Most of the bundlers offer the option of physical, digital, or both. Although I could see all physical books including a digital code and then the digital only selling at a discount like some ebooks sell for less than the physical version.
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 yes, I do believe free online rules & free digital toolsets exist and are useable. Everything Nexus provides apart from lore & adventures, is already given away for free and has tools that can use it available. They're charging to make it convenient for yourself, but it's 100% optional for their rules system.
That which I listed is everything currently being sold on Demiplane with the options picked that maximize what you get and minimize what you pay.
That's also four completely different game systems (while the Core Books are likely Alien and Mutant and they're based on the same "Year Zero Engine" (YZE) but one is a considerable evolution of the other, though they might be compatible, mechanics of both games systems are under a recently revised YZE SRD). I'm not sure what's being accomplished here with this list. If I walked into a game store and just pick one of everything from ttrpg section, I'd probably be at the high 4 maybe even break 5 figures level.
Is this to compare to the Legendary Bundle on DDB?
That which I listed is everything currently being sold on Demiplane with the options picked that maximize what you get and minimize what you pay.
That's also four completely different game systems (while the Core Books are likely Alien and Mutant and they're based on the same "Year Zero Engine" (YZE) but one is a considerable evolution of the other, though they might be compatible, mechanics of both games systems are under a recently revised YZE SRD). I'm not sure what's being accomplished here with this list. If I walked into a game store and just pick one of everything from ttrpg section, I'd probably be at the high 4 maybe even break 5 figures level.
Is this to compare to the Legendary Bundle on DDB?
That is what you have to buy for options in the character creator that aren't the free options when the character creator is released. And they made it clear that the character creator is going to be designed so it can easier transfer the options between the different game systems.
The first bundle is Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. The second bundle is officiously Pathfinder 2e. The Playtest Rulebook is for Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game. The third bundle is goes to Vampire: The Masquerade. The Core Rulebook is for Hunter: The Reckoning. The first Core Book, the Colonial Marines Operations Manual, and the Destroyer of Worlds scenario is for ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game. And finally, the second Core Book is for Mutant: Year Zero.
And buying a Demiplane Membership would allow you to share the content and save a lot of characters.
Still waiting to see how this would benefit a DM who uses multiple custom rules.
you know, the creative folks who use the rules as a foundation, not the be all and end all. I already have the books I need. I can share D&D stuff through for the little good it does me since I use none of the races or classes.
People are posting trying to sell this, and all I am seeing is fighting over how much stuff costs for things Other Than D&D on a site dedicated to D&D.
what value for those of us who imagine our own worlds, the way Mercer and Greenwood and Gygax and all the others did?
if I am going to keep getting dragged in here by notifications, make it worth the while and address the biggest issue: this kind of thing kills the creativity of DMs and Gamers.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Still waiting to see how this would benefit a DM who uses multiple custom rules.
you know, the creative folks who use the rules as a foundation, not the be all and end all. I already have the books I need. I can share D&D stuff through for the little good it does me since I use none of the races or classes.
It's being opened up to 3PP who also have custom races & classes - it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it eventually gets opened for using your own & maybe even selling homebrew. But your questions are probably best directed at their regular Twitch livestreams where they discuss their future plans and the what they're releasing/redy to release etc. They're very transparent about that stuff. Tell them what you need from a digital toolset & if enough others also want it, it'll get released faster!
Still waiting to see how this would benefit a DM who uses multiple custom rules.
you know, the creative folks who use the rules as a foundation, not the be all and end all. I already have the books I need. I can share D&D stuff through for the little good it does me since I use none of the races or classes.
People are posting trying to sell this, and all I am seeing is fighting over how much stuff costs for things Other Than D&D on a site dedicated to D&D.
what value for those of us who imagine our own worlds, the way Mercer and Greenwood and Gygax and all the others did?
if I am going to keep getting dragged in here by notifications, make it worth the while and address the biggest issue: this kind of thing kills the creativity of DMs and Gamers.
One, turn off the notifications.
Two, obviously this isn't for you.
If you want to run some homogenous overarching mega rules thing? Obviously a ruleset dedicated to a specific game won't serve your needs. I'm sure D&D Beyond isn't serving them.
Cautiously optimistic. On the bullish side, a one stop shop to let me build characters using the best third-party splat material could indeed be useful (and may increase the chances of getting a DM to allow the best stuff.) On the bearish side, platforms like this live and die based on their content curation - not just the low-hanging obvious things like deplatforming hate and labelling obscenity and the like, but the far harder task of making the good stuff easy to find. Sturgeon's Law continues to be a thing after all.
Still waiting to see how this would benefit a DM who uses multiple custom rules.
you know, the creative folks who use the rules as a foundation, not the be all and end all. I already have the books I need. I can share D&D stuff through for the little good it does me since I use none of the races or classes.
People are posting trying to sell this, and all I am seeing is fighting over how much stuff costs for things Other Than D&D on a site dedicated to D&D.
what value for those of us who imagine our own worlds, the way Mercer and Greenwood and Gygax and all the others did?
if I am going to keep getting dragged in here by notifications, make it worth the while and address the biggest issue: this kind of thing kills the creativity of DMs and Gamers.
One, turn off the notifications.
Two, obviously this isn't for you.
If you want to run some homogenous overarching mega rules thing? Obviously a ruleset dedicated to a specific game won't serve your needs. I'm sure D&D Beyond isn't serving them.
You would be correct, and that was before WotC bought it.
Trying to sell me a different version of the same thing that likely will have the same issues?
and where did you get this “overarching mega rules” bit — I would be satisfied with the just the available options already in the books and the ability to create my own classes and modify spells and the like. Can’t do the classes (because they are not subclasses) here, don’t have the spell point system here, don’t have sanity here. Things the people who made this new one didn’t put into the set up here before they sold it.
Now the big deal is they are doing it again but for other game systems! Oh, frabjous joy, caillou callay!
It asks if it affects me — and it does. Because it is yet another limitation placed on the digital play space for *this game*, where the ability of creatives is limited suddenly tot he options that the digital folks behind it fee are important — not the broader player base.
It means that there is going ot be one way to play all of those games online, and if you don’t like it, well, you don’t get to play with others online. You don’t get to use the nifty tools.
Feeling cranky that I am cutting this down? Well, imagine how folks here feel about how you are cutting down this place.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I too would like to see more flexibility to create homebrew content online, and even sell it. But there is zero chance that any website will be able to accommodate 100% freedom to create custom rules unless it gives you access to programing code. MySpace and Roll20 do this to some extent, but it is difficult to learn all the tricks of coding a game system. And even they still have some built in limits do to their toolset. Short of learning a programing language and creating your specific set of rules there will always be some limits to your creativity.
BUT you can do a great deal within DND Beyond. For example sanity points can be tracked in the Notes section of the character sheet. Sorcerers have spell points, so you could probably hack that into all spell casting subclasses and just use them instead of spell slots. Sure it will not automatically adjust when you click on the cast button, but you can do the math as if it was an offline game and have the Spell Point total saved between sessions.
Adding the ability to homebrew classes and spells should be low hanging fruit for DND Beyond. However, they do have a limited budget for coding so they will have to work on it on the side while focusing on releasing each new official rules set that players will buy. Maybe we can get a big group of people to request more homebrew flexibility and beat this website to the finish line.
Overall negative impact on everyone in the hobby. It's another walled garden that just further splits the party.
Just like all of the video streaming services reinventing the stupid cable network model, this is going to force everyone to pay multiple times for content and/or multiple subscriptions fees to play with different groups. DDB is also a symptom of this issue.
I too would like to see more flexibility to create homebrew content online, and even sell it. But there is zero chance that any website will be able to accommodate 100% freedom to create custom rules unless it gives you access to programing code. MySpace and Roll20 do this to some extent, but it is difficult to learn all the tricks of coding a game system. And even they still have some built in limits do to their toolset. Short of learning a programing language and creating your specific set of rules there will always be some limits to your creativity.
BUT you can do a great deal within DND Beyond. For example sanity points can be tracked in the Notes section of the character sheet. Sorcerers have spell points, so you could probably hack that into all spell casting subclasses and just use them instead of spell slots. Sure it will not automatically adjust when you click on the cast button, but you can do the math as if it was an offline game and have the Spell Point total saved between sessions.
Adding the ability to homebrew classes and spells should be low hanging fruit for DND Beyond. However, they do have a limited budget for coding so they will have to work on it on the side while focusing on releasing each new official rules set that players will buy. Maybe we can get a big group of people to request more homebrew flexibility and beat this website to the finish line.
All excellent points and some creative thinking. I will note that I use Sanity heavily, and applying madness effects is difficult through DDB in part because they don't track it as a regular score. As with everything, there are some dependencies that come into play (and they still have to fix the ableism).
Sorcery Spell points do not operate the same way and hacking would require taking something away in order to achieve it -- for nearly every subclass in the game.
In both cases though, again, very creative thinking. I like it.
The issue, though, is as I mentioned previously: unless these designers build that capacity into the tools (unless they program it to work that way), they will always be a functionally limiting system -- and ultimately cause harm to the game -- because they are going to be essentially forcing people to use and structure and set up things in a manner that persistently reduces all the many variables down to a lowest common denominator in artistic expression.
WHich is't a horrible thing if your focus is on being a player -- it becomes a min-maxer heaven, and discourages the creation of more unique and interesting characters.
But for DMs, whose Primary Charge is to Create a New World, it becomes a slap in the face, a way of saying what they can and cannot do that is more restrictive than the rules themselves, and so harms the usefulness of the overall tool, the game at large (regardless of the game, except maybe for paranoia), and so is far less useful.
That said, my underlying point of that post was that people are coming here to rag on DDB and say how it sucks because here's a new thing. Which is something they can do, but dang it is rude as hell and disrespectful.
I am well aware that DDB isn't going to magically find a way to make what I want possible -- that isn't a realistic expectation. But neither is one that says that other systems are going to be an improvement on it. Indeed, I would say they are ultimately working to make it more complex than it needs to be, but that is what they do (computer programmers).
in the end, I have no dog in this hunt, and I am slowly moving away from the big name virtual tabletops because they make the claim that they meet my needs but all seem to fail because they are trying to be everything for everyone. There is a buttload of money in it, though, and who am I to say don't get coin when I have as my first rule don't work for free and my work is explaining all those things like racism, homophobia, ableism, et al.
Kinda silly for me to do that.
There are a lot of people who got active inthe forums recently -- like me -- but they are angry and hostile and they are taking it out on Wizards. It is like those silly fights over Apple versus Microsoft, lol.
I will still keep telling DDB to add in Sanity (and fix the madness tables), and to put in spell points, and to allow us to homebrew new classes and more -- because there is a slim chance that they will and I would like it.
I mean, I use DDB for basically two reasons: to be able to share the books I have bought digitally with players (which includes kids who couldn't afford them), and, starting this year, the forums.
All the rest of the stuff is pretty much useful to me only for ideas, and none of it is truly useful to me for actually playing the game. I asked "what can the system do for me", and thus far no one has really come out and said the truth: nothing.
It isn't meant for experienced, long term players who want to have and fight for their own custom worlds that most will only ever share with two or three other people.
My thinking is, if they want to do good for the game and make a crap ton more money, then they *should* make it to work for folks like me. Because then everyone else will be abe to do the same thing, and the game will grow richer and more varied -- just as it did for all the years that they were the only people playing it and wishing for more.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I like the competition. Much better chance of a high quality product being developed with a variety of people creating different versions. If WotC didn't lease their material to verious online companies, we would not have any options for character creators, let alone digital rule books and integration with VTTs. That said, I have zero reason to believe this new entrant will be better than the current options. But someone will come up with innovations which are better than what already exists, and those innovations will work there way into competitor products eventually.
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Most of the bundlers offer the option of physical, digital, or both. Although I could see all physical books including a digital code and then the digital only selling at a discount like some ebooks sell for less than the physical version.
There's literally free digital toolsets out there to use already:
https://wanderersguide.app/
https://pathbuilder2e.com/
All the rules for free, (including monsters, spells, items etc): https://2e.aonprd.com/
You can already play online, with a toolset, for free without it costing a single penny. And the whole thing is open source on github:
https://github.com/wanderers-guide
https://github.com/Pf2eToolsOrg
So yes, I do believe free online rules & free digital toolsets exist and are useable. Everything Nexus provides apart from lore & adventures, is already given away for free and has tools that can use it available. They're charging to make it convenient for yourself, but it's 100% optional for their rules system.
Hardcover + NEXUS Book Bundle
$114.99
Pathfinder 2e Ultimate Bundle
$1,470.28
Playtest Rulebook
$9.99
Vampire Ultimate Bundle
$179.94
Core Rulebook
$29.99
Core Book
$29.99
Colonial Marines Operations Manual
$24.99
Destroyer of Worlds
$20.99
Core Book
$29.99
Subtotal
$1,911.15
That which I listed is everything currently being sold on Demiplane with the options picked that maximize what you get and minimize what you pay.
That's also four completely different game systems (while the Core Books are likely Alien and Mutant and they're based on the same "Year Zero Engine" (YZE) but one is a considerable evolution of the other, though they might be compatible, mechanics of both games systems are under a recently revised YZE SRD). I'm not sure what's being accomplished here with this list. If I walked into a game store and just pick one of everything from ttrpg section, I'd probably be at the high 4 maybe even break 5 figures level.
Is this to compare to the Legendary Bundle on DDB?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
That is what you have to buy for options in the character creator that aren't the free options when the character creator is released. And they made it clear that the character creator is going to be designed so it can easier transfer the options between the different game systems.
The first bundle is Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. The second bundle is officiously Pathfinder 2e. The Playtest Rulebook is for Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game. The third bundle is goes to Vampire: The Masquerade. The Core Rulebook is for Hunter: The Reckoning. The first Core Book, the Colonial Marines Operations Manual, and the Destroyer of Worlds scenario is for ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game. And finally, the second Core Book is for Mutant: Year Zero.
And buying a Demiplane Membership would allow you to share the content and save a lot of characters.
Still waiting to see how this would benefit a DM who uses multiple custom rules.
you know, the creative folks who use the rules as a foundation, not the be all and end all. I already have the books I need. I can share D&D stuff through for the little good it does me since I use none of the races or classes.
People are posting trying to sell this, and all I am seeing is fighting over how much stuff costs for things Other Than D&D on a site dedicated to D&D.
what value for those of us who imagine our own worlds, the way Mercer and Greenwood and Gygax and all the others did?
if I am going to keep getting dragged in here by notifications, make it worth the while and address the biggest issue: this kind of thing kills the creativity of DMs and Gamers.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
It's being opened up to 3PP who also have custom races & classes - it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it eventually gets opened for using your own & maybe even selling homebrew. But your questions are probably best directed at their regular Twitch livestreams where they discuss their future plans and the what they're releasing/redy to release etc. They're very transparent about that stuff. Tell them what you need from a digital toolset & if enough others also want it, it'll get released faster!
One, turn off the notifications.
Two, obviously this isn't for you.
If you want to run some homogenous overarching mega rules thing? Obviously a ruleset dedicated to a specific game won't serve your needs. I'm sure D&D Beyond isn't serving them.
Cautiously optimistic. On the bullish side, a one stop shop to let me build characters using the best third-party splat material could indeed be useful (and may increase the chances of getting a DM to allow the best stuff.) On the bearish side, platforms like this live and die based on their content curation - not just the low-hanging obvious things like deplatforming hate and labelling obscenity and the like, but the far harder task of making the good stuff easy to find. Sturgeon's Law continues to be a thing after all.
You would be correct, and that was before WotC bought it.
Trying to sell me a different version of the same thing that likely will have the same issues?
and where did you get this “overarching mega rules” bit — I would be satisfied with the just the available options already in the books and the ability to create my own classes and modify spells and the like. Can’t do the classes (because they are not subclasses) here, don’t have the spell point system here, don’t have sanity here. Things the people who made this new one didn’t put into the set up here before they sold it.
Now the big deal is they are doing it again but for other game systems! Oh, frabjous joy, caillou callay!
It asks if it affects me — and it does. Because it is yet another limitation placed on the digital play space for *this game*, where the ability of creatives is limited suddenly tot he options that the digital folks behind it fee are important — not the broader player base.
It means that there is going ot be one way to play all of those games online, and if you don’t like it, well, you don’t get to play with others online. You don’t get to use the nifty tools.
Feeling cranky that I am cutting this down? Well, imagine how folks here feel about how you are cutting down this place.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I too would like to see more flexibility to create homebrew content online, and even sell it. But there is zero chance that any website will be able to accommodate 100% freedom to create custom rules unless it gives you access to programing code. MySpace and Roll20 do this to some extent, but it is difficult to learn all the tricks of coding a game system. And even they still have some built in limits do to their toolset. Short of learning a programing language and creating your specific set of rules there will always be some limits to your creativity.
BUT you can do a great deal within DND Beyond. For example sanity points can be tracked in the Notes section of the character sheet. Sorcerers have spell points, so you could probably hack that into all spell casting subclasses and just use them instead of spell slots. Sure it will not automatically adjust when you click on the cast button, but you can do the math as if it was an offline game and have the Spell Point total saved between sessions.
Adding the ability to homebrew classes and spells should be low hanging fruit for DND Beyond. However, they do have a limited budget for coding so they will have to work on it on the side while focusing on releasing each new official rules set that players will buy. Maybe we can get a big group of people to request more homebrew flexibility and beat this website to the finish line.
Overall negative impact on everyone in the hobby. It's another walled garden that just further splits the party.
Just like all of the video streaming services reinventing the stupid cable network model, this is going to force everyone to pay multiple times for content and/or multiple subscriptions fees to play with different groups. DDB is also a symptom of this issue.
All excellent points and some creative thinking. I will note that I use Sanity heavily, and applying madness effects is difficult through DDB in part because they don't track it as a regular score. As with everything, there are some dependencies that come into play (and they still have to fix the ableism).
Sorcery Spell points do not operate the same way and hacking would require taking something away in order to achieve it -- for nearly every subclass in the game.
In both cases though, again, very creative thinking. I like it.
The issue, though, is as I mentioned previously: unless these designers build that capacity into the tools (unless they program it to work that way), they will always be a functionally limiting system -- and ultimately cause harm to the game -- because they are going to be essentially forcing people to use and structure and set up things in a manner that persistently reduces all the many variables down to a lowest common denominator in artistic expression.
WHich is't a horrible thing if your focus is on being a player -- it becomes a min-maxer heaven, and discourages the creation of more unique and interesting characters.
But for DMs, whose Primary Charge is to Create a New World, it becomes a slap in the face, a way of saying what they can and cannot do that is more restrictive than the rules themselves, and so harms the usefulness of the overall tool, the game at large (regardless of the game, except maybe for paranoia), and so is far less useful.
That said, my underlying point of that post was that people are coming here to rag on DDB and say how it sucks because here's a new thing. Which is something they can do, but dang it is rude as hell and disrespectful.
I am well aware that DDB isn't going to magically find a way to make what I want possible -- that isn't a realistic expectation. But neither is one that says that other systems are going to be an improvement on it. Indeed, I would say they are ultimately working to make it more complex than it needs to be, but that is what they do (computer programmers).
in the end, I have no dog in this hunt, and I am slowly moving away from the big name virtual tabletops because they make the claim that they meet my needs but all seem to fail because they are trying to be everything for everyone. There is a buttload of money in it, though, and who am I to say don't get coin when I have as my first rule don't work for free and my work is explaining all those things like racism, homophobia, ableism, et al.
Kinda silly for me to do that.
There are a lot of people who got active inthe forums recently -- like me -- but they are angry and hostile and they are taking it out on Wizards. It is like those silly fights over Apple versus Microsoft, lol.
I will still keep telling DDB to add in Sanity (and fix the madness tables), and to put in spell points, and to allow us to homebrew new classes and more -- because there is a slim chance that they will and I would like it.
I mean, I use DDB for basically two reasons: to be able to share the books I have bought digitally with players (which includes kids who couldn't afford them), and, starting this year, the forums.
All the rest of the stuff is pretty much useful to me only for ideas, and none of it is truly useful to me for actually playing the game. I asked "what can the system do for me", and thus far no one has really come out and said the truth: nothing.
It isn't meant for experienced, long term players who want to have and fight for their own custom worlds that most will only ever share with two or three other people.
My thinking is, if they want to do good for the game and make a crap ton more money, then they *should* make it to work for folks like me. Because then everyone else will be abe to do the same thing, and the game will grow richer and more varied -- just as it did for all the years that they were the only people playing it and wishing for more.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I like the competition. Much better chance of a high quality product being developed with a variety of people creating different versions. If WotC didn't lease their material to verious online companies, we would not have any options for character creators, let alone digital rule books and integration with VTTs. That said, I have zero reason to believe this new entrant will be better than the current options. But someone will come up with innovations which are better than what already exists, and those innovations will work there way into competitor products eventually.