So, I have been using DnD beyond for quite some time, and over the course of the 2 years of running a west march the 5 campaigns that support a total of 60 players at most is lack luster especially when you are above the 600+ player count. Having to continue to buy more accounts and books is really a drain on resources for these west marches. Now it has been said that you can join a campaign and if they enable content sharing it will work. This was tried and did not work at all.
Do you think DnD beyond will ever move to make campaigns larger to support west marches as a whole? Since they are one of the biggest platforms to introducing people to the game, I am not asking for a big increase maybe up to 30 players per campaign.
While I understand the desire, that would seem to be counterproductive for the business model. 30 people parties would effectively allow for 6 standard groups to all share content from a single subscription, in just that one campaign.
I could imagine DNDBeyond making Organizational (school club) accounts with other privileges, or perhaps charging a premium for additional account slots, but a free capacity increase would seem like a hard sell.
This is a huge ask - you are asking them to more than double the number of folks who can get content for free. Right now, a single person with a master tier subscription can share their content with a total of 60 people - probably one of the more generous content sharing options out there. What you want would be one player being able to share content with 150 players, a 2.5x increase on what is already more than fair.
I also would love to see the data behind your claim they are “one of the biggest platforms for introducing new players to the game.” This is not something I have ever heard of (despite avidly following these forums and D&D generally), and the first Reddit thread I found on the subject was filled with folks asking “what is this?” I think you are vastly overestimating the popularity and value of this style of campaign, and thus vastly overstating why there would be an ROI to Wizards.
This is a huge ask - you are asking them to more than double the number of folks who can get content for free. Right now, a single person with a master tier subscription can share their content with a total of 60 people - probably one of the more generous content sharing options out there. What you want would be one player being able to share content with 150 players, a 2.5x increase on what is already more than fair.
I also would love to see the data behind your claim they are “one of the biggest platforms for introducing new players to the game.” This is not something I have ever heard of (despite avidly following these forums and D&D generally), and the first Reddit thread I found on the subject was filled with folks asking “what is this?” I think you are vastly overestimating the popularity and value of this style of campaign, and thus vastly overstating why there would be an ROI to Wizards.
Agreed! I've been very active in online discussions of RPGs since it was sharing "Netbooks" RTFs over Gopher, and I honestly had to look up what that term was when I read this thread. LOL! Although now that I know, it does sound interesting!
That being said, I think a happy middle ground of assisting those with very non-standard needs and WotC still making money would be allowing the purchase of extra campaigns as well as extra player slots in campaigns. I've seen the request come up a few times, and I think it would be a great addition! There are times when I would have been willing to pay a few exrta dollars a month for another Campaign just to keep things organized, not even because I was hitting the limit. And if you have hundreds of players involved, I don't think it would be unreasonable to have to pay a bit more to support that. What is already there for sharing is extraordinarily generous and I've long said it's one of the biggest selling points of D&D Beyond!
Might be useful to start a thread in the D&D Beyond Feedback are of the forums. With the size of some of these West Marches games, it might be a good way to focus some vocal support of so many players in requesting that sort of feature! Good luck!
Edit to Add: I realized that might have sounded snarky, and I don't want to yuck someone's yum. My never having heard of West Marches campaigns is my loss, and just goes to show how effectively the internet works to create isolated bubbles even within niche hobbies! Either way, I hope something works out for better supporting that group, and I'm happy to have finally found this other bubble in our shared gaming space! :)
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
They could hypothetically get more players, but that does not mean more paying players. This would allow more players to network together to share content, reducing the number of folks who would be paying for content. That is, after all, what OP is seeking - expanding access so they can share the content to more people without spending more money.
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
They could hypothetically get more players, but that does not mean more paying players. SNIP!
Right, of course. Paying for access. But what is it was free?
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB (I'm not sure who TPTB is, but I'm assuming it's in some way a reference to DDB and its owners) gets $200+$6/month, while having to pay for servers and maintenance for 5 people. If you got for 149 friends, DDB still only gets $200+$6/month, but now has to run servers for 150 people, which costs more. Plus the lost potential for profits, because those are 145 people who might have bought those books but no longer have to.
By allowing 2.5x the number of people to share the sub and materials, they'd be increasing costs, losing profits and still be getting the same amount back. There is potential for more customers (for example, they get tired of the bodgery that comes with sharing books with people to create characters then transfer them over), but given how much DDB costs...I think most people will just abuse the sub system. DDB could easily lose money over it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB ... SNIP I'm not sure who TPTB is...
TPTB = The Powers That Be. How long have you been on the Internet? lol
Everything you posted is correct, of course. But I love the idea of West March. And DNDBeyond, that's why I'm here. Scenario; if DNDBeyond brought in a hundred players (in rotation, cause it's easy), then you have more peeps actually plays, and buying merch. Etc. Pretty sure Hasbro has to see DNDBeyond as a part of the over all D&D ecosystem. Perhaps as a generator of players, fans, and yea peeps who join the fun. Sure, DNDBeyond would run at a loss. I think that might be worth it?
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB ... SNIP I'm not sure who TPTB is...
TPTB = The Powers That Be. How long have you been on the Internet? lol
Everything you posted is correct, of course. But I love the idea of West March. And DNDBeyond, that's why I'm here. Scenario; if DNDBeyond brought in a hundred players (in rotation, cause it's easy), then you have more peeps actually plays, and buying merch. Etc. Pretty sure Hasbro has to see DNDBeyond as a part of the over all D&D ecosystem. Perhaps as a generator of players, fans, and yea peeps who join the fun. Sure, DNDBeyond would run at a loss. I think that might be worth it?
Wizards and Hasbro had an investor presentation yesterday where they discussed why this would not work - DMs spend money, non-DMs don’t spend a statistically significant amount. The numbers come out to 20% of players financially propping up D&D, spending the money to cover the other 80%. Increasing content sharing further might bring in more players, but it is less likely to bring in paying players - it is bringing in folks who are being supported by the 20%, not joining them (at least unlikely to join them proportionally 80-20, meaning further dilution of the critical 20%).
I am not sure if you have looked at the overall player base of west marches that are in various sizes some as small as 50-60 players others 2-3 thousand players, I do not think I am vastly overstating anything when it is quite clear to see in the DnD discord on the various sizes of these communities that lack the space for this, in the end they will turn to free pdfs and gsheets which a lot already do, with the gsheets and avrae support it makes sense.
If you took the actual time to read through much of the discord you would see, meaning all you did was a quick search and did not look into it properly :D which is fine! At the end of all this once you run a decent size community that pushes forward DnD as a whole it makes sense, I would not mind paying extra at all for newer slots! But again, you did a quick search and nothing more, which figures since most people will just turn to that.
1 master subscription per 60 players sounds like a reasonable price to pay for a Westmarches campaign.
I don't know why your attempt at content sharing didn't work - perhaps you don't have enough players who have purchased all the player material on dndbeyond?
It could be however I can only use myself as an example I have all source books and the sharing for 60 people which covers 1/10th of my server, I much rather see a subscription that can increase the number of players in them which would be possible, I would definitely not mind paying even 60$ a month for a subscription that increases my campaigns from 12 players to 24.
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB (I'm not sure who TPTB is, but I'm assuming it's in some way a reference to DDB and its owners) gets $200+$6/month, while having to pay for servers and maintenance for 5 people. If you got for 149 friends, DDB still only gets $200+$6/month, but now has to run servers for 150 people, which costs more. Plus the lost potential for profits, because those are 145 people who might have bought those books but no longer have to.
By allowing 2.5x the number of people to share the sub and materials, they'd be increasing costs, losing profits and still be getting the same amount back.
With economy of scale, elastic compute and storage. It doesn’t work that simply and to be quite honest as someone in the industry, it doesn’t increase costs very much. Not to mention that there would likely be a decent number of new players that would convert to dm’s or even players that buy content. Since lock down I have been gaming with 2 old friends that played back in the day, and started playing a game run by me. They have gone on to become dm’s themselves, bought master tier and almost all of the available content here. Additionally, I have had 1 player who started a year before lockdown in a tabletop game who now dm’s here has all content etc, and 3 brand new players who started this year in one of my games and 2 of them are also now dm’ing and own content. So out of 6 players that have joined my games, 5 of them went on to purchase all content and master tier. That’s an 83.33% conversion rate. Expand that to 100 players, 1000 players and the small cost of that expansion is more than covered by the new income.
[REDACTED]
Notes: All users are expected to be respectful in their conduct
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB (I'm not sure who TPTB is, but I'm assuming it's in some way a reference to DDB and its owners) gets $200+$6/month, while having to pay for servers and maintenance for 5 people. If you got for 149 friends, DDB still only gets $200+$6/month, but now has to run servers for 150 people, which costs more. Plus the lost potential for profits, because those are 145 people who might have bought those books but no longer have to.
By allowing 2.5x the number of people to share the sub and materials, they'd be increasing costs, losing profits and still be getting the same amount back.
With economy of scale, elastic compute and storage. It doesn’t work that simply and to be quite honest as someone in the industry, it doesn’t increase costs very much. Not to mention that there would likely be a decent number of new players that would convert to dm’s or even players that buy content. Since lock down I have been gaming with 2 old friends that played back in the day, and started playing a game run by me. They have gone on to become dm’s themselves, bought master tier and almost all of the available content here. Additionally, I have had 1 player who started a year before lockdown in a tabletop game who now dm’s here has all content etc, and 3 brand new players who started this year in one of my games and 2 of them are also now dm’ing and own content. So out of 6 players that have joined my games, 5 of them went on to purchase all content and master tier. That’s an 83.33% conversion rate. Expand that to 100 players, 1000 players and the small cost of that expansion is more than covered by the new income.
OP - you will come to learn that there are a small number of people on the forums that are abject apologists for WotC and will scream blue murder at anyone who has the temerity to suggest that something could be done better. I’m pretty sure that they are paid employees. You will never change their minds even with empirical evidence to the contrary so it’s better not to engage with them.
You are right, it seems that it will just fall on deaf ears, I know many of my DMs have started to buy their own source books from Beyond as well even though they are in my campaign.
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB (I'm not sure who TPTB is, but I'm assuming it's in some way a reference to DDB and its owners) gets $200+$6/month, while having to pay for servers and maintenance for 5 people. If you got for 149 friends, DDB still only gets $200+$6/month, but now has to run servers for 150 people, which costs more. Plus the lost potential for profits, because those are 145 people who might have bought those books but no longer have to.
By allowing 2.5x the number of people to share the sub and materials, they'd be increasing costs, losing profits and still be getting the same amount back.
With economy of scale, elastic compute and storage. It doesn’t work that simply and to be quite honest as someone in the industry, it doesn’t increase costs very much. Not to mention that there would likely be a decent number of new players that would convert to dm’s or even players that buy content. Since lock down I have been gaming with 2 old friends that played back in the day, and started playing a game run by me. They have gone on to become dm’s themselves, bought master tier and almost all of the available content here. Additionally, I have had 1 player who started a year before lockdown in a tabletop game who now dm’s here has all content etc, and 3 brand new players who started this year in one of my games and 2 of them are also now dm’ing and own content. So out of 6 players that have joined my games, 5 of them went on to purchase all content and master tier. That’s an 83.33% conversion rate. Expand that to 100 players, 1000 players and the small cost of that expansion is more than covered by the new income.
OP - you will come to learn that there are a small number of people on the forums that are abject apologists for WotC and will scream blue murder at anyone who has the temerity to suggest that something could be done better. I’m pretty sure that they are paid employees. You will never change their minds even with empirical evidence to the contrary so it’s better not to engage with them.
The problem with your post - beyond the rather silly and conspiratorial nature of your last paragraph and the fact that you imply you have "empirical evidence" when you decidedly are posting speculation - is that you are looking only at increased cost to Wizards for running the server, you are not looking at the opportunity cost of lost proceeds. Anyone with a basic degree of business knowledge knows that lost proceeds are a real cost. And you do not need to look beyond this very thread to see that there would be lost proceeds if Wizards expanded access - OP has already said "I know many of my DMs have started to buy their own source books from Beyond as well even though they are in my campaign"; if the system were changed as OP wishes, those proceeds would have been lost.
Turning again to some things Wizards' President and the Hasbro CEO talked about earlier this week, they presently feel that D&D is undermonetized - it has a massive player base and extremely high levels of name brand recognition, but only a small fraction of those players are actually paying for the game. They are currently seeking new monetization systems that allow them to tap into the untapped potential of the 80% or so of non-paying players. That is why they are not going to freely expand access to new slots--that just would decrease the possibility of monetizing new players; it also is why they are not presently likely to sell higher tier subscriptions with more player sharing, since they are not trying to further increase the burden on the 20% of players who already pay.
Now, you are free to dismiss the above with whatever conspiracy you wish; that does not change the reality of opportunity cost (something children learn about and come to understand in second grade) and Hasbro and Wizards' own recent statements related to the subject of D&D Beyond monetization.
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB ... SNIP I'm not sure who TPTB is...
TPTB = The Powers That Be. How long have you been on the Internet? lol
Everything you posted is correct, of course. But I love the idea of West March. And DNDBeyond, that's why I'm here. Scenario; if DNDBeyond brought in a hundred players (in rotation, cause it's easy), then you have more peeps actually plays, and buying merch. Etc. Pretty sure Hasbro has to see DNDBeyond as a part of the over all D&D ecosystem. Perhaps as a generator of players, fans, and yea peeps who join the fun. Sure, DNDBeyond would run at a loss. I think that might be worth it?
Wizards and Hasbro had an investor presentation yesterday where they discussed why this would not work - DMs spend money, non-DMs don’t spend a statistically significant amount. The numbers come out to 20% of players financially propping up D&D, spending the money to cover the other 80%. Increasing content sharing further might bring in more players, but it is less likely to bring in paying players - it is bringing in folks who are being supported by the 20%, not joining them (at least unlikely to join them proportionally 80-20, meaning further dilution of the critical 20%).
Thx, exactly the situation explained. So rang a bell in my melon too, hasn't this been the thing with the economy of the game since, forever? Players never buy anything. I, however, have a Master Teir sub here and my players insist on using photocopied character sheets. I'm pretty sure my pals rogue isn't AC: 20, but that's how she calculated it on her sheet. I own books, they DLed some PDFs. From, somewhere.
What boggles me though, is when Wgould26 mentions "player base of west marches that are in various sizes some as small as 50-60 players others 2-3 thousand players... ", I mean, how is that possible? And could there be a "critical mass" of players where maybe this is an opportunity? Just thinking outside the box here. imho :)
I'm a member of a discord server with thousands of users that does West Marches games. Not everyone in the server participates in the West Marches. The server also has a strict no-piracy code of conduct. Established DMs there tend to own their own sourcebooks on DDB.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So, I have been using DnD beyond for quite some time, and over the course of the 2 years of running a west march the 5 campaigns that support a total of 60 players at most is lack luster especially when you are above the 600+ player count. Having to continue to buy more accounts and books is really a drain on resources for these west marches. Now it has been said that you can join a campaign and if they enable content sharing it will work. This was tried and did not work at all.
Do you think DnD beyond will ever move to make campaigns larger to support west marches as a whole? Since they are one of the biggest platforms to introducing people to the game, I am not asking for a big increase maybe up to 30 players per campaign.
While I understand the desire, that would seem to be counterproductive for the business model. 30 people parties would effectively allow for 6 standard groups to all share content from a single subscription, in just that one campaign.
I could imagine DNDBeyond making Organizational (school club) accounts with other privileges, or perhaps charging a premium for additional account slots, but a free capacity increase would seem like a hard sell.
Hmm, well I'd no idea what West Marches was. Google search ...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=west marches d&d&t=newext&atb=v291-1&ia=web
James Earle explains it well in the first paragraph, third link down.
And I think this is pretty cool. Including the ability to play in a completely one-shot way and rotate players each game. I think that's brilliant.
This is a huge ask - you are asking them to more than double the number of folks who can get content for free. Right now, a single person with a master tier subscription can share their content with a total of 60 people - probably one of the more generous content sharing options out there. What you want would be one player being able to share content with 150 players, a 2.5x increase on what is already more than fair.
I also would love to see the data behind your claim they are “one of the biggest platforms for introducing new players to the game.” This is not something I have ever heard of (despite avidly following these forums and D&D generally), and the first Reddit thread I found on the subject was filled with folks asking “what is this?” I think you are vastly overestimating the popularity and value of this style of campaign, and thus vastly overstating why there would be an ROI to Wizards.
It's 60 players at Master Tier? Well that's loads, I reckon.
Agreed! I've been very active in online discussions of RPGs since it was sharing "Netbooks" RTFs over Gopher, and I honestly had to look up what that term was when I read this thread. LOL! Although now that I know, it does sound interesting!
That being said, I think a happy middle ground of assisting those with very non-standard needs and WotC still making money would be allowing the purchase of extra campaigns as well as extra player slots in campaigns. I've seen the request come up a few times, and I think it would be a great addition! There are times when I would have been willing to pay a few exrta dollars a month for another Campaign just to keep things organized, not even because I was hitting the limit. And if you have hundreds of players involved, I don't think it would be unreasonable to have to pay a bit more to support that. What is already there for sharing is extraordinarily generous and I've long said it's one of the biggest selling points of D&D Beyond!
Might be useful to start a thread in the D&D Beyond Feedback are of the forums. With the size of some of these West Marches games, it might be a good way to focus some vocal support of so many players in requesting that sort of feature! Good luck!
Edit to Add: I realized that might have sounded snarky, and I don't want to yuck someone's yum. My never having heard of West Marches campaigns is my loss, and just goes to show how effectively the internet works to create isolated bubbles even within niche hobbies! Either way, I hope something works out for better supporting that group, and I'm happy to have finally found this other bubble in our shared gaming space! :)
Hmmm, sooo, how is it that TPTB would loose money if the number of players per Master Tier is raised to, was it 150? Or more? Isn't that potentially MORE players?
I'm not understanding if that math works out? I'm dumb, it just somehow doesn't compute with me.
They could hypothetically get more players, but that does not mean more paying players. This would allow more players to network together to share content, reducing the number of folks who would be paying for content. That is, after all, what OP is seeking - expanding access so they can share the content to more people without spending more money.
Right, of course. Paying for access. But what is it was free?
Players = buying everything else?
imho
*cough* merchandise, novels, movies...
IT's 60 players spread over 5 campaigns. 12 per campaign. That's plenty (with room to spare) for a normal campaign, but not the same as getting 30 per campaign (even if you reduce the number of campaigns to 2 to maintain total number of players) if you need it for some reason.
So, with a master tier sub, you get to share any bought materials for no additional cost beyond the sub, which is flat. So, if you spend $200 on books, then share it via master sub with 4 friends, then DDB (I'm not sure who TPTB is, but I'm assuming it's in some way a reference to DDB and its owners) gets $200+$6/month, while having to pay for servers and maintenance for 5 people. If you got for 149 friends, DDB still only gets $200+$6/month, but now has to run servers for 150 people, which costs more. Plus the lost potential for profits, because those are 145 people who might have bought those books but no longer have to.
By allowing 2.5x the number of people to share the sub and materials, they'd be increasing costs, losing profits and still be getting the same amount back. There is potential for more customers (for example, they get tired of the bodgery that comes with sharing books with people to create characters then transfer them over), but given how much DDB costs...I think most people will just abuse the sub system. DDB could easily lose money over it.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
TPTB = The Powers That Be. How long have you been on the Internet? lol
Everything you posted is correct, of course. But I love the idea of West March. And DNDBeyond, that's why I'm here. Scenario; if DNDBeyond brought in a hundred players (in rotation, cause it's easy), then you have more peeps actually plays, and buying merch. Etc. Pretty sure Hasbro has to see DNDBeyond as a part of the over all D&D ecosystem. Perhaps as a generator of players, fans, and yea peeps who join the fun. Sure, DNDBeyond would run at a loss. I think that might be worth it?
Wizards and Hasbro had an investor presentation yesterday where they discussed why this would not work - DMs spend money, non-DMs don’t spend a statistically significant amount. The numbers come out to 20% of players financially propping up D&D, spending the money to cover the other 80%. Increasing content sharing further might bring in more players, but it is less likely to bring in paying players - it is bringing in folks who are being supported by the 20%, not joining them (at least unlikely to join them proportionally 80-20, meaning further dilution of the critical 20%).
I am not sure if you have looked at the overall player base of west marches that are in various sizes some as small as 50-60 players others 2-3 thousand players, I do not think I am vastly overstating anything when it is quite clear to see in the DnD discord on the various sizes of these communities that lack the space for this, in the end they will turn to free pdfs and gsheets which a lot already do, with the gsheets and avrae support it makes sense.
If you took the actual time to read through much of the discord you would see, meaning all you did was a quick search and did not look into it properly :D which is fine! At the end of all this once you run a decent size community that pushes forward DnD as a whole it makes sense, I would not mind paying extra at all for newer slots! But again, you did a quick search and nothing more, which figures since most people will just turn to that.
1 master subscription per 60 players sounds like a reasonable price to pay for a Westmarches campaign.
I don't know why your attempt at content sharing didn't work - perhaps you don't have enough players who have purchased all the player material on dndbeyond?
It could be however I can only use myself as an example I have all source books and the sharing for 60 people which covers 1/10th of my server, I much rather see a subscription that can increase the number of players in them which would be possible, I would definitely not mind paying even 60$ a month for a subscription that increases my campaigns from 12 players to 24.
With economy of scale, elastic compute and storage. It doesn’t work that simply and to be quite honest as someone in the industry, it doesn’t increase costs very much. Not to mention that there would likely be a decent number of new players that would convert to dm’s or even players that buy content. Since lock down I have been gaming with 2 old friends that played back in the day, and started playing a game run by me. They have gone on to become dm’s themselves, bought master tier and almost all of the available content here. Additionally, I have had 1 player who started a year before lockdown in a tabletop game who now dm’s here has all content etc, and 3 brand new players who started this year in one of my games and 2 of them are also now dm’ing and own content. So out of 6 players that have joined my games, 5 of them went on to purchase all content and master tier. That’s an 83.33% conversion rate. Expand that to 100 players, 1000 players and the small cost of that expansion is more than covered by the new income.
[REDACTED]
You are right, it seems that it will just fall on deaf ears, I know many of my DMs have started to buy their own source books from Beyond as well even though they are in my campaign.
The problem with your post - beyond the rather silly and conspiratorial nature of your last paragraph and the fact that you imply you have "empirical evidence" when you decidedly are posting speculation - is that you are looking only at increased cost to Wizards for running the server, you are not looking at the opportunity cost of lost proceeds. Anyone with a basic degree of business knowledge knows that lost proceeds are a real cost. And you do not need to look beyond this very thread to see that there would be lost proceeds if Wizards expanded access - OP has already said "I know many of my DMs have started to buy their own source books from Beyond as well even though they are in my campaign"; if the system were changed as OP wishes, those proceeds would have been lost.
Turning again to some things Wizards' President and the Hasbro CEO talked about earlier this week, they presently feel that D&D is undermonetized - it has a massive player base and extremely high levels of name brand recognition, but only a small fraction of those players are actually paying for the game. They are currently seeking new monetization systems that allow them to tap into the untapped potential of the 80% or so of non-paying players. That is why they are not going to freely expand access to new slots--that just would decrease the possibility of monetizing new players; it also is why they are not presently likely to sell higher tier subscriptions with more player sharing, since they are not trying to further increase the burden on the 20% of players who already pay.
Now, you are free to dismiss the above with whatever conspiracy you wish; that does not change the reality of opportunity cost (something children learn about and come to understand in second grade) and Hasbro and Wizards' own recent statements related to the subject of D&D Beyond monetization.
Thx, exactly the situation explained. So rang a bell in my melon too, hasn't this been the thing with the economy of the game since, forever? Players never buy anything. I, however, have a Master Teir sub here and my players insist on using photocopied character sheets. I'm pretty sure my pals rogue isn't AC: 20, but that's how she calculated it on her sheet. I own books, they DLed some PDFs. From, somewhere.
What boggles me though, is when Wgould26 mentions "player base of west marches that are in various sizes some as small as 50-60 players others 2-3 thousand players... ", I mean, how is that possible? And could there be a "critical mass" of players where maybe this is an opportunity? Just thinking outside the box here. imho :)
I'm a member of a discord server with thousands of users that does West Marches games. Not everyone in the server participates in the West Marches. The server also has a strict no-piracy code of conduct. Established DMs there tend to own their own sourcebooks on DDB.
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)