Seems like there will be character creator options. My challenge and dislike of DnDBeyond is I buy physical copies of the books from my local game store. So If I want to use DNDBeyond I have to essentially buy the book twice. If Demiplane is going to offer a character creator that is cheaper than buying the book twice and/or is not a monthly subscription then I'll be very excited. I prefer to use a character creator. My handwriting is atrocious.
They're not going to be able to publish or off any official options not in the SRD without WotC consent - you'll be able to use SRD options for free, I suspect. For 3rd party options, yes - you will have to buy a Demiplane version of them I suspect. With Paizo & PF2e, you do get a free pdf version in your Paizo account if you buy on Demiplane or a discount on the Demiplane version if you buy from Paizo.
The current PF2e subscription option is to share content with others, same as on here. I don't subscribe, but I find buying from them well worth it as I don't buy the PF2e physical books & the PDFs direct from Paizo, whilst slightly cheaper, aren't particularly readable on my phone, whilst the Demiplane version is fully readable on mobile & there are plans for an app (like DDB currently has). So eventually it'll all be available offline, too.
Seems like there will be character creator options. My challenge and dislike of DnDBeyond is I buy physical copies of the books from my local game store. So If I want to use DNDBeyond I have to essentially buy the book twice. If Demiplane is going to offer a character creator that is cheaper than buying the book twice and/or is not a monthly subscription then I'll be very excited. I prefer to use a character creator. My handwriting is atrocious.
They're not going to be able to publish or off any official options not in the SRD without WotC consent - you'll be able to use SRD options for free, I suspect. For 3rd party options, yes - you will have to buy a Demiplane version of them I suspect. With Paizo & PF2e, you do get a free pdf version in your Paizo account if you buy on Demiplane or a discount on the Demiplane version if you buy from Paizo.
The current PF2e subscription option is to share content with others, same as on here. I don't subscribe, but I find buying from them well worth it as I don't buy the PF2e physical books & the PDFs direct from Paizo, whilst slightly cheaper, aren't particularly readable on my phone, whilst the Demiplane version is fully readable on mobile & there are plans for an app (like DDB currently has). So eventually it'll all be available offline, too.
Yeah, to back this up, when I was looking at what Demiplane offered for Mutant and Alien, their FAQ handles the "can I access the tools for free if I own the physical books" with almost the same verbiage DDB does, though it does say "at this time" which only means they're open to it if someone finds some way of doing that as a viable business model. That could be something like WotC does with the bundles where you purchase both the book and digital toolset access at once.
They need to print books with GUIDS that can be used to redeem the digital copy. This is what Goodman Games does with Dungeon Crawl Classics.
As far as people who already bought the physical book before the books come with codes, you're just sol, there isn't an easy, non-hackable way of proving it's your book.
They need to print books with GUIDS that can be used to redeem the digital copy. This is what Goodman Games does with Dungeon Crawl Classics.
As far as people who already bought the physical book before the books come with codes, you're just sol, there isn't an easy, non-hackable way of proving it's your book.
Nope. This isn't that at all. You get a PDF with a hardcopy, but Goodman Games has its stuff on Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds, buying a Goodman Games Book does not grant you license to the Roll 20 or Fantasy Grounds set up just for the cost of the book. That is what this is.
I don't know if you get Paizo's PDFs with physical book purchase, I'm pretty sure with Free League you do or usually do. Neither are giving DemiPlane Access for the price of purchasing the book.
No one will EVER give free access to their digital toolset for the cost of a physical book. It costs scads of money to create and maintain the digital toolset, software people need to be paid for their time and server/building costs need to be paid.
It. Will. Never. Happen. It SHOULDN'T happen. Please stop asking for it. Pay your fair shot for access to transformative digital toolsets.
I don't know if you get Paizo's PDFs with physical book purchase, I'm pretty sure with Free League you do or usually do. Neither are giving DemiPlane Access for the price of purchasing the book.
I believe you do if you buy direct from Paizo online, but not 100% certain. You 100% do get them if you subscribe to Paizo though. They let you subscribe to physical copies of their book lines so you can get books as they come out - they provide the pdf as soon as the book is shipped, so you can actually start reading it before it arrives. Looking into shipping costs from Paizo, it's really only worth buying directly inside the USA, though.
I don't know if you get Paizo's PDFs with physical book purchase, I'm pretty sure with Free League you do or usually do. Neither are giving DemiPlane Access for the price of purchasing the book.
I believe you do if you buy direct from Paizo online, but not 100% certain. You 100% do get them if you subscribe to Paizo though. They let you subscribe to physical copies of their book lines so you can get books as they come out - they provide the pdf as soon as the book is shipped, so you can actually start reading it before it arrives. Looking into shipping costs from Paizo, it's really only worth buying directly inside the USA, though.
When I bought Starfinder's core rule book awhile back it gave me a PDF copy from buying it directly from their website. That said I have a PF2E second hand so no idea on their flagship title. And Starfinder has not been added as far as I can see to Demiplane.
I remember when phone companies use to say the same about having to pay for text and getting only so many minutes a month for cell access.
You're more saying you have a landline so you should get a cell phone ... which you can now do, but a lot more expensive than your phone plan cost back when cell phones were a new tool and most folks were tied into landlines. "The future" will cost more than the present cost of a hardback.
I remember when phone companies use to say the same about having to pay for text and getting only so many minutes a month for cell access.
The digital toolset gets zero dollars from hardback sales.
Zero dollars.
You can't operate an expensive software program and massed storage for customer data for zero dollars.
You want a snazzy digital toolset? Pay for it. You also want hardback books? Pay for those. They're separate products and they always will be.
Not only that, but Paizo & Demiplane have come to an agreement where you get a free pdf from Paizo or a discount on the Demiplane version depending on which of the two you buy your digital copy from. This meant I got a hundreds of £££ of Paizo pdfs on humble bundle for around £20 - https://www.humblebundle.com/books/so-you-wanna-try-out-pathfinder-paizo-books and as soon as the PDFs were unlocked on Paizo's site & they've been doing pretty regular humble bundles with different content. Do people really expect all of that super cheap content to also fully unlock digital toolset & mobile device reformatted versions with no additional cost?
And as mentioned above, when buying new direct from Paizo, they give you free pdfs. These will also give you a Demiplane discount. If you just want the rules, these are entirely free (and not just the core rule book, but all the rules from every book) legally, here: https://2e.aonprd.com/ - that's the official SRD, licenced & supported by Paizo, but most of the content there is free for community reuse (and so you can look it up on Demiplane, too, without paying iirc). It's the lore & "fluff" they make money on, as well as the - importantly here, art & layout, which are the things Demiplane licences from Paizo that aren't free elsewhere.
Can't speak for other systems, but all the rules (including spells, items etc ) are free online for pf2e. Comparing Paizo & Demiplane to phone companies is a long way off - they've got to make their money somewhere!
I remember when phone companies use to say the same about having to pay for text and getting only so many minutes a month for cell access.
The digital toolset gets zero dollars from hardback sales.
Zero dollars.
You can't operate an expensive software program and massed storage for customer data for zero dollars.
You want a snazzy digital toolset? Pay for it. You also want hardback books? Pay for those. They're separate products and they always will be.
you seem to equate digital content with digital toolset. Not exactly the same.
Well, that's the thing though?
In terms of how D&D Beyond presents it's product, they are intertwined. Ditto with the Nexus concept on Demiplane. Ditto with Fantasy Grounds. Ditto with Roll20.
D&D Beyond allows people to buy compendium content only, aka it's just the content with zero interaction with the character creator toolset. Strixhaven as an example is 20 bucks for the info, which is is in line with Paizo and how they charge 20 for PDFs.
If you want digital toolset access? It's 30. Roll20? 30. Fantasy Grounds? Still 30.
Demiplane is now the digital toolset for Paizos Pathfinder 2e. You can buy a 20 dollar PDF, or you can buy a 35 dollar thing on Demiplane. What's interesting there is if you already owned the PDF, you can get a discount on the Demiplane content. If you buy the content on demiplane, you just get the PDFs for free. The same is true for Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 when you buy the content through them. If you already owned the PDFs on Paizo.com, and then buy the fantasy/roll20 content, you get a discount. That said they do charge more for their content.
I think Yurei is coming off strong, but I don't exactly disagree. When you're paying for the content on Roll 20, Fantasy Grounds, D&D Beyond, Demiplane or any other service? Part of the money you're paying is to have the integration on X service. That integration isn't free. It's why I highlighted price points. Every single service charges more, and D&D Beyond/Paizo offer book only content(in different ways mind you, but it is still offered), but the second you want to use their official toolsets? Time to pony up.
How they present it, and how they could present it, well that's the thing isn't it. Needs one of the vendors to change up the paradigm that draws the crowds, then suddenly they all will do it. Once upon a time all MMO's were pay to play... no one could even image a 'free to play' model... they said it's never going to happen ... before it happened.
How they present it, and how they could present it, well that's the thing isn't it. Needs one of the vendors to change up the paradigm that draws the crowds, then suddenly they all will do it. Once upon a time all MMO's were pay to play... no one could even image a 'free to play' model... they said it's never going to happen ... before it happened.
They're already giving it away free, their official SRD has all of the actual rules, for free, here: https://2e.aonprd.com/
There's more than one free online character builder, Pathbuilder & Wanderer's Guide are the major ones. There's even a couple of Discord bots for rules lookup & things like tracking initiative for pbp games. They already have a 100% free to play model, with community tools that offer similar functions to a lot of Demiplane functionality.
I'm not sure how much more you expect them to give away for free.
I don't expect anything for free. Do you really believe free-to-play is free... I know you don't. Costs can be 'redistributed'... and wallah... suddenly you get a free PDF of the physical book you bought. Want to use a toolset with it? That's not free, of course... it's like saying cabs should be free because it doesn't cost you anything to walk to the airport.
So could the digital toolset verify through an API call to the publisher the ownership of the digital content that was verified via GUID from the physical book that was purchased and redeemed,? It could work that way, or other ways too. If one publisher/toolset vendor set up such a system, and it worked and was appealing to the players and drew them, then others would follow suit. Don't lock your brain out of possibilities.
Could it ever happen... depends on who's in charge... and if they are of the mindset of 'what could be' instead of 'what can never be'.
Not interested rn (I’m not a big Pathfinder fan) but that could change. I mean, you never know. I did like some of the third party stuff from Kobold Press.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
I don't expect anything for free. Do you really believe free-to-play is free... I know you don't. Costs can be 'redistributed'... and wallah... suddenly you get a free PDF of the physical book you bought. Want to use a toolset with it? That's not free, of course... it's like saying cabs should be free because it doesn't cost you anything to walk to the airport.
So could the digital toolset verify through an API call to the publisher the ownership of the digital content that was verified via GUID from the physical book that was purchased and redeemed,? It could work that way, or other ways too. If one publisher/toolset vendor set up such a system, and it worked and was appealing to the players and drew them, then others would follow suit. Don't lock your brain out of possibilities.
Could it ever happen... depends on who's in charge... and if they are of the mindset of 'what could be' instead of 'what can never be'.
Hot take: digital-only players do not want digital-physical bundling. If I had to pay seventy-five dollars per book on this platform instead of thirty but got the "bonus" of a mutilated tree corpse sent to my home whenever I did, I'd own drastically less content in this system. I don't want "real" books, and I shouldn't be forced to buy them because users of the outdated physical media want access to the digital toolset for free-ninety-nine. You go ahead and buy physical media. Enjoy it. Use it all you like. Don't shove it down the throats of the rest of us.
I generally ban the massively overpowered third party content for players. Monsters and NPCs, on the other hand...
The biggest value from this project is having a backup plan after WotC bans the use of any 5e content not included in the SRD and shuts down DnD Beyond. Hopefully this doesn't occur until well after 7e is launched a couple decades from now.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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They're not going to be able to publish or off any official options not in the SRD without WotC consent - you'll be able to use SRD options for free, I suspect. For 3rd party options, yes - you will have to buy a Demiplane version of them I suspect. With Paizo & PF2e, you do get a free pdf version in your Paizo account if you buy on Demiplane or a discount on the Demiplane version if you buy from Paizo.
The current PF2e subscription option is to share content with others, same as on here. I don't subscribe, but I find buying from them well worth it as I don't buy the PF2e physical books & the PDFs direct from Paizo, whilst slightly cheaper, aren't particularly readable on my phone, whilst the Demiplane version is fully readable on mobile & there are plans for an app (like DDB currently has). So eventually it'll all be available offline, too.
Yeah, to back this up, when I was looking at what Demiplane offered for Mutant and Alien, their FAQ handles the "can I access the tools for free if I own the physical books" with almost the same verbiage DDB does, though it does say "at this time" which only means they're open to it if someone finds some way of doing that as a viable business model. That could be something like WotC does with the bundles where you purchase both the book and digital toolset access at once.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
They need to print books with GUIDS that can be used to redeem the digital copy. This is what Goodman Games does with Dungeon Crawl Classics.
As far as people who already bought the physical book before the books come with codes, you're just sol, there isn't an easy, non-hackable way of proving it's your book.
Nope. This isn't that at all. You get a PDF with a hardcopy, but Goodman Games has its stuff on Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds, buying a Goodman Games Book does not grant you license to the Roll 20 or Fantasy Grounds set up just for the cost of the book. That is what this is.
I don't know if you get Paizo's PDFs with physical book purchase, I'm pretty sure with Free League you do or usually do. Neither are giving DemiPlane Access for the price of purchasing the book.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
No one will EVER give free access to their digital toolset for the cost of a physical book. It costs scads of money to create and maintain the digital toolset, software people need to be paid for their time and server/building costs need to be paid.
It. Will. Never. Happen. It SHOULDN'T happen. Please stop asking for it. Pay your fair shot for access to transformative digital toolsets.
Please do not contact or message me.
I believe you do if you buy direct from Paizo online, but not 100% certain. You 100% do get them if you subscribe to Paizo though. They let you subscribe to physical copies of their book lines so you can get books as they come out - they provide the pdf as soon as the book is shipped, so you can actually start reading it before it arrives. Looking into shipping costs from Paizo, it's really only worth buying directly inside the USA, though.
I remember when phone companies use to say the same about having to pay for text and getting only so many minutes a month for cell access.
When I bought Starfinder's core rule book awhile back it gave me a PDF copy from buying it directly from their website. That said I have a PF2E second hand so no idea on their flagship title. And Starfinder has not been added as far as I can see to Demiplane.
You're more saying you have a landline so you should get a cell phone ... which you can now do, but a lot more expensive than your phone plan cost back when cell phones were a new tool and most folks were tied into landlines. "The future" will cost more than the present cost of a hardback.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The digital toolset gets zero dollars from hardback sales.
Zero dollars.
You can't operate an expensive software program and massed storage for customer data for zero dollars.
You want a snazzy digital toolset? Pay for it. You also want hardback books? Pay for those. They're separate products and they always will be.
Please do not contact or message me.
you seem to equate digital content with digital toolset. Not exactly the same.
Not only that, but Paizo & Demiplane have come to an agreement where you get a free pdf from Paizo or a discount on the Demiplane version depending on which of the two you buy your digital copy from. This meant I got a hundreds of £££ of Paizo pdfs on humble bundle for around £20 - https://www.humblebundle.com/books/so-you-wanna-try-out-pathfinder-paizo-books and as soon as the PDFs were unlocked on Paizo's site & they've been doing pretty regular humble bundles with different content. Do people really expect all of that super cheap content to also fully unlock digital toolset & mobile device reformatted versions with no additional cost?
And as mentioned above, when buying new direct from Paizo, they give you free pdfs. These will also give you a Demiplane discount. If you just want the rules, these are entirely free (and not just the core rule book, but all the rules from every book) legally, here: https://2e.aonprd.com/ - that's the official SRD, licenced & supported by Paizo, but most of the content there is free for community reuse (and so you can look it up on Demiplane, too, without paying iirc). It's the lore & "fluff" they make money on, as well as the - importantly here, art & layout, which are the things Demiplane licences from Paizo that aren't free elsewhere.
Can't speak for other systems, but all the rules (including spells, items etc ) are free online for pf2e. Comparing Paizo & Demiplane to phone companies is a long way off - they've got to make their money somewhere!
Well, that's the thing though?
In terms of how D&D Beyond presents it's product, they are intertwined. Ditto with the Nexus concept on Demiplane. Ditto with Fantasy Grounds. Ditto with Roll20.
D&D Beyond allows people to buy compendium content only, aka it's just the content with zero interaction with the character creator toolset. Strixhaven as an example is 20 bucks for the info, which is is in line with Paizo and how they charge 20 for PDFs.
If you want digital toolset access? It's 30. Roll20? 30. Fantasy Grounds? Still 30.
Demiplane is now the digital toolset for Paizos Pathfinder 2e. You can buy a 20 dollar PDF, or you can buy a 35 dollar thing on Demiplane. What's interesting there is if you already owned the PDF, you can get a discount on the Demiplane content. If you buy the content on demiplane, you just get the PDFs for free. The same is true for Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 when you buy the content through them. If you already owned the PDFs on Paizo.com, and then buy the fantasy/roll20 content, you get a discount. That said they do charge more for their content.
I think Yurei is coming off strong, but I don't exactly disagree. When you're paying for the content on Roll 20, Fantasy Grounds, D&D Beyond, Demiplane or any other service? Part of the money you're paying is to have the integration on X service. That integration isn't free. It's why I highlighted price points. Every single service charges more, and D&D Beyond/Paizo offer book only content(in different ways mind you, but it is still offered), but the second you want to use their official toolsets? Time to pony up.
How they present it, and how they could present it, well that's the thing isn't it. Needs one of the vendors to change up the paradigm that draws the crowds, then suddenly they all will do it. Once upon a time all MMO's were pay to play... no one could even image a 'free to play' model... they said it's never going to happen ... before it happened.
They're already giving it away free, their official SRD has all of the actual rules, for free, here: https://2e.aonprd.com/
There's more than one free online character builder, Pathbuilder & Wanderer's Guide are the major ones. There's even a couple of Discord bots for rules lookup & things like tracking initiative for pbp games. They already have a 100% free to play model, with community tools that offer similar functions to a lot of Demiplane functionality.
I'm not sure how much more you expect them to give away for free.
I don't expect anything for free. Do you really believe free-to-play is free... I know you don't. Costs can be 'redistributed'... and wallah... suddenly you get a free PDF of the physical book you bought. Want to use a toolset with it? That's not free, of course... it's like saying cabs should be free because it doesn't cost you anything to walk to the airport.
So could the digital toolset verify through an API call to the publisher the ownership of the digital content that was verified via GUID from the physical book that was purchased and redeemed,? It could work that way, or other ways too. If one publisher/toolset vendor set up such a system, and it worked and was appealing to the players and drew them, then others would follow suit. Don't lock your brain out of possibilities.
Could it ever happen... depends on who's in charge... and if they are of the mindset of 'what could be' instead of 'what can never be'.
Not interested rn (I’m not a big Pathfinder fan) but that could change. I mean, you never know. I did like some of the third party stuff from Kobold Press.
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
Hot take: digital-only players do not want digital-physical bundling. If I had to pay seventy-five dollars per book on this platform instead of thirty but got the "bonus" of a mutilated tree corpse sent to my home whenever I did, I'd own drastically less content in this system. I don't want "real" books, and I shouldn't be forced to buy them because users of the outdated physical media want access to the digital toolset for free-ninety-nine. You go ahead and buy physical media. Enjoy it. Use it all you like. Don't shove it down the throats of the rest of us.
Please do not contact or message me.
A 5e Nexus on Demiplane, with matchmaking and built in dice roller and audio/video, is a very interesting proposition indeed.
I didn't think this day would come. I imagine the 5e SRD going to CC licence was like Christmas coming early for Adam and co!
Now they just have to get one of the big 3rd party players onboard, emulate what they already did here and continue to update the product.
I generally ban the massively overpowered third party content for players. Monsters and NPCs, on the other hand...
The biggest value from this project is having a backup plan after WotC bans the use of any 5e content not included in the SRD and shuts down DnD Beyond. Hopefully this doesn't occur until well after 7e is launched a couple decades from now.