I'm trying to avoid a huge wall of text and keep to the point, so pardon me if this post is light on history or details.
I have been a member and subscriber to D&D Beyond for nearly 3 years. I purchased a Legendary Bundle at the time and have been making individual purchases such that I own most of the content offered.
I am also a DM and have used Virtual Table Tops (VTT) for a few years. My group of players are hugely impressed by the Beyond20 chrome extension that allows them to manage their character sheet here on D&D Beyond and roll directly from their character sheets with the dice roll results imported into the VTT. I, as the DM, find Beyond20 to be OK but still lacking when trying to manage combat with many creatures/monsters. I have found it is still better to create the creatures in the VTT and access their abilities, hit points, saves, etc... from the VTT. Less programs open, fewer tabs on the browser, etc... Just easier to manage. However, creating a creature in a VTT from my D&D Beyond webpage takes up a lot of my prep time. It seems silly that I have to manually input each statistic, skill, feature, spell, weapon, armor, attack, etc... one at a time until I have a working copy on my VTT.
I recently switched to a newer table top that allows for community modifications. Seeing how accessible and supportive the VTT community is, I leapt into the deep end and made my own with nearly no Javascript/HTML/CSS knowledge. I googled my way to a concept and learned to code. A couple months later, my thing works. What took 10-25 minutes per monster/creature now takes 1 or 2 seconds.
I learned a lot along the way. It turns out what I'm doing is scraping the monster webpage to pull out the data, and recreating the monster in the VTT.
Yes, scraping. I didn't know anything about extracting data from webpages, and googling set me on that path. The more I learnt, the more I realized scraping is frowned upon, regardless of how it can be useful for non-malicious ends. It turns out that the D&D Beyond ToS explicitly forbids scraping. Lawyer legalese that uses a sledgehammer to squash a insect. Banning a tool regardless of purpose or intent because some bad people do bad things.
I'm getting ahead of myself though. I wanted (still want) to release what I made to the VTT community because it's such a time saver that allows content you own to be used where you need it. I do not want to be prosecuted or banned, so I reached out to D&D Beyond customer support. (This is before I knew the content of the ToS).
The response I got was clearly a scripted answer. Scraping is not allowed. At all. Regardless of intent, purpose, execution, openness, visibility... To add insult to injury, I got the following statement:
"Any tool that is used to import a seperate copy into another platform is against our ToS. Content purchased on D&D Beyond is designed to be used on D&D Beyond only."
Sorry, but that's utter hogwash, to be polite. I mean, you sell digital maps. Where in D&D Beyond are we supposed to use our digital maps? Just to look at them in our browser? And character sheets can be exported to PDF. For what purpose if not to use outside of D&D Beyond? If I use my computer to manually build a creature in another platform using my D&D Beyond content as a reference, I'm violating your ToS?
I know I'm being facetious with the above examples. But I want to release a tool that will benefit D&D Beyond by integrating content owned in D&D Beyond into a VTT:
For the personal use of any individual that uses my tool.
My tool scrapes a webpage, but it doesn't crawl or fetch automatically. All site navigation still has to be done manually by the individual.
My tool doesn't inject anything into webpages, or modify the content of the webpages.
My tool doesn't steal any personal information, or even require it at all.
It doesn't allow access to content that is not owned or shared via D&D Beyond subscribers since the end user has to be logged in to be able to see non-SRD creatures.
I am not asking that the structure of webpages remain fixed forever, so my tool doesn't break. I am willing to update my tool as necessary. I would willingly re-write it or retire it completely if and when a proper API is offered.
My tool is 95% a chrome extension. It is written in Javascript and the code is visible to anyone that would download the extension.
I would even be willing to hand the extension off to D&D Beyond, so they become the owners of the tool and have final control of it.
I find the ToS is heavy handed and not representative of what D&D Beyond is as a service. Nearly everything D&D Beyond sells and provides is meant to be used outside of D&D Beyond.
It would be nice if I could be pointed to some official clarification, permission, license, or be provided one to use my content, and let others user their content where they want to use it, using modern tools that are just a smidge faster than writing it by hand.
its so unfortunate this never got a response. Dndbeyond would really benefit from allowing users to access the content they own, however they please. I know i'd be buying a lot more content if and when an api allowed me to access it, but saying I can't even build a tool that accesses it on my own? That actively discourages me from using the platform :/
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Hello,
I'm trying to avoid a huge wall of text and keep to the point, so pardon me if this post is light on history or details.
I have been a member and subscriber to D&D Beyond for nearly 3 years. I purchased a Legendary Bundle at the time and have been making individual purchases such that I own most of the content offered.
I am also a DM and have used Virtual Table Tops (VTT) for a few years. My group of players are hugely impressed by the Beyond20 chrome extension that allows them to manage their character sheet here on D&D Beyond and roll directly from their character sheets with the dice roll results imported into the VTT. I, as the DM, find Beyond20 to be OK but still lacking when trying to manage combat with many creatures/monsters. I have found it is still better to create the creatures in the VTT and access their abilities, hit points, saves, etc... from the VTT. Less programs open, fewer tabs on the browser, etc... Just easier to manage. However, creating a creature in a VTT from my D&D Beyond webpage takes up a lot of my prep time. It seems silly that I have to manually input each statistic, skill, feature, spell, weapon, armor, attack, etc... one at a time until I have a working copy on my VTT.
I recently switched to a newer table top that allows for community modifications. Seeing how accessible and supportive the VTT community is, I leapt into the deep end and made my own with nearly no Javascript/HTML/CSS knowledge. I googled my way to a concept and learned to code. A couple months later, my thing works. What took 10-25 minutes per monster/creature now takes 1 or 2 seconds.
I learned a lot along the way. It turns out what I'm doing is scraping the monster webpage to pull out the data, and recreating the monster in the VTT.
Yes, scraping. I didn't know anything about extracting data from webpages, and googling set me on that path. The more I learnt, the more I realized scraping is frowned upon, regardless of how it can be useful for non-malicious ends. It turns out that the D&D Beyond ToS explicitly forbids scraping. Lawyer legalese that uses a sledgehammer to squash a insect. Banning a tool regardless of purpose or intent because some bad people do bad things.
I'm getting ahead of myself though. I wanted (still want) to release what I made to the VTT community because it's such a time saver that allows content you own to be used where you need it. I do not want to be prosecuted or banned, so I reached out to D&D Beyond customer support. (This is before I knew the content of the ToS).
The response I got was clearly a scripted answer. Scraping is not allowed. At all. Regardless of intent, purpose, execution, openness, visibility... To add insult to injury, I got the following statement:
"Any tool that is used to import a seperate copy into another platform is against our ToS. Content purchased on D&D Beyond is designed to be used on D&D Beyond only."
Sorry, but that's utter hogwash, to be polite. I mean, you sell digital maps. Where in D&D Beyond are we supposed to use our digital maps? Just to look at them in our browser? And character sheets can be exported to PDF. For what purpose if not to use outside of D&D Beyond? If I use my computer to manually build a creature in another platform using my D&D Beyond content as a reference, I'm violating your ToS?
I know I'm being facetious with the above examples. But I want to release a tool that will benefit D&D Beyond by integrating content owned in D&D Beyond into a VTT:
I find the ToS is heavy handed and not representative of what D&D Beyond is as a service. Nearly everything D&D Beyond sells and provides is meant to be used outside of D&D Beyond.
It would be nice if I could be pointed to some official clarification, permission, license, or be provided one to use my content, and let others user their content where they want to use it, using modern tools that are just a smidge faster than writing it by hand.
its so unfortunate this never got a response. Dndbeyond would really benefit from allowing users to access the content they own, however they please. I know i'd be buying a lot more content if and when an api allowed me to access it, but saying I can't even build a tool that accesses it on my own? That actively discourages me from using the platform :/