after 5 years, when WotC will change edition... what? *puff-of-smoke* everything gone? You're not paying the usual service fees of "here's your month's pay". Your'e paying a per item fee of something you cannot hold onto."
D&D insider is a broken mess that can barely be used even by a friend of mine with a subscription. It got broken even more by recent silverlight updates. He could now have continued to pay to use a little more than a compendium basically. He quit 3 months ago when WotC changed policies. It was unusable anyway. [REDACTED]
D&D Beyond never had and never will have anything like that. So even if i did come very close to pay 19$ per manual when i had the occasion. I did not. Because all i could think of was. "It will soon be gone and then i will have paid twice for nothing." All those years of living with 200$ to work with did not go away. I could pay, but in the end i could not.
So.
In this last layer.
I ask this of you people working on this program.
Either you people work with WotC to allow people to buy PDFs of the 5th edition. And each PDF bought (since WotC has that RPGNow-based dmsguild site), will give access of a source manual here in the D&D beyond site (and vice versa every manual bought here will give me the PDF version on dmsguild).
And also start working on a release a free offline builder after D&D 6 will inevitably be a thing and you will dismiss D&D Beyond as D&D Insider was dismissed...
Or... well... At the very least take my suggestion and just put the SRD and everything else isn't just barred from use, but are written as "references" to manuals and pages in those manuals that i haven't bought here for the "entry fee" character builder of 6 dollars/month. Eventually i might get fed up of transcribing reference and at least give you money for the stuff i am actually using.
Let's reason also from the market elasticity point of view. Are you guys telling me that the market is soooo rigid that making people pay 30$ per manual will net you just as much as making people pay... i dunno? 7$ or per manual? Most other companies make people pay that much for digital PDFs. 15$ if they are new.
Or what about making people pay directly 10$ or 12$ per month fixed fee to grant access to everything? I know i could not pay for that before, but i can pay that now.
But if we reason what i could pay before... before i could not pay the Insider's asking price. Are you telling me that 6 dollars per month plus each book as an aside is going to be more accessible to people who are getting paid like i was before? After they already paid for the manuals?
So yes in the end i am a cheap bastard who can (when i had little money) spend 750 euros in physical books (slowly one every few months) for an edition nobody liked and then spend another 800$ (nowadays, all at once) to get himself a "birthday gift" english-only PDFs of the very same books (plus, admittedly, a few more, thanks to the sale and the fact nobody ever translated them) [REDACTED]
...but cannot bring himself to spend 30$ per book to access a limited-time only database even after reasoning how much this site and that database has cost you guys until now and the fact you're offering a service which he would really like to use. And that if you guys were only 10 people and were getting paid a bachelor degree data-entry keyboard monkey worth of cash each month you made a huge debt which would need quite a lot of people to kill.
Feel free to hate me and perma-ban me from this site. I just cannot bring myself to pay for this in the way you want me to pay for it. Because it feels basically as one of those "fee to pay AND pay to win" MMORPGs which not only sucks away a lot of money but also gets characters and worlds deleted every time they get shut down. And they get shut down just because there's a "shinier new version" now out.
It happened for D&D 4 in just 7 years. Those "essentials" were quite interesting but could not delay the inevitable. They felt like the "Option-al" books for AD&D. The swan's song. A very much more decent one this time. But still a song of death. AD&D lasted me 8 years while manuals were still printed and another 7 until i switched to D&D 4. [REDACTED]
I cannot ignore it.
AD&D lasted 13 years by its own, WotC wants to change every 7 years now, apparently. 7 years from now i will still have the manuals but then i won't have all i paid for to access on D&D beyond.
The problem might be that i don't see roleplaying games as a service. They have forever been tied to my books, to my childhood. I can go back to the under-roof and blow a layer of dust and my AD&D books are still there. I bought D&D 4. Now it's in the under-roof too, but just because nobody loved it and i can't play by myself.
I am playing D&D 5th edition at least in D&D 5e multiclassing is a lot less rewarding than 3rd edition, so players are discouraged anyway and what little they do, for now seems like a good compromise of payoff to investment, but yes, unlike D&D 4e where if i made a completely random 10th level character and an "optimized" 10th level character i could see... uh... maybe a +3 to hit and damage and a set of abilities more sinergized with the rest of the group? Maybe even a random "once per scene <something>" which is more useful? D&D 5e is a lot more "rigid" (due to the lack of books) and more prone to have people get unbalanced characters, but not to the point of D&D 3rd edition where a 10th level characteer could either be a guy which hit "really well" with a shortsword for 1d6 damage + "nothing" a couple of times per round or a guy which comboed in absurd stuff and ended up making 3 to 4 attacks with 5d6 damage + "something". Possibly even if equipped in the same identical way. D&D 5e is not the mess. True...
But it does not feel like a service. It feels like a set of books. And D&D Beyond, to me... still does not feel like a service, it feels like an extension of those books i already bought. I can pay for site maintenance and updates. But my primal side does not allow me to pay for books which will vanish because the new edition is out.
Sorry. I know i've acted like a troll in this message. Feel free to kill my account with this.
Theft is Theft. Trying to justify stealing from someone does not make it okay. I have no idea what you do but if I came to a mechanic and said "Look, I cannot afford to pay you today because eventually the car is going die permanently So I am just going to steal the part and fix it myself unless you give me the part for free."
As a creator and writer what you are asking is absurd. Piracy robs me of my income and is the reason people are charged twice for a book. Once for the hard copy and once for the electronic copy because people will see someone less well off and give them a pirated copy.
There are two ways to approach this problem. One is to do what WOTC is doing and releasing the basic Rules as a FREE download or charge outrageous sums of money for the original books like $60.00 per source book. I think WOTC is actually pretty generous here. Your justification of your theft does not make me feel like it was okay. When I was a kid we didn't steal or pirate things. We saved and worked for them until then you shared with the other people in your gaming group.
The monthly subscription is so you can have the convenience of creating a character easily. It is a great system. Also it is cheap. Using the car analogy again. Ford is not going to give me a new warranty on my car after the original one expires. Things change and we get new cars. They won't make me a new 1966 mustang Because I was not able to afford one back in the day.
Curse hasn't really talked about it much (which is understandable), but my understanding from Dungeonscape and Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 is that the pricing for everybody who's done/tried to do official digital tools for 5e is 100% set by WOTC. Which, I mean, kind of makes sense, since they're not only worried about their cut from the digital sales, but also for the costs of cheaper digital tools in terms on cannibalized sales of their print products.
Money is, I'm guessing, most of the reason 4e's lifecycle was so short. They released a ton of products quite quickly and not all of it sold all that well. Since then, the D&D team at WOTC has been pretty drastically streamlined and their release schedule cut to a trickle. Sales have apparently been great, but continued sales are what keeps the product alive. Their slow release schedule, reluctance to release PDFs, and tight control over digital tool pricing tells me they are very, very conscious about maintaining profitability to keep the edition alive as long as possible.
There's probably nothing Curse can do to make you happy about the pricing and ultimate ephemeralness of the product, and there's probably little that WOTC feels it can do without risking the financial stability they've fought so hard to get back with this edition.
Theft is Theft. Trying to justify stealing from someone does not make it okay. I have no idea what you do but if I came to a mechanic and said "Look, I cannot afford to pay you today because eventually the car is going die permanently So I am just going to steal the part and fix it myself unless you give me the part for free."
As a creator and writer what you are asking is absurd. Piracy robs me of my income and is the reason people are charged twice for a book. Once for the hard copy and once for the electronic copy because people will see someone less well off and give them a pirated copy.
There are two ways to approach this problem. One is to do what WOTC is doing and releasing the basic Rules as a FREE download or charge outrageous sums of money for the original books like $60.00 per source book. I think WOTC is actually pretty generous here. Your justification of your theft does not make me feel like it was okay. When I was a kid we didn't steal or pirate things. We saved and worked for them until then you shared with the other people in your gaming group.
The monthly subscription is so you can have the convenience of creating a character easily. It is a great system. Also it is cheap. Using the car analogy again. Ford is not going to give me a new warranty on my car after the original one expires. Things change and we get new cars. They won't make me a new 1966 mustang Because I was not able to afford one back in the day.
totaly agree but... wouldnt cost anything more from WOTC to just give a pdf or even sell the damn think ... you know that watermarked pdf exist ... i think WOTC dont mind you share your books or pdf with the players you play with ... D&D Beyond offert us that too by sharing content over in a campaign
so why they dont want to sell or give pdf when you buy digital content ? they dont want you to send to the mass over internet ... ok good point.... watermarked pdf its a protection for that so they can trace back who buy that version of the pdf and get him or her in justice ... right now its everyone good person who would like a pdf who pay for that because WOTC seem not likely to sell or give pdf format to buyers of digital content
thats where i'm pissed for the rest i totaly agree with the price etc... here for me its great and the option they give you to buy parts of a books or whatever you need for a smaller price and get a discount if you buy the whole book later is amazing .....I just want WOTC to sell or give watermarked (protected) PDF of the digital content we buy so in a way i agree with both position ...
Tools exist to dewatermark PDFs, unfortunately. Nothing, not even not publishing PDFs, will stop piracy 100% of the way. WOTC has clearly chosen to make it as difficult as possible. I wish they'd reconsider, too, but I'm guessing they feel they'd lose more than they'd gain by releasing PDFs.
But I see now that a lot of my message was redacted. I don't want to argue about what and why. The problem is that a lot of my message hinged on explaining what had happened. The original message is now even more confused than before.
So. Let's drop everything of the original, except my request: "What will i get for the money i spend after D&D Beyond will be gone?"
Let me put it in a different way. After all if it has to get redacted and lose meaning let's say something which should not in theory get redacted because it's a proactive discussion. I don't want to break the rules. I want to make people think.
Okay. So. Let's start with the assumption that this D&D Beyond is a service. You compare it to a revision. I can buy a 1966 mustang because they are still around. Same thing as i can buy a TSR Red Box.
By buying a Red Box i am not entitled to anything more than what is in the box. By buying an old mustand Ford won't sell me new parts or a warranty extension to something Ford does not make anymore.
However by having bought a warranty in the past my 1966 mustang might still be around today because in order to cover that warranty a number of "parts" were manufactured according to average consumption.
What i am asking is not "i don't want to pay". It's "This seems too much for something that will disappear". My comparison is that if your warranty covered for the substitution of a conveyance belt for your mustang in 1966 once the part stops being made... your belt disappears. You keep the original, but the substitute does not exist anymore.
So. Let me suggest a few solutions to that which i personally see as a problem:
Once D&D Beyond gets shelved just as D&D Insider got shelved, "convert" the books we paid for into PDFs. The PDFs aren't going to get produced during D&D 5 shelf life, so basically i see no problem with that. I already paid for something digital which i could use as a book, let me have a PDF book in exchange when this database cannot be accessed anymore.
Once D&D Beyond gets shelved etc. etc. offer people to buy a local offline version of the compendium+character builder. The people here have already slaved over the database and interface, and there are plenty of operating ambients which can run PHP locally in a window, disconnected to the rest. Why let it go to waste? Those which have already bought the books etc. etc will get those books inside this local version. Anybody else which wants to buy it will get this windowed program which runs basically this site (minus the forums obviously).
Once D&D Beyond gets shelved... well... don't just let it die. Either make it a community project or send it all into the OGL. Don't let it go the way that D&D Insider went. Forgotten and broken. For how outrageous it might be to make it "free", people might still show support to a system they liked just as i did by buying old manuals, original electronic format pdfs don't really go to waste since people still like them better than illegal alternatives and stuff. After all Pathfinder still lives despite being broken on so many levels exactly because except for the images is basically a big OGL content free for all.
If WotC does not wish for its intellectual content to be in a format that can be a financial security risk until it's obsolete... then i can understand that. But all the money that i spent shouldn't just disappear because somebody decided that it's not worth it anymore. Mustang parts did not get destroyed once they stopped getting made. They just stopped making more. I can accept that they will sell me a program and tell me "but its maintenance is up to you now because this project is shelved". I am totally fine with that.
I do not wish to do anything illegal to this site or its content. I wish to have something after it will be gone.
It's better not to look at D&D Beyond as something that will get shelved. They've stated that if WotC releases a new edition of D&D that they'll adapt the site and add the new edition. They're in this for the long haul.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat On - Mod Hat Off
I hope that D&D beyond will not go the way of D&D Insider. But once i've seen a precedent for an action course. I tend to assume that then next action will be decided on the same basis.
Also let's avoid discussing about stuff that will get this thread closed. Illegal acts are illegal. I can understand excuses but they are not to be discussed here. This is about discussing a different way to think
I think 4e had such a short life cycle compared to other editions because, as you said, it was not very popular. 5e seems to be a phenomenon, and WotC will want to keep it alive as long as it stays commercially viable. I know more people getting involved with the hobby now than ever before, and I have a long list of friends wanting to join in. 5e came out in 2014 (unless I'm mistaken), which means that if your 7 year life cycle holds true, it only has 4 years left. That means all of these new players only get to play 3 or maybe 4 of the published adventures before they become obsolete and the hype for the new edition takes hold. Furthermore, DDB would be opening shop at a really bad time. No business only plans to operate for 4 years.
I think the success of 5e has made something like DDB a viable business venture, and I think we'll see 5e for more than a decade. During that time, the features of DDB will grow, only adding to its worth. And if DDB continues to be successful, I don't think all 5e content will just be swept away when 6e drops. As players of the game, I'm sure they get that not everyone will make the transition immediately.
That being said, I think your concerns about DDB eventually closing down are not without just cause. But unfortunately, that's the world we live in now. Star Wars Battlefront 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. I hated the new one that was recently released, but the old ones were some of the most fun I remember having during that era of video games. I recently found it for very cheap on Steam, and was super excited to get to play it again. But then I discovered why it was as cheap as it was. The servers hosting the online multiplayer had closed. Sure, I could still play the single player, but that was only going to be fun for so long. But here's the thing, you don't see people who purchased the game at full price when it was released complaining (I mean, I'm sure a few people are out there). That's because in that decade or so, most of those people had their fun and moved on to other things. The same will happen with DDB. If D&D ever loses so much popularity to where DDB can't sustain itself, then you will very likely be having trouble finding a group to play with in the first place. As long as D&D is a viable brand, then DDB will be active. When the day comes that it does go dark, it will be because there aren't enough interested users left to justify its existence. Sure, some people will be burned, but at that point they will have exponentially more options for how to spend their time.
So to answer your question, what are you buying with your money? An added immediate convenience. It's not a required component for playing D&D. If anything, it is a luxury. If it is not for you, that's unfortunate (as I strongly believe even the free version has a lot of value at the table). It's not an investment, but no digital resources (not even PDFs, as they too will one day reach obsolescence) are.
I think 4e had such a short life cycle compared to other editions because, as you said, it was not very popular. 5e seems to be a phenomenon, and WotC will want to keep it alive as long as it stays commercially viable. I know more people getting involved with the hobby now than ever before, and I have a long list of friends wanting to join in. 5e came out in 2014 (unless I'm mistaken), which means that if your 7 year life cycle holds true, it only has 4 years left. That means all of these new players only get to play 3 or maybe 4 of the published adventures before they become obsolete and the hype for the new edition takes hold. Furthermore, DDB would be opening shop at a really bad time. No business only plans to operate for 4 years.
I don't know.
On one side: 3.0 (2001) including 3.5 (2003) lasted 7 year and was subsided by 4e in 2008 which was subsided by 5e in 2015. It's not 7 years on the dot for each edition... buuuut. Yeah. This was my impression until now.
Again. These are not facts. I'm just interpolating.
On the other side: 5.0 is "anomalous" in the sense that they are not "printing money" and in turn by that i mean we don't have 20 books to buy now. If one doe not count adventures. But as i said i never counted adventures. And in fact... i just checked. Even counting adventures... yeah... there are strangely few right now.
So... by reasoning... yeah. This "7 year cycle" interpolation of mine one could be wrong and they could be trying to actually make this last.
I think the success of 5e has made something like DDB a viable business venture, and I think we'll see 5e for more than a decade. During that time, the features of DDB will grow, only adding to its worth. And if DDB continues to be successful, I don't think all 5e content will just be swept away when 6e drops. As players of the game, I'm sure they get that not everyone will make the transition immediately.
I can only cross finger. but my point is that aside from the fact that i should not even have to think about having to cross fingers... the current business model asks that i buy not only a subscription to a service to make character building but also each single "module" with which one could do character building. It's basically the same system of another commercial character builder. And i never used their service... well... for the same reasons. Because they aren't just asking me to buy their character builder. They are asking me to buy each single book that would work for their character builder. I would have understood a "per gaming system" business model, but a "per book"?
A different reasoning goes here for D&D Beyond. This is not a third party. I mean, of course it is a third party, but it is a third party with a direct line to Wizards of the Coast. So it's not like some guy "second guessing" how some rules should work.
That being said, I think your concerns about DDB eventually closing down are not without just cause. But unfortunately, that's the world we live in now.
I am sorry. Whatever you wanted to say with the rest of the paragraph. This one sentence just made it invalid and extremely wrong. So what? Should we not fight for our political beliefs? Should we not fight for our social beliefs? Whichever they are? If we feel strongly about a cause, should we just say: "Ah... well... i just like something, but it' never going to be. That's how things go. right now."
What i started this thread for is exactly because i did that mistake last time.
I don't want to do it again.
I want to know right now what the closure plans are once 6th edition comes along. Because i am not just paying a flat fee service here to have access to everything. I am paying a flat fee to have access to "the right to pay to access a database based on what i pay for".
I don't pay for steam.
I don't pay for GOG.
I don't pay for Origin
I don't pay for ... whatever a storefront is.
The store makes money on me paying for its items. The books in this case.
But that's besides my point.
My point here here is a different one. I am paying a fee? Okay, they are making me access a service.
A service which sells "a converted database containing information from play books".
Would i like to have this store free? It's their store. I don't care in the end.
I can throw that much money at them monthly for the character builder service, and it wont' hurt.
What i am denouncing here is a different thing.
And this thing is not the flat fee. It's annoying, true, but in the end unimportant.
It is the fact that they had a similar service before.
They closed it.
And it is now unreachable.
They.
Set.
A.
Precedent.
And it is a precedent i don't like if i want to buy each single book twice.
So:
I am willing to pay for the service.
I am even willing to pay for the books.
Would i have done things differently? That is completely besides the point.
Right now i want to know: What will happen 4 or 10 or even 70 years from now.
If GOG closes i know i still have the backups.
If Steam closes... again i have the backups... i suppose there will be ways in the future to play games after steam starting from the backups.
If origin closes... i don't care, never bought anything from them.
If this store closes... what do i have left? Because i am buying a "virtual access" but i don't get "backups" at this moment.
I am buying a token.
As an engineer here in italy i have to pay a fee to access the UNI-ISO database, and then i buy each single code i need for whatever job i need to do or i need to know what the official law-abiding norms are. And i can download those norms as well as accessing them online.
Here what do i buy? Will there ba a "download the rules" button? They are making me buy the books but they keep the books for themselves and make me just look at the shiny thing i just bought without making me hold onto it.
A "download the rules" button? That... would be nice... but it seems to me that it is against the rules set by WotC. Even if they produced something like the "errata" which contains no images and cannot be used onto illegal scans because it does not reflect the wording of the books. That would really make me happy.
But, again. There will be no PDFs until 6th edition. They did that with 3.5 and did that with 4.0 they will do it with this one. I understand. The financial security risk is too great.
So i am asking.
"Working within the rules set by WotC what can be done to accomodate me?"
So to answer your question, what are you buying with your money? An added immediate convenience. It's not a required component for playing D&D. If anything, it is a luxury. If it is not for you, that's unfortunate (as I strongly believe even the free version has a lot of value at the table). It's not an investment, but no digital resources (not even PDFs, as they too will one day reach obsolescence) are.
Yes i am buying an added immediate convenience not required for playing D&D. This can be said of any "non core mechanics" book that is out here on the shelves of WotC. Including the game itself, which is by definition "a luxury". Since when has a game been anything else but "a luxury" at its very core?!
At this moment i am the only one guy in the entire group that likes to play D&D 5e when it's his turn to be the GM. 2 other like pathfinder and 3 others like... whatever stuff they like at the moment. One played Savage Worlds the last 3 times, one seems to be changing every time and last two times we played numenera first and cypher system second, the last one seems to like changing games each time, but the last two times we played Dungeon World.
So, not only is this a luxury, it is a luxury that is competing with much cheaper stuff. So if i wish to spend my money here single handedly making other people play D&D 5e... i want to get something for all the money i am going to throw here. Because they have already shown me that they will close this storefront. It has already happened and they set a precedent.
And yes, what you're saying is true "at the moment this is not for me". What i am asking here is: "Does it really have to not be for me?" and also "How many "me" are out here?" Are they losing just me? A single person? Are they losing 1% of the potential buyers? Are they losing 10-20-50-90% of their buyers?
This is a forum thread. It's supposed to be a discussion. Total agreement is never a discussion. I wanted to make a discussion about this one subject.
The current model doesn't require a subscription though. The subscription does up to 3 things, gives you access to public homebrew, removes ads, and at the higher tier, allows the sharing of purchased content (it doesn't even have to be all of yours). You can purchase, view, and use content without a subscription. You can also create and use private homebrew (which can mirror the content from books) completely for free.
And regarding my comment about the way of the world, my point is that digital media is quickly becoming the standard. If you want to fight the power, so to speak, only buy physical media. I mean, look at the vinyl record industry, which is defying all expectations and thriving in an otherwise all-digital subscription-based market. But the reality of the situation is that subscriptions for access to more content is proving to be a more successful business model than selling physical content once. As long as people are buying it, nothing will change.
The current model doesn't require a subscription though. The subscription does up to 3 things, gives you access to public homebrew, removes ads, and at the higher tier, allows the sharing of purchased content (it doesn't even have to be all of yours). You can purchase, view, and use content without a subscription. You can also create and use private homebrew (which can mirror the content from books) completely for free.
A subscription also lets you have more than 6 characters at a time.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
The current model doesn't require a subscription though. The subscription does up to 3 things, gives you access to public homebrew, removes ads, and at the higher tier, allows the sharing of purchased content (it doesn't even have to be all of yours). You can purchase, view, and use content without a subscription. You can also create and use private homebrew (which can mirror the content from books) completely for free.
A subscription also lets you have more than 6 characters at a time.
I think that if we're interested in engaging with the model for digital tools that WOTC is willing to allow, we need to stop comparing it to purchasing physical books and asking what we have to show for it when it goes away. We aren't purchasing content; we're purchasing access to content. It's less like buying a television and more like buying cable TV.
This is a fairly common model for digital content. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about it, either -- most of the time, I don't purchase access to digital content that I can't keep permanently, though in this particular case, there's enough utility compared to a physical copy that I feel it's worth it. That said, this is the model we have and I don't see that changing any time soon. I would imagine that WOTC (or probably Hasbro) has thought long and hard and decided that the customers they lose by not offering permanent digital purchases are fewer than the customers they would lose if they release such permanent purchases into the wild. I don't particularly agree with their judgment, as illegal copies are already out there, but it's clearly the conclusion to which they've come.
But then again, maybe they're right. I don't hear a lot of people saying they won't play D&D if they can't have PDFs; I hear a lot of people saying they won't use Beyond if they can't have PDFs. Presumably, many/most of those people will just continue to buy books, which is perfectly fine as far as WOTC is concerned. There's a growing attitude that companies shouldn't treat piracy as lost sales because most of them never would have bought anything anyway. I'm not sure how true that is, but if WOTC believes it, then they probably believe that digital tools as they're offered now and physical copies together capture 100% of the people who would ever have spent money on their product. If that's the case, they probably don't care if someone doesn't want to accept digital tools as they're being offered; if they're not for you, well, they're willing to sell you books instead
That's ultimately what this comes down to, I'm afraid. Does the model that exists work for you? If not, this product isn't for you, and likely never will be.
I've made my peace with it, knowing that eventually online support for 5e will be no more or no longer stable, whether that's because Beyond is discontinued or WOTC and Curse move on to 6e. This won't be the only way I access D&D — I'll still buy a physical copy of Xanathar's and other non-adventures — but it will probably the one that sees the most use while it lasts, however long that may be.
For me, the initial costs were a concern, but going forward, with an affordable annual subscription (that I don't really need to have) and about 2 or 3 releases a year, it's a cost I'm more than willing to pay for the service. For the convenience. For the tools that are here, and those that are yet to come. I've accepted that that's all that I'm getting, and decided on the balance that it's still worth it.
I can totally understand somebody arriving at another conclusion, however,
My plan is to buy all of the physical books so I have something that will last, and only buy what I actually need from DDB. The cool thing is the way it chips away at the total cost, eventually I should end up unlocking everything if I end up playing enough.
Also, I DM and my players chip in with me for access, so we all paid $11 or so at launch and got everything we needed to run our current game. As things progress, we can buy certain features piecemeal, and it's really not that bad. People are concerned with lasting value, and I totally sympathize with that, but if the most I ever pay is $20 or so because my players are chipping in, it's less of a blow if the service goes down later, a few years down the line.
I'd love to have PDFs thrown in with any purchase of the content. If I buy a PHB hardback, I would love to get one through bits and mortar, if I buy the PHB content on D&D Beyond, I'd love to have same PDF included there, if I buy the PHB on Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, I'd love to have a PDF out of that too.
For some people, it's going to be the assurance that they want that they keep the content if the service they're using to access the content goes away. For hardback purchasers, it's the convenience of being able to carry your library on a laptop.
A PDF only option might be a cool thing to see in the future too, but it it really going to be able to be much cheaper than the price of the content on D&D Beyond?
End of the line though, is that it's not a deal breaker for me to buy into the content a second time after the hardbacks in a format with a higher level of convenience.
When you purchase a subscription to World of Warcraft, what are you keeping? The character and servers are theirs to shut off as they see fit, which are required for the game to function.
When you buy a movie ticket, what are you keeping? You watch the film, and leave for the night empty-handed.
When you buy a summer pass to an amusement park, what are you keeping? You enjoy the thrills for a set period of time, then it's over.
Not everything nets something tangible you can keep through the ages. Some services are ONLY a service, and that service can expire. This is a capitalistic venture, and you - the consumer - gets to make the choice on whether you see value in it. If you do, you pay for it and enjoy the experiences, much like the examples listed above. If you don't, you don't pay for it and go about your finance decisions. While debating for change is a novel idea, you are debating how a private organization should be managing their assets. If it is change you seek, you are free to launch your own venture and provide said change to the community. Show us how things should be, if so pure, and surely profits shall fall upon you?
While debating for change is a novel idea, you are debating how a private organization should be managing their assets.
Pretty sure that consumers pushing for change from companies is one of the driving forces of "capitalistic ventures" too, though. If consumers don't buy a product because it isn't what they're looking for, the manufacturer either has to switch up what they're doing or not make sales. I'm not saying that's the situation we're in right now--I've expressed my thoughts about DDB elsewhere, and I'm pretty much on board with the current model even if my ideal is different--but I really, really hate how prevalent this notion is, that consumers somehow have no right to complain or take issue with how a company does business. That's absurd.
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DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder) Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
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I prefer to be brutally honest than see something getting out of rails. I've been silent these last 7 months i decided i had to speak because i've reasoned about this.
This is going to be very long. Tristam Shandy long. And it's going to be layered. Not Inception layered. That's for kids. Frankenstein layered. And probably as well told as Tristam Shandy and Frankensten. (that is: by modern standards it will be nigh unreadable.)
But i ask you to bear with me.
So. Let's rip the worst right away and then let me explain why. I hope you don't sue me. But i also hope i can explain and reason why i do what i do and why i think it's unfair.
"I think prices are too high right now" [REDACTED]
Let's talk about work. "This is copying/pasting content" i heard that excuse a lot and for anybody making any kind of site is obvious, but for others: NO! even in best case scenario a character builder is not copied/pasted. You have to program stuff. You have to tag items, class powers, spells, whatever. you have to make people be able to use such tags to build their characters, you have to make the interface that allows to chose said choices, you have to account for choices which will break your interface because they will do stuff you did not account for up until the moment they come up. So you have to study the rules thoroughly. and i'm not talking about simply reading the manuals twice or trice. you really need to pour a lot of man hour to think about "okay but what happens if this power/feat/spell/item gets selected? How do i represent this in my current interface design? What does it break." It's never the simple stuff that breaks your system, it's the weird stuff. And this is a fantasy game, there's a lot of stuff that "does not follow the normal rules".
This is a lot of work. I've bought "only" 5 manuals and i can already see that a team would need hundred of man hours to go through all that stuff. Even if those people were paid monkey-like just setting up a "what we need to do" before even starting coding is going to cost thousands of dollars. And that is if it gets accepted by the people in charge of reviewing your project. Which is the Wizards team. Which is not the people making this specific site. Surprise! The people making the game "only" speak to those making the site. They are not the same people. It's how work gets done. You can't have geniuses doing all the work alone.
Actually making this game. Even with the precious "free feedback" we're providing. Well. The team has been working at least since March 20th, that's almost 7 months. Assuming a 10 people team from the forum administration and management to actually making compendium and builder. If they were to be paid like an average data-entry code monkey a measly 1,200$ each that's 12,000$ each month or... well up until now a "measly" 84,000$. And that's "best case scenario" in a game where everybody loses.
Then there's maintenance. Because, as i just said every new thing added might break old stuff. Overtime. Even PHP updates will break stuff. And then there's hackers. Security is essential. Work hours spent like crazy madmen in front of a computer. Looking and reading messages by trolls like me [REDACTED]
So... yeah. It costs a lot. I can see that. And we are still in "preview mode". Not all the content is here yet. So for now everything is a default waiting for future income.
[REDACTED]
Because if i guess that much is how much it is costing right now this stuff (which has not yet started asking for money) and i do concur that's a black hole where the only light going inside is paying customers, there must be a [CENSORED] good excuse for me not putting my money on the table and telling you to shut up and keep it.
This was the end of the first layer. Now onto the second layer.
To understand my excuse let me do the part of Tristam Shandy and let me start when i started playing D&D.
I started in '92 with Advanced. Then i went to the red box my friends had (yes, i went "backwards"). Then came back to advanced. I liked advanced. Bought about 17 manuals and the best ones are undoubtedly the "Chronomancer" handbook (which is the only one book that presents time travel in a way that is actually playable, not just fun to think about, and even at low levels at that, and it's a pity that it has never been reprinted for newer editions ever since) and "Spelljammer" boxed set (Where finally somebody made a fantasy setting in space which is not just the usual "and then aliens came and it's the future over there") and also the "complete humanoid handbook" was a lot of fun and the "legends and lore" allowed for more "common" mythology to be played, finally "Psionics" in AD&D were not a powered thing like right now where they just replaced "spell levels" with "power points"... they were really weird and flexible things not based on pure damage but allowing people to do weird stuff. But then they made those books. I don't name those "optional" books that ended AD&D.
Then came 3.0 and i ... was not sure about 3.0. Sure it was... streamlined...? But it was also deeeply unbalanced, especially the multiclassing system. I was used to the old AD&D multiclassing and this seemed just a "cash grab" for players to nip and pick whatever from any class. Sure, really fun, but also a balancing nightmare. And yes it became a balancing nightmare. I only played by borrowing books. The only ones i bought were the 4 books they ever translated here in italian for the Eberron series because aside from the fact that i liked warforged. Then 3.5 came out i was excited... but as i read the books taken by a friend... i understood that i would never play it. I still have the eberron playbooks because i liked them but... yeah. Never actually playerd them. I soldiered on. Only guy using AD&D with his group of players until D&D 4.0 arrived.
Another company made pathfinder. I did end up starting playing pathfinder... about 4 years ago. Long after D&D 4 had (undeservingly) died. And just because by then i found nobody else to play D&D 4 with.
Then came D&D 4. I loved D&D 4. I loved it soooo much that i bought all 24 books ever printed in italian. Especially Dark Sun and Eberron. I avoided like the plague that stuff regarding forgotten realms but that's just because forgotten realms is my most hated setting after dragonlance. If when i was young i could be brought to the use of fists at the mere question of "what color are the mage's robes?" by the time D&D 4 was around i was tempted to buy the chronicles of drizz't just to burn them and then film as the slowly burned and kindle them every now and then and even naming that mage which shall remain unnamed makes me puke. I cannot stand people quoting them anymore. Just stop. I never played Dark Sun in AD&D. Mostly because it was either untranslated here in Italy or if it ever got released i never saw it. But i liked this D&D 4e take and of course i liked Eberron a lot. Also: finally multiclassing done well. I did not like at all the hybrid class rules, but the rest of the multiclassing i really liked it a lot.
Problem was that by the time i finished buying it... i also understood why nobody played it. If you wanted to play it... you really needed all 24 book to just choose what to do and then another 5 books on average to make a character. Sooooo WotC made the character builder. It was perfect. It was offline and thus it was even more perfect for me. Because i really needed it to be offline as... welll... bringing a 17 inch notebook is much lighter than 24 books. Problem is. I bought the books okay. The notebook i got a loan from my parents (could not afford it on 750 euros per month)... but paying a subscription at that time...?
Call me an idiot but working part time 750 euros per month from 2002 to 2013 doing side courses to keep myself updated and not lose the hard earned master degree because of a "lack of professional updates" and also dealing with a partial disability (luckily here in Italy hospitals are "free")... i found myself thinking that at least for a program i could very well skirt the costs. after all... well... i already bought the books. and when you have to pay rent, bills and everything else with 750 euros, i had around 200 euros to work with lunches and entertainment each month. Not really gold-engraved stuff.
I understood my situation was the same as that of a lot of people.
And this is also why the old offline character builder was discontinued.
Because everybody was pirating it.
And the problem here is... well... it's not WotC that was making the character builder. Sure their name was there. Printed all big. Even in the credits. But the way i understand now how the world works at age nearly 39 is that the people making that builder were just subcontractors. And subcontractors might get a share (depending on the contract) of whatever revenue came from the subscriptions system, but nothing else. WotC went with an online thing which was unuseable.
But at least anybody who used it had to pay since it was hosted on their servers and short of reverse engineering what was shown to the users there was little downloaded information to work with. [REDACTED]
I could not use the online character builder because more than half the time the places where i went to play did not have internet. I'm not saying they did not have wi-fi. They literally did not have internet. They were "ludo-teques" as they are called here in italy. Places where people go play board games. Internet is not given as a principle since people should play without checking online, just with the books and what's in the boxes. "If you wanted to play online either play at home or at an internet cafe". That kind of place. Cool for all the old stuff shown in "reliquaries" of sorts (more like cheap glass cabinets) where people stored miniatures and small sculptures of famous games and fantasy/sci-fi stuff. Not so cool for people having to use a character builder or log around several books.
I worked myself into reasoning that if i continued to buy the books i should not have paid the price for also an online subscription to make characters.
After 2013 i finally got a job that payed "normally" for the master degree i had. Also my parents were finally able to buy me an house so i should not have to continue paying rent.
About 3 years later, age 37 by now, once i got settled and finally bought a car, a decent computer and i finally had money to actually spend. I started dwelling on Patreon, Steam and Gog, RPGNow, bundle of holding, humble bundle, you name it. [REDACTED]
On my last birthday i went to the dmsguild site and spent around 800$ on buying all the available for D&D 4rth edition in PDF. They had a sale. It was my birthday. I finally had the money. I loved that 4rth edition. I had never paid for the subscription. So why not get the PDFs? I still have my AD&D compendium CD in a box. I bought that one again too as the old CD had become unreadable, due to the fact i was an idiot kid and put a scratch too many on it. Or maybe it's true that even printed CDs after a while become unreadable. The new CD is readable, but with the compendium in the old *.hlp format it's still... unreadable.
I will need a windows '98 virtual machine to read that compendium.
End of second layer, entering third layer.
But the fact remains that even now. After all those years when i was a kid with very little money and then a teenager that had to beg to get something bought and then an adult that had to get around paying bills each month... right now. Even though i now pay for everything whenever i can. Because i finally can. I pay for webcomics even thought they are free. I pay for games i never have the time to play because i like what they did from the few videos i saw of people playing those games...
But: this is stuff i keep here with me. I have Steam and GOG backup of digital downloads. Every now and then i re-download the new versions. I have each PDF i bought on RPGNow and humble bundle and bundle of holding.
I even have multiple versions of some stuff. Like games i was able to play and like on steam i also bought on GOG and viceversa, or i bought audiobooks of books i had read and i still have.
But about D&D 4e and AD&D... buying the PDFs and the CD were something: they were my choice to give again for something that gave me nice and fuzzy memories.
Nobody demanded me to give them my money by giving me nothing i could hold onto.
They just told me "hey you want something you can keep?". Merchandise, basically. I was showing respect and i got something in return. When i was little i bought around 17 AD&D physical books plus a red box (white, actually, where it got sold here in italy). Later when AD&D was not a thing anymore but i was still teenager i bought the AD&D compendium CD for a whopping... i don't remember how much but i remember for me it was a lot. I re-bought the CD again for "only" 50 dollars plus overseas shipping. I don't remember the original price but i'm preeeeeeetty sure this one i have right now i paid less even with overseas shipping over the 50$ price tag.
So right now. I see the new D&D Beyond and i ask: "Why, again, should i pay twice for each book plus a subscription in order to have the right to make my character?"
Wait?! Hold on. What?!
Problem is: With D&D insider i see nothing i can keep.
This is no AD&D compendium to try and make use with a virtual machine or emulator. There is no *.HLP file to covert into a new *.CHM format or try and run in a windows '95 virtual machine. D&D Insider is not a PDF file which i can keep or a builder i can try and make it work again in later years with a virtual machine or emulator.
In fact right now the only PDFs that are available are adventures (which i never bought used or read anyway) or free stuff. There is not a single PDF of the books you want to sell me.
All i get is an access to a database. True: that database and the site accompanying it is a work of labour. But it's something "external". Something i cannot access whenever i want. Something you can take away.
I would pay D&D Beyond's asking price if you gave me PDFs at least with the access to that database.
But you aren't.
You aren't offering me an offline character builder whose database i can use when i cannot access internet, and that is: when i actually get out and go and play D&D.
You aren't even telling me: "Listen the 6 dollars is an entry fee. You can make your character but everything you haven't bought is just a placeholder which references manuals you actually have bought, also the PDF output will be editable and you can insert the missing info with the manual and page number we're giving you, but you have to do it by hand."
All you're telling me is you want my money for something which *will* disappear. It is inevitable. Only it wont' be an accident and it won't be recoverable. It will be planned obsolescence.
So even if now i can afford it. I look at the 250 euro receipt for buying the manuals i already have of 5th edition and i ask myself why should i buy them again and also pay a subscription. To "have the privilege to make a character". You are basically asking me money to access different portions of a database you've already making me pay a subscription to use.
I get it. Your work is not free. Each single manual is distilled blood sweat from the foreheads of the people trying to make everything work now and before and in the future. I have reasoned above all that this thing is costing to you people. My estimates are just a guss, and if i have to be honest i even think my estimates were on the low side. Even just PR is a nightmare. I don't know how many people from the team are working on this forum. Dealing with trolls like me.
But the fact remains... well... I get nothing.
There is nothing that remains after D&D Beyond will inevitably be closed. Look at D&D Insider. Even if i wanted to use it now that i can pay for it they are not only not accepting new subscriptions, but the old D&D insider is a mess due to silverlight updates which are unsupported. [REDACTED]
But the fact is that right now. If i wanted to start playing D&D 5th edition i would need to pay at least 150 euros in manuals for the three base manuals because this is what i paid here in italy, for english manuals. Not even italian translated ones. And also, by your pricing, another 90 dollars (i hope i misread that). If i wanted to buy the 5 manuals i am working with right now i would have to pay 150 dollars. In addition to the 250 i already spent.
Plus six dollars per month.
To use your service.
Enter layer four.
On one side part of me says: "It's a fair price. You know how much work goes there and 6 dollars per month barely covers the upkeep. This is not a multibillion industry like Netflix. We're talking roleplaying games here. They cover the costs. But not so much as to light cigars with dollar bills." That is my rational side. My rational side also tells me: "This is a *SERVICE*, you pay for service every time you go to a dinner or you go to a theater or even when you use an email. Today's world is filled with services."
And then my primal side says: "after 5 years, when WotC will change edition... what? *puff-of-smoke* everything gone? You're not paying the usual service fees of "here's your month's pay". Your'e paying a per item fee of something you cannot hold onto."
D&D insider is a broken mess that can barely be used even by a friend of mine with a subscription. It got broken even more by recent silverlight updates. He could now have continued to pay to use a little more than a compendium basically. He quit 3 months ago when WotC changed policies. It was unusable anyway. [REDACTED]
D&D Beyond never had and never will have anything like that. So even if i did come very close to pay 19$ per manual when i had the occasion. I did not. Because all i could think of was. "It will soon be gone and then i will have paid twice for nothing." All those years of living with 200$ to work with did not go away. I could pay, but in the end i could not.
So.
In this last layer.
I ask this of you people working on this program.
Either you people work with WotC to allow people to buy PDFs of the 5th edition. And each PDF bought (since WotC has that RPGNow-based dmsguild site), will give access of a source manual here in the D&D beyond site (and vice versa every manual bought here will give me the PDF version on dmsguild).
And also start working on a release a free offline builder after D&D 6 will inevitably be a thing and you will dismiss D&D Beyond as D&D Insider was dismissed...
Or... well... At the very least take my suggestion and just put the SRD and everything else isn't just barred from use, but are written as "references" to manuals and pages in those manuals that i haven't bought here for the "entry fee" character builder of 6 dollars/month. Eventually i might get fed up of transcribing reference and at least give you money for the stuff i am actually using.
Let's reason also from the market elasticity point of view. Are you guys telling me that the market is soooo rigid that making people pay 30$ per manual will net you just as much as making people pay... i dunno? 7$ or per manual? Most other companies make people pay that much for digital PDFs. 15$ if they are new.
Or what about making people pay directly 10$ or 12$ per month fixed fee to grant access to everything? I know i could not pay for that before, but i can pay that now.
But if we reason what i could pay before... before i could not pay the Insider's asking price. Are you telling me that 6 dollars per month plus each book as an aside is going to be more accessible to people who are getting paid like i was before? After they already paid for the manuals?
So yes in the end i am a cheap bastard who can (when i had little money) spend 750 euros in physical books (slowly one every few months) for an edition nobody liked and then spend another 800$ (nowadays, all at once) to get himself a "birthday gift" english-only PDFs of the very same books (plus, admittedly, a few more, thanks to the sale and the fact nobody ever translated them) [REDACTED]
...but cannot bring himself to spend 30$ per book to access a limited-time only database even after reasoning how much this site and that database has cost you guys until now and the fact you're offering a service which he would really like to use. And that if you guys were only 10 people and were getting paid a bachelor degree data-entry keyboard monkey worth of cash each month you made a huge debt which would need quite a lot of people to kill.
Feel free to hate me and perma-ban me from this site. I just cannot bring myself to pay for this in the way you want me to pay for it. Because it feels basically as one of those "fee to pay AND pay to win" MMORPGs which not only sucks away a lot of money but also gets characters and worlds deleted every time they get shut down. And they get shut down just because there's a "shinier new version" now out.
It happened for D&D 4 in just 7 years. Those "essentials" were quite interesting but could not delay the inevitable. They felt like the "Option-al" books for AD&D. The swan's song. A very much more decent one this time. But still a song of death. AD&D lasted me 8 years while manuals were still printed and another 7 until i switched to D&D 4. [REDACTED]
I cannot ignore it.
AD&D lasted 13 years by its own, WotC wants to change every 7 years now, apparently. 7 years from now i will still have the manuals but then i won't have all i paid for to access on D&D beyond.
The problem might be that i don't see roleplaying games as a service. They have forever been tied to my books, to my childhood. I can go back to the under-roof and blow a layer of dust and my AD&D books are still there. I bought D&D 4. Now it's in the under-roof too, but just because nobody loved it and i can't play by myself.
I am playing D&D 5th edition at least in D&D 5e multiclassing is a lot less rewarding than 3rd edition, so players are discouraged anyway and what little they do, for now seems like a good compromise of payoff to investment, but yes, unlike D&D 4e where if i made a completely random 10th level character and an "optimized" 10th level character i could see... uh... maybe a +3 to hit and damage and a set of abilities more sinergized with the rest of the group? Maybe even a random "once per scene <something>" which is more useful? D&D 5e is a lot more "rigid" (due to the lack of books) and more prone to have people get unbalanced characters, but not to the point of D&D 3rd edition where a 10th level characteer could either be a guy which hit "really well" with a shortsword for 1d6 damage + "nothing" a couple of times per round or a guy which comboed in absurd stuff and ended up making 3 to 4 attacks with 5d6 damage + "something". Possibly even if equipped in the same identical way. D&D 5e is not the mess. True...
But it does not feel like a service. It feels like a set of books. And D&D Beyond, to me... still does not feel like a service, it feels like an extension of those books i already bought. I can pay for site maintenance and updates. But my primal side does not allow me to pay for books which will vanish because the new edition is out.
Sorry. I know i've acted like a troll in this message. Feel free to kill my account with this.
Theft is Theft. Trying to justify stealing from someone does not make it okay. I have no idea what you do but if I came to a mechanic and said "Look, I cannot afford to pay you today because eventually the car is going die permanently So I am just going to steal the part and fix it myself unless you give me the part for free."
As a creator and writer what you are asking is absurd. Piracy robs me of my income and is the reason people are charged twice for a book. Once for the hard copy and once for the electronic copy because people will see someone less well off and give them a pirated copy.
There are two ways to approach this problem. One is to do what WOTC is doing and releasing the basic Rules as a FREE download or charge outrageous sums of money for the original books like $60.00 per source book. I think WOTC is actually pretty generous here. Your justification of your theft does not make me feel like it was okay. When I was a kid we didn't steal or pirate things. We saved and worked for them until then you shared with the other people in your gaming group.
The monthly subscription is so you can have the convenience of creating a character easily. It is a great system. Also it is cheap. Using the car analogy again. Ford is not going to give me a new warranty on my car after the original one expires. Things change and we get new cars. They won't make me a new 1966 mustang Because I was not able to afford one back in the day.
Curse hasn't really talked about it much (which is understandable), but my understanding from Dungeonscape and Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 is that the pricing for everybody who's done/tried to do official digital tools for 5e is 100% set by WOTC. Which, I mean, kind of makes sense, since they're not only worried about their cut from the digital sales, but also for the costs of cheaper digital tools in terms on cannibalized sales of their print products.
Money is, I'm guessing, most of the reason 4e's lifecycle was so short. They released a ton of products quite quickly and not all of it sold all that well. Since then, the D&D team at WOTC has been pretty drastically streamlined and their release schedule cut to a trickle. Sales have apparently been great, but continued sales are what keeps the product alive. Their slow release schedule, reluctance to release PDFs, and tight control over digital tool pricing tells me they are very, very conscious about maintaining profitability to keep the edition alive as long as possible.
There's probably nothing Curse can do to make you happy about the pricing and ultimate ephemeralness of the product, and there's probably little that WOTC feels it can do without risking the financial stability they've fought so hard to get back with this edition.
Dave
totaly agree but... wouldnt cost anything more from WOTC to just give a pdf or even sell the damn think ... you know that watermarked pdf exist ... i think WOTC dont mind you share your books or pdf with the players you play with ... D&D Beyond offert us that too by sharing content over in a campaign
so why they dont want to sell or give pdf when you buy digital content ? they dont want you to send to the mass over internet ... ok good point.... watermarked pdf its a protection for that so they can trace back who buy that version of the pdf and get him or her in justice ... right now its everyone good person who would like a pdf who pay for that because WOTC seem not likely to sell or give pdf format to buyers of digital content
thats where i'm pissed for the rest i totaly agree with the price etc... here for me its great and the option they give you to buy parts of a books or whatever you need for a smaller price and get a discount if you buy the whole book later is amazing .....I just want WOTC to sell or give watermarked (protected) PDF of the digital content we buy so in a way i agree with both position ...
Tools exist to dewatermark PDFs, unfortunately. Nothing, not even not publishing PDFs, will stop piracy 100% of the way. WOTC has clearly chosen to make it as difficult as possible. I wish they'd reconsider, too, but I'm guessing they feel they'd lose more than they'd gain by releasing PDFs.
Dave
True.
But I see now that a lot of my message was redacted. I don't want to argue about what and why. The problem is that a lot of my message hinged on explaining what had happened. The original message is now even more confused than before.
So. Let's drop everything of the original, except my request: "What will i get for the money i spend after D&D Beyond will be gone?"
Let me put it in a different way. After all if it has to get redacted and lose meaning let's say something which should not in theory get redacted because it's a proactive discussion. I don't want to break the rules. I want to make people think.
Okay. So. Let's start with the assumption that this D&D Beyond is a service. You compare it to a revision. I can buy a 1966 mustang because they are still around. Same thing as i can buy a TSR Red Box.
By buying a Red Box i am not entitled to anything more than what is in the box. By buying an old mustand Ford won't sell me new parts or a warranty extension to something Ford does not make anymore.
However by having bought a warranty in the past my 1966 mustang might still be around today because in order to cover that warranty a number of "parts" were manufactured according to average consumption.
What i am asking is not "i don't want to pay". It's "This seems too much for something that will disappear". My comparison is that if your warranty covered for the substitution of a conveyance belt for your mustang in 1966 once the part stops being made... your belt disappears. You keep the original, but the substitute does not exist anymore.
So. Let me suggest a few solutions to that which i personally see as a problem:
If WotC does not wish for its intellectual content to be in a format that can be a financial security risk until it's obsolete... then i can understand that. But all the money that i spent shouldn't just disappear because somebody decided that it's not worth it anymore. Mustang parts did not get destroyed once they stopped getting made. They just stopped making more. I can accept that they will sell me a program and tell me "but its maintenance is up to you now because this project is shelved". I am totally fine with that.
I do not wish to do anything illegal to this site or its content. I wish to have something after it will be gone.
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ModeratorIt's better not to look at D&D Beyond as something that will get shelved. They've stated that if WotC releases a new edition of D&D that they'll adapt the site and add the new edition. They're in this for the long haul.
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I hope that D&D beyond will not go the way of D&D Insider. But once i've seen a precedent for an action course. I tend to assume that then next action will be decided on the same basis.
Also let's avoid discussing about stuff that will get this thread closed. Illegal acts are illegal. I can understand excuses but they are not to be discussed here. This is about discussing a different way to think
Please forgive me for not bothering to read through your mountain of text.
Now that D&D Beyond is live, do you have any thoughts and/or concerns beyond what you and numerous others (including myself) have already outlined?
I think 4e had such a short life cycle compared to other editions because, as you said, it was not very popular. 5e seems to be a phenomenon, and WotC will want to keep it alive as long as it stays commercially viable. I know more people getting involved with the hobby now than ever before, and I have a long list of friends wanting to join in. 5e came out in 2014 (unless I'm mistaken), which means that if your 7 year life cycle holds true, it only has 4 years left. That means all of these new players only get to play 3 or maybe 4 of the published adventures before they become obsolete and the hype for the new edition takes hold. Furthermore, DDB would be opening shop at a really bad time. No business only plans to operate for 4 years.
I think the success of 5e has made something like DDB a viable business venture, and I think we'll see 5e for more than a decade. During that time, the features of DDB will grow, only adding to its worth. And if DDB continues to be successful, I don't think all 5e content will just be swept away when 6e drops. As players of the game, I'm sure they get that not everyone will make the transition immediately.
That being said, I think your concerns about DDB eventually closing down are not without just cause. But unfortunately, that's the world we live in now. Star Wars Battlefront 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. I hated the new one that was recently released, but the old ones were some of the most fun I remember having during that era of video games. I recently found it for very cheap on Steam, and was super excited to get to play it again. But then I discovered why it was as cheap as it was. The servers hosting the online multiplayer had closed. Sure, I could still play the single player, but that was only going to be fun for so long. But here's the thing, you don't see people who purchased the game at full price when it was released complaining (I mean, I'm sure a few people are out there). That's because in that decade or so, most of those people had their fun and moved on to other things. The same will happen with DDB. If D&D ever loses so much popularity to where DDB can't sustain itself, then you will very likely be having trouble finding a group to play with in the first place. As long as D&D is a viable brand, then DDB will be active. When the day comes that it does go dark, it will be because there aren't enough interested users left to justify its existence. Sure, some people will be burned, but at that point they will have exponentially more options for how to spend their time.
So to answer your question, what are you buying with your money? An added immediate convenience. It's not a required component for playing D&D. If anything, it is a luxury. If it is not for you, that's unfortunate (as I strongly believe even the free version has a lot of value at the table). It's not an investment, but no digital resources (not even PDFs, as they too will one day reach obsolescence) are.
I don't know.
On one side: 3.0 (2001) including 3.5 (2003) lasted 7 year and was subsided by 4e in 2008 which was subsided by 5e in 2015. It's not 7 years on the dot for each edition... buuuut. Yeah. This was my impression until now.
Again. These are not facts. I'm just interpolating.
On the other side: 5.0 is "anomalous" in the sense that they are not "printing money" and in turn by that i mean we don't have 20 books to buy now. If one doe not count adventures. But as i said i never counted adventures. And in fact... i just checked. Even counting adventures... yeah... there are strangely few right now.
So... by reasoning... yeah. This "7 year cycle" interpolation of mine one could be wrong and they could be trying to actually make this last.
The current model doesn't require a subscription though. The subscription does up to 3 things, gives you access to public homebrew, removes ads, and at the higher tier, allows the sharing of purchased content (it doesn't even have to be all of yours). You can purchase, view, and use content without a subscription. You can also create and use private homebrew (which can mirror the content from books) completely for free.
And regarding my comment about the way of the world, my point is that digital media is quickly becoming the standard. If you want to fight the power, so to speak, only buy physical media. I mean, look at the vinyl record industry, which is defying all expectations and thriving in an otherwise all-digital subscription-based market. But the reality of the situation is that subscriptions for access to more content is proving to be a more successful business model than selling physical content once. As long as people are buying it, nothing will change.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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I think that if we're interested in engaging with the model for digital tools that WOTC is willing to allow, we need to stop comparing it to purchasing physical books and asking what we have to show for it when it goes away. We aren't purchasing content; we're purchasing access to content. It's less like buying a television and more like buying cable TV.
This is a fairly common model for digital content. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about it, either -- most of the time, I don't purchase access to digital content that I can't keep permanently, though in this particular case, there's enough utility compared to a physical copy that I feel it's worth it. That said, this is the model we have and I don't see that changing any time soon. I would imagine that WOTC (or probably Hasbro) has thought long and hard and decided that the customers they lose by not offering permanent digital purchases are fewer than the customers they would lose if they release such permanent purchases into the wild. I don't particularly agree with their judgment, as illegal copies are already out there, but it's clearly the conclusion to which they've come.
But then again, maybe they're right. I don't hear a lot of people saying they won't play D&D if they can't have PDFs; I hear a lot of people saying they won't use Beyond if they can't have PDFs. Presumably, many/most of those people will just continue to buy books, which is perfectly fine as far as WOTC is concerned. There's a growing attitude that companies shouldn't treat piracy as lost sales because most of them never would have bought anything anyway. I'm not sure how true that is, but if WOTC believes it, then they probably believe that digital tools as they're offered now and physical copies together capture 100% of the people who would ever have spent money on their product. If that's the case, they probably don't care if someone doesn't want to accept digital tools as they're being offered; if they're not for you, well, they're willing to sell you books instead
That's ultimately what this comes down to, I'm afraid. Does the model that exists work for you? If not, this product isn't for you, and likely never will be.
I've made my peace with it, knowing that eventually online support for 5e will be no more or no longer stable, whether that's because Beyond is discontinued or WOTC and Curse move on to 6e. This won't be the only way I access D&D — I'll still buy a physical copy of Xanathar's and other non-adventures — but it will probably the one that sees the most use while it lasts, however long that may be.
For me, the initial costs were a concern, but going forward, with an affordable annual subscription (that I don't really need to have) and about 2 or 3 releases a year, it's a cost I'm more than willing to pay for the service. For the convenience. For the tools that are here, and those that are yet to come. I've accepted that that's all that I'm getting, and decided on the balance that it's still worth it.
I can totally understand somebody arriving at another conclusion, however,
Dave
My plan is to buy all of the physical books so I have something that will last, and only buy what I actually need from DDB. The cool thing is the way it chips away at the total cost, eventually I should end up unlocking everything if I end up playing enough.
Also, I DM and my players chip in with me for access, so we all paid $11 or so at launch and got everything we needed to run our current game. As things progress, we can buy certain features piecemeal, and it's really not that bad. People are concerned with lasting value, and I totally sympathize with that, but if the most I ever pay is $20 or so because my players are chipping in, it's less of a blow if the service goes down later, a few years down the line.
I'd love to have PDFs thrown in with any purchase of the content. If I buy a PHB hardback, I would love to get one through bits and mortar, if I buy the PHB content on D&D Beyond, I'd love to have same PDF included there, if I buy the PHB on Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, I'd love to have a PDF out of that too.
For some people, it's going to be the assurance that they want that they keep the content if the service they're using to access the content goes away. For hardback purchasers, it's the convenience of being able to carry your library on a laptop.
A PDF only option might be a cool thing to see in the future too, but it it really going to be able to be much cheaper than the price of the content on D&D Beyond?
End of the line though, is that it's not a deal breaker for me to buy into the content a second time after the hardbacks in a format with a higher level of convenience.
When you purchase a subscription to World of Warcraft, what are you keeping? The character and servers are theirs to shut off as they see fit, which are required for the game to function.
When you buy a movie ticket, what are you keeping? You watch the film, and leave for the night empty-handed.
When you buy a summer pass to an amusement park, what are you keeping? You enjoy the thrills for a set period of time, then it's over.
Not everything nets something tangible you can keep through the ages. Some services are ONLY a service, and that service can expire. This is a capitalistic venture, and you - the consumer - gets to make the choice on whether you see value in it. If you do, you pay for it and enjoy the experiences, much like the examples listed above. If you don't, you don't pay for it and go about your finance decisions. While debating for change is a novel idea, you are debating how a private organization should be managing their assets. If it is change you seek, you are free to launch your own venture and provide said change to the community. Show us how things should be, if so pure, and surely profits shall fall upon you?
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)