money wise its much better to turn it into PDF they would make more money.[/quote]
This is what you call an "opinion," or a "theory." It might be true, but it also might not. And I guarantee you that Wizards of the Coast have weighed the matter and made the choice that they believe will get them the "more money" - what makes you better equipped to predict the outcome of their actions than the people they employ to do just that?
you really think they got this rich by just saying hey everyone will pay the cost of what we do and thats it. no at some point they decided how much they wanted in their pocket after all said and done.
What I am telling you is that they did not just pick a price because they wanted X in their pocket; they picked a price because people would be happy enough to pay it that the amount going into their pockets was going to keep going into their pockets (and even growing), rather than maybe get people to pay this once but never again because what they got wasn't actually worth what they paid.
Saying "I want to put X amount of profit in my pocket" and setting your price based on that is how you fail to sell your product, not how you make millions. The idea that corporate greed drives the price is spot-on; it's just the what that means for the price part that you are wrong about. Greed keeps the prices competitive rather than arbitrarily large in any market where competition is a legitimate thing (such as video games, indie or otherwise, and table-top games).
There's nothing stopping you from inputting stuff as private homebrew. Staff has already said that's perfectly fine.
It's not accurate now, and even when the above features mentioned are finished, there is still a class (pun intended!) of stuff that we, as users, simply cannot create on our own.
Can someone give me a good reason why I should pay again for all the books I have already purchased? Why aren’t the book contents available in the subscription tiers? A base tier that give access to core content and a higher tier that offers expansion books? Next, can someone give me a good reason why I would pay $55 for a subscription that offers absolutely no campaign management tools? Not even an NPC builder or Encounter generator? Finally, why didn’t Wotc create this digital content instead of outsourcing it? Why didn’t Wotc just create a digital development department to do this? This is D20 all over again. At this point DndBeyond is nothing more than a cash grab character creation version of Orcpub2.
Public Mod Note
(Stormknight):
Moved to this thread as was off-topic for where it was posted
I'll give it a shot. How about "game designers, publishers, software programmers, and systems administrators need to eat"? No one is making you pay for it. You can use totally free OGL content only, if you like, or design your own homebrew system.
Or, if the digital versions and tools provide value to you, you can pay for that value. If not, you don't have to, and that's fine.
Neither of these responses are good answers. Wotc could have hired a development team and created a seperate division within to do this. As to the former response, at this point Dndbeyind is only fully functional for character creation, and nothing else, AFTER you have purchase ALL the digital versions of the books, which most DM’s have already bought at this point. If they do if fact ever come out with some version of a functional DM’s toolkit it will only be likewise useable after repurchasing everything we’ve already bought before. Which means for those us who have been waiting for digital campaign managment software we will be SOL unless we fork over another $300. There is absolutely no reason the manual content shouldn’t be priced into the subscription services at different tier levels.
@Cambuil. I think you miss some of the aspects of this and should read som more on the forum. Then you might get a clearer picture Some of the things are: Curse who creates DnD beoynd is not owned by WotC. This software is not something mandatory. If you have the books and you dont need this sofware then dont buy and use it. The software is under construction. We have to wait and see what will be added or not.
But above all. If you have no use of this software then dont use it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm not stupid. I'm just unlucky when I'm thinking.
I understand all of that. My point is this should never have been outsourced in the first place. With outsourcing to Amazon the huge licencing fee from Hasbro gets passed to the consumer. An unnecessary expense if Wotc had established a digital division within the company. Not only that, but by having a completely seperate charge for the books in order for Dndbeyond to be functional for the DM, they are in essence punishing D&D’s most loyal fanbase. I’ve been running 5th edition since the beginning of the play test. I preordered all the core books as soon as they were available and have been singing it’s praises from the start. Now, the only way to finally get access to campaign mamagement software is by forking over all that money again AND pay a subscription fee. A subscription fee which currently offers ZERO campaign management tools.
I recommend that you wait until DnD beyond crosses your line between not useful, to as useful that you want to pay for it. I agree that campaign management tools isnt as useful as it hopefully will be. So wait and see what happens. Play 5th edition as you have done so far. No change to that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm not stupid. I'm just unlucky when I'm thinking.
I understand all of that. My point is this should never have been outsourced in the first place. With outsourcing to Amazon the huge licencing fee from Hasbro gets passed to the consumer. An unnecessary expense if Wotc had established a digital division within the company. Not only that, but by having a completely seperate charge for the books in order for Dndbeyond to be functional for the DM, they are in essence punishing D&D’s most loyal fanbase. I’ve been running 5th edition since the beginning of the play test. I preordered all the core books as soon as they were available and have been singing it’s praises from the start. Now, the only way to finally get access to campaign mamagement software is by forking over all that money again AND pay a subscription fee. A subscription fee which currently offers ZERO campaign management tools.
There are TONS of campaign management tools out there, some are free, some are not. City of Brass, Realmworks, obsidian portal, and Scabbard to name a few.
WotC is a game company, not a software company, why wouldn't they outsource these things? If you've been following their attempts at software over the years, you would know they pretty much suck when they try to handle it themsevles. They are making way more money now than they would trying to hire a team and develop it themselves and this is a much better product with an amazing future.
As for them punishing their loyal fanbase, I have purchased pretty much every product they have ever put out, and some of them multiple times. I have licensed products on several online softwares, because they all offer different things. I am, as many people are, very loyal to the company and I think this is an amazing product and an excellent, if not cheap price for what we are getting. So just because you are upset about it and it doesn't work for you, please don't try to represent the entirety of the "most loyal fanbase." It isn't a punishment, this is finally getting the software that we deserve, and evidently a crapton (metric) of people seem to agree as they are doing very very well.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
The D&D team at WOTC is less than half the size it was for previous editions. To do this in-house, they would easily have had to double their staff and put out something that isn't the focus of their company and that past efforts have shown them to not be particularly good at. WOTC's strategy for 5e relies heavily on licensing and other passive revenue across the board. Their official releases are down to a few books a year but the licenses for video games, digital tools, miniatures, branded dice, accessories, etc., combined with their cut from user-generated content on DM's Guild, more than make up for it, I'd imagine. Like many publishing companies these days, they seem very focused on doing more with less.
There was basically zero chance they'd ever try, or even want, to do this in-house. And honestly, that's fantastic. Now we have several different great choices for digital content, with more on the way, that provide things at a lower price than physical editions and have new content ready to go the minute it releases, fully integrated into their platforms, each of which has different features and strengths, rather than one likely poor official product.
Can someone give me a good reason why I should pay again for all the books I have already purchased? Why aren’t the book contents available in the subscription tiers? A base tier that give access to core content and a higher tier that offers expansion books? Next, can someone give me a good reason why I would pay $55 for a subscription that offers absolutely no campaign management tools? Not even an NPC builder or Encounter generator? Finally, why didn’t Wotc create this digital content instead of outsourcing it? Why didn’t Wotc just create a digital development department to do this? This is D20 all over again. At this point DndBeyond is nothing more than a cash grab character creation version of Orcpub2.
Only one reason: they're not D&D community members. True D&D player wants to make his community grows. They want only dollars, don't they?
However, Idon't agree with your "DndBeyond is nothing more than a cash grab character creation version of Orcpub2". Orcpub offered much more. for free.
I wish if he closed his site and give an access only by credentials. You send photo/scan of your books (books ID?), for instance, and then you get access to digitl version of their content. Would it work? I don't know. But this is at least honest with the user and with the WotC. Or WotC have to hire him. He did a greate job, and, as I saw, he works faster (alone!) than current team.
Can someone give me a good reason why I should pay again for all the books I have already purchased? Why aren’t the book contents available in the subscription tiers? A base tier that give access to core content and a higher tier that offers expansion books? Next, can someone give me a good reason why I would pay $55 for a subscription that offers absolutely no campaign management tools? Not even an NPC builder or Encounter generator? Finally, why didn’t Wotc create this digital content instead of outsourcing it? Why didn’t Wotc just create a digital development department to do this? This is D20 all over again. At this point DndBeyond is nothing more than a cash grab character creation version of Orcpub2.
Only one reason: they're not D&D community members. True D&D player wants to make his community grows. They want only dollars, don't they?
However, Idon't agree with your "DndBeyond is nothing more than a cash grab character creation version of Orcpub2". Orcpub offered much more. for free.
I wish if he closed his site and give an access only by credentials. You send photo/scan of your books (books ID?), for instance, and then you get access to digitl version of their content. Would it work? I don't know. But this is at least honest with the user and with the WotC. Or WotC have to hire him. He did a greate job, and, as I saw, he works faster (alone!) than current team.
This has been addressed everywhere, but basically here it is in a nutshell. Orcpub stole from WotC. He compromised his integrity, so no one in their right mind would hire him.
Also, DNDBeyond is such a powerful tool, and has been created with a huge expansion in mind. Orcpub may have been a superior character builder (to some i guess, not me) but it didn't do 1/10th the things that Beyond does and it doesn't (didn't) have 1/100th the potential that Beyond does.
He worked "faster" because his system was a bicycle, and Beyond is a car. Both vehicles, with wheels, but so much more potential and utility to a car, but takes a lot longer to work on.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
A real world example to answer the question "I already bought the books! Why should I pay again?"
Think back about two decades, when CDs and DVDs were just starting to become more popular than cassette and video tapes. You could still choose to buy the latest hit album on cassette, but also CD. Say you bought a new car in 1997 and it was the first one you owned that came with a CD player instead of a tape deck. Would you complain to record companies or the car manufacturer, that the tapes you bought, whether it be four years earlier or four days earlier, didn't work with your new car, and they should give you a CD copy for free? No, of course you wouldn't! Because you would realize that the tape and the CD were two different products that happened feature the same content.
The physical D&D books, published by Wizards of the Coast, and the digital toolset created by and hosted on the D&D Beyond website (and soon app) are also two different products featuring the same content. And they are, in fact, products made by two different companies. Yes, those companies work closely with one another, but they're still distinct entities.
So no, you couldn't get a free CD copy of the latest U2 album in 1997 if you owned the cassette tape already, and you can't get a free copy of the PHB on D&D Beyond if you already own the physical book in 2017. That's annoying, I know (I also had to pay twice for the PHB, since I wanted to use it on Beyond, even though I own the physical book). But the good news is, if you don't want the products D&D Beyond are selling, it is your right as a consumer to not purchase them. If you find value in the Compendium and other related toolsets of D&D Beyond, you have to pay to access the content on here. And you're paying for the use of the Spell and Monster, and Class compendiums, Character Builder (which is getting an overhaul by the team), etc., in addition to the full contents of the books. So yes, it is worth paying more for in many peoples' eyes.
Both Wizards of the Coast and the D&D Beyond team have stated that they're very pleased at the adoption rate of the website, so they must be doing something right. And it's perfectly fine if the D&D Beyond tools don't fit with how you want to play D&D. It's not a requirement to purchase content from them.
Neither of these responses are good answers. Wotc could have hired a development team and created a seperate division within to do this. As to the former response, at this point Dndbeyind is only fully functional for character creation, and nothing else, AFTER you have purchase ALL the digital versions of the books, which most DM’s have already bought at this point. If they do if fact ever come out with some version of a functional DM’s toolkit it will only be likewise useable after repurchasing everything we’ve already bought before. Which means for those us who have been waiting for digital campaign managment software we will be SOL unless we fork over another $300. There is absolutely no reason the manual content shouldn’t be priced into the subscription services at different tier levels.
They're both good answers.
WotC COULD have hired a development team and created a separate division or whatever, but that doesn't mean the SHOULD have. They clearly judged they'd get a better solution by working with partners. An inhouse solution wouldn't necessarily solve the problem of paying twice for physical/digital copies.
DDB COULD have included access to the content as part of a tiered subscription model, but chose not to. "There's absolutely no reason manual content shouldn't be priced into the subscription services" is utter BS. They could have felt it would make subscriptions too expensive. They may have licensing constraints. They could have done market research and realised that more people, like me, prefer the current model.
If you don't like the business model, don't use the service. No one is forcing you to and there are plenty of alternatives. Or wait until the service is built out.
Here's my use case to contrast with the "I bought physical books!" line of thinking.
I've purchased several (4) copies of the PHB, 2 copies of the DMG, 1 of everything else, sans published adventures.
Yesterday I purchased the core books, Volo's, and XGtE, each with a $49.99 print cover price. Those books would be $250 at my FLGS, and I got all five for $150 here at DDB. I also picked up a master subscription, so that I could share the books with my group.
I have all of the functionality of multiple copies of the books at the table with a single digital purchase of each book at a 40% discount + sub.
I DM a small table of friends from the last town I used to live (1h from here) plus my wife. They come here once a month to spend the weekend. We play on Saturday, but on Sunday my wife DM the same group (including me) plus some friends from the city we are currently living. Seven people on total (six excluding my wife that has access to all of our books). Despite the fact I have all the physical books (but XGTE) to buy some books and parts of other books we use plus the subscription is not that expensive. That's one point.
Another very relevant point: why I have all the books but XGTE, that's because I am from Brazil, there is no FLGS with pre-access to it here, so if I want it I have to wait until November 21th to buy it from a big store, and wait at least another 2-3 weeks te get it on my hands (also extra costs for international shipping). And why buy it from a big store? To ensure if anything happens on the way (not to rare considering Brazil) they can solve the problem without extra costs.
So I purchased the DMG and the players before I knew this site existed. I would like to use this site here but I also do like to have a hard copy on hand.
Is there a way to access those books on this site without having to purchase it again?
At this time, all purchases on D&D Beyond are for content on D&D Beyond only. Unfortunately, there is not a way to unlock the digital content if you have purchased the books. We realize and understand the concerns over re-purchasing content, but the material in D&D Beyond is in a different format and platform.
Thanks. And sorry for my laziness of not searching better... I didn't internet well. haha
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Homebrew races, subraces and subclasses are on their way. It is been announced in this item of the changelog.
This is what you call an "opinion," or a "theory." It might be true, but it also might not. And I guarantee you that Wizards of the Coast have weighed the matter and made the choice that they believe will get them the "more money" - what makes you better equipped to predict the outcome of their actions than the people they employ to do just that?
What I am telling you is that they did not just pick a price because they wanted X in their pocket; they picked a price because people would be happy enough to pay it that the amount going into their pockets was going to keep going into their pockets (and even growing), rather than maybe get people to pay this once but never again because what they got wasn't actually worth what they paid.Saying "I want to put X amount of profit in my pocket" and setting your price based on that is how you fail to sell your product, not how you make millions. The idea that corporate greed drives the price is spot-on; it's just the what that means for the price part that you are wrong about. Greed keeps the prices competitive rather than arbitrarily large in any market where competition is a legitimate thing (such as video games, indie or otherwise, and table-top games).
Can someone give me a good reason why I should pay again for all the books I have already purchased? Why aren’t the book contents available in the subscription tiers? A base tier that give access to core content and a higher tier that offers expansion books? Next, can someone give me a good reason why I would pay $55 for a subscription that offers absolutely no campaign management tools? Not even an NPC builder or Encounter generator? Finally, why didn’t Wotc create this digital content instead of outsourcing it? Why didn’t Wotc just create a digital development department to do this? This is D20 all over again. At this point DndBeyond is nothing more than a cash grab character creation version of Orcpub2.
I'll give it a shot. How about "game designers, publishers, software programmers, and systems administrators need to eat"? No one is making you pay for it. You can use totally free OGL content only, if you like, or design your own homebrew system.
Or, if the digital versions and tools provide value to you, you can pay for that value. If not, you don't have to, and that's fine.
And as for why WotC decided to outsource: I assume due to the fiasco that was the 4E tools. Stick to your strengths!
Neither of these responses are good answers. Wotc could have hired a development team and created a seperate division within to do this. As to the former response, at this point Dndbeyind is only fully functional for character creation, and nothing else, AFTER you have purchase ALL the digital versions of the books, which most DM’s have already bought at this point. If they do if fact ever come out with some version of a functional DM’s toolkit it will only be likewise useable after repurchasing everything we’ve already bought before. Which means for those us who have been waiting for digital campaign managment software we will be SOL unless we fork over another $300. There is absolutely no reason the manual content shouldn’t be priced into the subscription services at different tier levels.
I'm not stupid. I'm just unlucky when I'm thinking.
I understand all of that. My point is this should never have been outsourced in the first place. With outsourcing to Amazon the huge licencing fee from Hasbro gets passed to the consumer. An unnecessary expense if Wotc had established a digital division within the company. Not only that, but by having a completely seperate charge for the books in order for Dndbeyond to be functional for the DM, they are in essence punishing D&D’s most loyal fanbase. I’ve been running 5th edition since the beginning of the play test. I preordered all the core books as soon as they were available and have been singing it’s praises from the start. Now, the only way to finally get access to campaign mamagement software is by forking over all that money again AND pay a subscription fee. A subscription fee which currently offers ZERO campaign management tools.
I'm not stupid. I'm just unlucky when I'm thinking.
WotC is a game company, not a software company, why wouldn't they outsource these things? If you've been following their attempts at software over the years, you would know they pretty much suck when they try to handle it themsevles. They are making way more money now than they would trying to hire a team and develop it themselves and this is a much better product with an amazing future.
As for them punishing their loyal fanbase, I have purchased pretty much every product they have ever put out, and some of them multiple times. I have licensed products on several online softwares, because they all offer different things. I am, as many people are, very loyal to the company and I think this is an amazing product and an excellent, if not cheap price for what we are getting. So just because you are upset about it and it doesn't work for you, please don't try to represent the entirety of the "most loyal fanbase." It isn't a punishment, this is finally getting the software that we deserve, and evidently a crapton (metric) of people seem to agree as they are doing very very well.
The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
The D&D team at WOTC is less than half the size it was for previous editions. To do this in-house, they would easily have had to double their staff and put out something that isn't the focus of their company and that past efforts have shown them to not be particularly good at. WOTC's strategy for 5e relies heavily on licensing and other passive revenue across the board. Their official releases are down to a few books a year but the licenses for video games, digital tools, miniatures, branded dice, accessories, etc., combined with their cut from user-generated content on DM's Guild, more than make up for it, I'd imagine. Like many publishing companies these days, they seem very focused on doing more with less.
There was basically zero chance they'd ever try, or even want, to do this in-house. And honestly, that's fantastic. Now we have several different great choices for digital content, with more on the way, that provide things at a lower price than physical editions and have new content ready to go the minute it releases, fully integrated into their platforms, each of which has different features and strengths, rather than one likely poor official product.
Dave
Only one reason: they're not D&D community members. True D&D player wants to make his community grows. They want only dollars, don't they?
However, Idon't agree with your "DndBeyond is nothing more than a cash grab character creation version of Orcpub2". Orcpub offered much more. for free.
Also, DNDBeyond is such a powerful tool, and has been created with a huge expansion in mind. Orcpub may have been a superior character builder (to some i guess, not me) but it didn't do 1/10th the things that Beyond does and it doesn't (didn't) have 1/100th the potential that Beyond does.
He worked "faster" because his system was a bicycle, and Beyond is a car. Both vehicles, with wheels, but so much more potential and utility to a car, but takes a lot longer to work on.
The most memorable stories always begin with failure.
A real world example to answer the question "I already bought the books! Why should I pay again?"
Think back about two decades, when CDs and DVDs were just starting to become more popular than cassette and video tapes. You could still choose to buy the latest hit album on cassette, but also CD. Say you bought a new car in 1997 and it was the first one you owned that came with a CD player instead of a tape deck. Would you complain to record companies or the car manufacturer, that the tapes you bought, whether it be four years earlier or four days earlier, didn't work with your new car, and they should give you a CD copy for free? No, of course you wouldn't! Because you would realize that the tape and the CD were two different products that happened feature the same content.
The physical D&D books, published by Wizards of the Coast, and the digital toolset created by and hosted on the D&D Beyond website (and soon app) are also two different products featuring the same content. And they are, in fact, products made by two different companies. Yes, those companies work closely with one another, but they're still distinct entities.
So no, you couldn't get a free CD copy of the latest U2 album in 1997 if you owned the cassette tape already, and you can't get a free copy of the PHB on D&D Beyond if you already own the physical book in 2017. That's annoying, I know (I also had to pay twice for the PHB, since I wanted to use it on Beyond, even though I own the physical book). But the good news is, if you don't want the products D&D Beyond are selling, it is your right as a consumer to not purchase them. If you find value in the Compendium and other related toolsets of D&D Beyond, you have to pay to access the content on here. And you're paying for the use of the Spell and Monster, and Class compendiums, Character Builder (which is getting an overhaul by the team), etc., in addition to the full contents of the books. So yes, it is worth paying more for in many peoples' eyes.
Both Wizards of the Coast and the D&D Beyond team have stated that they're very pleased at the adoption rate of the website, so they must be doing something right. And it's perfectly fine if the D&D Beyond tools don't fit with how you want to play D&D. It's not a requirement to purchase content from them.
Here's my use case to contrast with the "I bought physical books!" line of thinking.
I've purchased several (4) copies of the PHB, 2 copies of the DMG, 1 of everything else, sans published adventures.
Yesterday I purchased the core books, Volo's, and XGtE, each with a $49.99 print cover price. Those books would be $250 at my FLGS, and I got all five for $150 here at DDB. I also picked up a master subscription, so that I could share the books with my group.
I have all of the functionality of multiple copies of the books at the table with a single digital purchase of each book at a 40% discount + sub.
That's a really good value.
I might add a bit to this discussion.
I DM a small table of friends from the last town I used to live (1h from here) plus my wife. They come here once a month to spend the weekend. We play on Saturday, but on Sunday my wife DM the same group (including me) plus some friends from the city we are currently living. Seven people on total (six excluding my wife that has access to all of our books). Despite the fact I have all the physical books (but XGTE) to buy some books and parts of other books we use plus the subscription is not that expensive. That's one point.
Another very relevant point: why I have all the books but XGTE, that's because I am from Brazil, there is no FLGS with pre-access to it here, so if I want it I have to wait until November 21th to buy it from a big store, and wait at least another 2-3 weeks te get it on my hands (also extra costs for international shipping). And why buy it from a big store? To ensure if anything happens on the way (not to rare considering Brazil) they can solve the problem without extra costs.
And I cast Heroism on the community.