My suggestion is to never buy digital from a company like WotC. They are constantly altering their products post-release to appease sensitivity readers. Whatever you think you're buying today will be altered. A few words cut here. A few phrases altered there. The product you paid for may become unrecognizable. "We can't say this. We can't say that. Someone may be offended." You keep removing "problematic" words from the English language and from media. Every word is problematic to someone. When will it end?
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself.”
My suggestion is to never buy digital from a company like WotC. They are constantly altering their products post-release to appease sensitivity readers. Whatever you think you're buying today will be altered. A few words cut here. A few phrases altered there. The product you paid for may become unrecognizable. "We can't say this. We can't say that. Someone may be offended." You keep removing "problematic" words from the English language and from media. When will it end?
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself.”
-- George Orwell, 1984
You can just, scan your book yourself and turn it into a PDF for your own personal consumption.
It's a temporary service, we only need to look at Xbox Live to see the truth of the matter. It's a fallacious argument to say that because an entity invested so much into a thing, that its going to stay.'
Xbox live seems like a counterargument to me. It's a service that's been there since what, the early 2000s? Microsoft are, like wizards, heavily invested in the service. It's pretty clear it's not going anywhere as long as MS are in the video game business at all. (Yes, they renamed it, and remodeled it a bit into the bottom tier of game pass, but it's still there.)
Stadia was like that, Google put tens of millions into Stadia, it did not stay.
Google put relatively tiny amounts of money into Stadia. Google is also a business with the attention span of a magpie (or a PC) in a dragon horde (Shiny! Wait, over there, other shiny!), so people didn't trust them to be in it for the long haul. And they weren't. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but they could've known that, and stuck it out until customers decided they were serious. Instead, they pulled the plug before the game studios they bought could even finish a single release.
All the evidence suggests WotC are more like Microsoft than they are like Google here.
You would be surprised how many digital products Xbox had that are no longer available or accessible. Xbox live still exists for sure, but hundreds to thousands of products that are digital are unusable. Stadia was still millions of dollars; it doesn't matter the ratio. All digital products are equally expendable.
It's a temporary service, we only need to look at Xbox Live to see the truth of the matter. It's a fallacious argument to say that because an entity invested so much into a thing, that its going to stay. Stadia was like that, Google put tens of millions into Stadia, it did not stay. Lack of ownership is a valid argument to be afraid if they feel the investment will not yield a return. You said it yourself, this is a live service, buying into it means paying to get something in return. But that is not the end of it. Eventually the market maxes out, the good will might run out from bad choices, and the market demands impact the willingness to buy into this kind of entertainment. Neither you, nor I, can see the future. We can only see what we see, extinction of a digital product can happen and should be accounted for by consumers prior to purchasing a digital product. For me, I could live with that if the price is right since I have physical copies. But I don't want to buy the same thing twice, even with the service.
No one can see the future, but we can see the past. This is not some untested program like Stadia, which gambled unsuccessfully on creating a new market. D&D Beyond is the inheritor of a sixteen year legacy of Wizards’ online digital toolsets. It is a proven successful business model for a game that has been consistently showing growth (even during the OGL issue, Beyond gained more subscribers than it lost).
We know Wizards has a history of maintaining digital tools for the entire length of the edition, and even beyond (though with reduced support) - they kept their 4e tools running as long as the underlying Microsoft system allowed and give folks plenty of warning to archive their characters (and the entirety of 4e content, if they so chose).
So, while no one can accurately predict the future, when making predictions, you should use relevant data points. Trying to extrapolate a future for Beyond from Stadia is bad analytics - an unproven product for a market that does not exist, by a company that can throw huge piles of money at potential failures is a lot different from a product in a proven product in a growing market, by a cash-strapped company that can only afford big investments if they are committed to making them work. And, unlike Stadia, we have a general idea of when the ******** will receive lesser support - when 5e dies. Considering they are renewing their commitment to 5e this year, those books likely have at least 5-10 years, if past trends on editions hold true. Then, once the tools do die, folks will either be moving on to 6e, so the lease becomes less valuable to them, or they’ll almost certainly have enough warning to database their content.
Now, whether an expected 5-10+ year lease is worth it, that is something each player should decide. But, to me, Wizards has over a decade-and-a-half of proven commitment to their digital tools. That is more than enough to evidence long-term stability and make me comfortable with the digital release. Perhaps that metric is different from others (though, I would hope no one is avoiding digital purchases because of bad Stadia-based analysis).
I don't doubt its experience, or its product, I doubt its longevity. I am new to DnD Beyond, looking around I am less than impressed. I came in expecting to buy tons and walked away with nothing. Coke isn't wealthy because they sell bottles, its wealthy because it sells drinks. What I'm seeing on DnD beyond is bottles for sale, not the drink within. If I'm just starting this hobby, buying a digital copy is extremely helpful and fast way to get started. But if I've been in the hobby for the last two decades? I already own the book, I don't feel enticed to be on here. I might also buy secondhand books if I feel new ones are outrageously priced. DnD Beyond feels like offering me an endless supply of cups, but nothing to really drink, from my anecdotal perspective. Short term success in selling cups is great, but I only need so many.
If you’ve got a local group it doesn’t offer much, but if your group is online the value shoots up. And online play has blossomed in the past few years.
The core issue isn't how much a product cost in the past, it's how much it's likely to cost in the future, and how much revenue it's likely to pull in. For books where Wizards still has the layout documents, the cost of turning it into a PDF for sale is very low, so unless you are looking for a specific printing (they're going to use the most recent version of the file unless there's really compelling reason to do something else) or they messed up the rights (and thus selling it would be illegal or expensive), they have no reason not to make it available in backorder.
The core issue isn't how much a product cost in the past, it's how much it's likely to cost in the future, and how much revenue it's likely to pull in. For books where Wizards still has the layout documents, the cost of turning it into a PDF for sale is very low, so unless you are looking for a specific printing (they're going to use the most recent version of the file unless there's really compelling reason to do something else) or they messed up the rights (and thus selling it would be illegal or expensive), they have no reason not to make it available in backorder.
Making your own PDF is also both legal and easy. So if you own a physical copy and as long as you aren't distributing it, you can do what you wish.
I don't doubt its experience, or its product, I doubt its longevity. I am new to DnD Beyond, looking around I am less than impressed. I came in expecting to buy tons and walked away with nothing. Coke isn't wealthy because they sell bottles, it’s wealthy because it sells drinks. What I'm seeing on DnD beyond is bottles for sale, not the drink within. If I'm just starting this hobby, buying a digital copy is extremely helpful and fast way to get started. But if I've been in the hobby for the last two decades? I already own the book, I don't feel enticed to be on here. I might also buy secondhand books if I feel new ones are outrageously priced. DnD Beyond feels like offering me an endless supply of cups, but nothing to really drink, from my anecdotal perspective. Short term success in selling cups is great, but I only need so many.
This this analogy does not hold water (pun intended). This is not Wizards offering lesser content - you are getting the exact same content (all the rules text from your purchase book)… and more in the form of digital integration with the character and encounter builder, online access from anywhere, a search option, etc. Saying you are getting an empty glass borders on nonsensical.
Now, if you do not use the digital tools (or if you are patient enough to manually enter everything into homebrew), then that product might not be the right option for you. But it still is the right option for a whole bunch of people - so you cannot really say it is “empty.”
Making your own PDF is also both legal and easy. So if you own a physical copy and as long as you aren't distributing it, you can do what you wish.
I would not call scanning a physical book easy. Sure, it's a fairly mechanical process, but unless you have hardware designed to do it an automated manner (which likely requires destroying the book) it's quite time consuming and produces an inferior product. I would much rather pay an online store $15 to get a high quality pdf than spend three hours making my own low quality pdf.
The core issue isn't how much a product cost in the past, it's how much it's likely to cost in the future, and how much revenue it's likely to pull in. For books where Wizards still has the layout documents, the cost of turning it into a PDF for sale is very low, so unless you are looking for a specific printing (they're going to use the most recent version of the file unless there's really compelling reason to do something else) or they messed up the rights (and thus selling it would be illegal or expensive), they have no reason not to make it available in backorder.
Making your own PDF is also both legal and easy. So if you own a physical copy and as long as you aren't distributing it, you can do what you wish.
If someone owns a hard copy (as we all should, for the reasons given about wotc behaviour), and is not planning on distributing copies illegally, why on earth would they destroy the hard copy to make a .pdf?
If someone owns a hard copy (as we all should, for the reasons given about wotc behaviour), and is not planning on distributing copies illegally, why on earth would they destroy the hard copy to make a .pdf?
I assume this is responding to my comment about destroying the hard copy, even though it's not quoted? The issue is that paper feeders don't generally like bound books, so you'd have to cut off the spine (turning it into looseleaf pages) to run it through an automated scanner. You could manually open the book and scan it, but flattening it enough to produce a good scan, over the number of pages involved, will likely destroy the spine anyway.
There's always hand scanners, though those have their own limitations.
Sure. I suspect you can scan a book with a cell phone if you don't mind the quality you get as a result. The problem is that scanning a book would really prefer the pages be flat, and Wizards (like most publishers) does not use a lay-flat binding, so to actually flatten the pages you have to break the spine.
If someone owns a hard copy (as we all should, for the reasons given about wotc behaviour), and is not planning on distributing copies illegally, why on earth would they destroy the hard copy to make a .pdf?
I assume this is responding to my comment about destroying the hard copy, even though it's not quoted? The issue is that paper feeders don't generally like bound books, so you'd have to cut off the spine (turning it into looseleaf pages) to run it through an automated scanner. You could manually open the book and scan it, but flattening it enough to produce a good scan, over the number of pages involved, will likely destroy the spine anyway.
Yeah, I agree with you. I don't understand the logic of tearing apart a hard copy to make a soft copy that you can't legally distribute. Chances are a player (or DM) is only accessing a small section of any book during a session, and it is way easier to read a full size copy compared to try to read it on a 7 x 5 screen, or maybe a 2 x 2 screen.
It's a temporary service, we only need to look at Xbox Live to see the truth of the matter. It's a fallacious argument to say that because an entity invested so much into a thing, that its going to stay.'
Xbox live seems like a counterargument to me. It's a service that's been there since what, the early 2000s? Microsoft are, like wizards, heavily invested in the service. It's pretty clear it's not going anywhere as long as MS are in the video game business at all. (Yes, they renamed it, and remodeled it a bit into the bottom tier of game pass, but it's still there.)
You would be surprised how many digital products Xbox had that are no longer available or accessible. Xbox live still exists for sure, but hundreds to thousands of products that are digital are unusable.
I mean it's partly a digital storefront, selling thousands of items from hundreds of studios, many of which have gone under, or have their own sublicensing to worry about. And AFAIK, everything I've ever bought from them, I can still redownload, assuming it works on the console I'm on. (And they've made significant attempts to keep that possible.)
Given that, of course things are going to become unavailable. What WotC are doing is closer to the MS first-party games, which AFAIK have remained available continuously for the consoles they run on. (But I admit I haven't checked, nor can I be bothered to just to win internet points.)
It does raise one question: how are things going to work over the long term with the third-party books?
Stadia was still millions of dollars; it doesn't matter the ratio. All digital products are equally expendable.
They really aren't. They're not eternal, but track records matter. Google, who can't even stick to a single chat system for more than five minutes, are much less trustworthy than, well, pretty much everybody established. (And Stadia was particularly speculative even for a google product.)
It does raise one question: how are things going to work over the long term with the third-party books?
I expect we would see something similar to what happened when the Rick & Morty license expired - Wizards lost the right to sell new products, but those who already purchased the content retained access to it. I am guessing Wizards structured similar licenses with the third party publishers.
It does raise one question: how are things going to work over the long term with the third-party books?
I expect we would see something similar to what happened when the Rick & Morty license expired - Wizards lost the right to sell new products, but those who already purchased the content retained access to it. I am guessing Wizards structured similar licenses with the third party publishers.
That seems likely. I'd completely forgotten Rick and Morty D&D existed.
If someone owns a hard copy (as we all should, for the reasons given about wotc behaviour), and is not planning on distributing copies illegally, why on earth would they destroy the hard copy to make a .pdf?
I assume this is responding to my comment about destroying the hard copy, even though it's not quoted? The issue is that paper feeders don't generally like bound books, so you'd have to cut off the spine (turning it into looseleaf pages) to run it through an automated scanner. You could manually open the book and scan it, but flattening it enough to produce a good scan, over the number of pages involved, will likely destroy the spine anyway.
Yeah, I agree with you. I don't understand the logic of tearing apart a hard copy to make a soft copy that you can't legally distribute. Chances are a player (or DM) is only accessing a small section of any book during a session, and it is way easier to read a full size copy compared to try to read it on a 7 x 5 screen, or maybe a 2 x 2 screen.
Location, location, location. A gaming table is not always the best place for books, and table real estate is not always in plentiful supply. For example, MM is nice book to read at home, but it is a completely utter shit tool at the table due to how clunky and inconvenient it is. I did not realize how absolutely stupid the MM is until I lugged it around, brought it to my friend's house, sat down, and then realized I am never going to crank open that book at a game, especially when I can whip out my phone for Beyond's database, or use Gale Force 9's cards if I plan my encounters in advance and do not want to use my phone for both referencing stat blocks and running the adventure at the same time. If I am cranking open a physical book at the table, it is going to be an adventure book. For a person who already bought the physical MM, but realized too late it is a shit tool, destroying the physical book is a small price to pay when you can turn it into a tool that you will actually use, like a PDF or a series of cropped images of the statblocks. Personally, I would just buy the book again on Beyond or as the monster cards (I got all three formats), but not everyone likes Beyond or Wizards, and/or they might be afraid of keeping track of so many physical cards.
And I imagine for some people, they would not even want to crank open a clunky adventure book. A lot of people have at least two devices (one old and one new phones; one phone and one tablet; or two phones and a tablet; etc.), and running an adventure on one device while referencing stat blocks on another is an extremely clean setup.
@PsyrenXY The contraction is true. Making new books was not the issue - AD&D introduced Barbarians, Acrobats, etc.later after their initial launch, and game grew, created many modules too and other materials and accessories and the game growth did well - my discussion was that today's D&D 5e was catered to players so hard 1) turned off DM's who make the games possible for players to enjoy 2) they gave players so many powers and abilities the challenge of the adventure had been lost.
Challenging PCs who have better abilities is not hard. If your last encounter was too easy, increase their APL for the next one, or use max values instead of average values on the monster statblocks, or both. Both of these work even if you're running a printed module. This grognard "back in my day" insistence that players have it easy now strikes me as little more than laziness.
If anything, upgrading makes things easier on the DM, because the power has been normalized to the more recent releases; you won't have to manage the power disparities of a 2017 Gloomstalker alongside a 2014 Beast Master/Champion Fighter, or a 2020 Mercy Monk alongside a 2014 Open Hand Monk/Thief Rogue etc.
But the risk is not worth it, especially for the price.
Given your specific situation and the effectiveness of alternatives, this conclusion does not follow to me - but it's your decision.
And why should all player characters in a fantasy sword and sorcery setting be able to fly, use any weapon, and wear full plate while casting spells all at level 3? D&D is a fantasy game, not a superhero game.
Late comment, but I think they are going to have to make the 2014 book a legacy book, and just sell and use the new one going forward as the baseline for all products. Hopefully, one of the first products in 2025 will be an update of the rest of the subclasses that are not in the new PHB. They just need to add an option in the character builder to use legacy products, just like they do for other products, for this to work.
My suggestion is to never buy digital from a company like WotC. They are constantly altering their products post-release to appease sensitivity readers. Whatever you think you're buying today will be altered. A few words cut here. A few phrases altered there. The product you paid for may become unrecognizable. "We can't say this. We can't say that. Someone may be offended." You keep removing "problematic" words from the English language and from media. Every word is problematic to someone. When will it end?
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself.”
-- George Orwell, 1984
You can just, scan your book yourself and turn it into a PDF for your own personal consumption.
You would be surprised how many digital products Xbox had that are no longer available or accessible. Xbox live still exists for sure, but hundreds to thousands of products that are digital are unusable. Stadia was still millions of dollars; it doesn't matter the ratio. All digital products are equally expendable.
I don't doubt its experience, or its product, I doubt its longevity. I am new to DnD Beyond, looking around I am less than impressed. I came in expecting to buy tons and walked away with nothing. Coke isn't wealthy because they sell bottles, its wealthy because it sells drinks. What I'm seeing on DnD beyond is bottles for sale, not the drink within. If I'm just starting this hobby, buying a digital copy is extremely helpful and fast way to get started. But if I've been in the hobby for the last two decades? I already own the book, I don't feel enticed to be on here. I might also buy secondhand books if I feel new ones are outrageously priced. DnD Beyond feels like offering me an endless supply of cups, but nothing to really drink, from my anecdotal perspective. Short term success in selling cups is great, but I only need so many.
If you’ve got a local group it doesn’t offer much, but if your group is online the value shoots up. And online play has blossomed in the past few years.
The core issue isn't how much a product cost in the past, it's how much it's likely to cost in the future, and how much revenue it's likely to pull in. For books where Wizards still has the layout documents, the cost of turning it into a PDF for sale is very low, so unless you are looking for a specific printing (they're going to use the most recent version of the file unless there's really compelling reason to do something else) or they messed up the rights (and thus selling it would be illegal or expensive), they have no reason not to make it available in backorder.
Making your own PDF is also both legal and easy. So if you own a physical copy and as long as you aren't distributing it, you can do what you wish.
This this analogy does not hold water (pun intended). This is not Wizards offering lesser content - you are getting the exact same content (all the rules text from your purchase book)… and more in the form of digital integration with the character and encounter builder, online access from anywhere, a search option, etc. Saying you are getting an empty glass borders on nonsensical.
Now, if you do not use the digital tools (or if you are patient enough to manually enter everything into homebrew), then that product might not be the right option for you. But it still is the right option for a whole bunch of people - so you cannot really say it is “empty.”
I would not call scanning a physical book easy. Sure, it's a fairly mechanical process, but unless you have hardware designed to do it an automated manner (which likely requires destroying the book) it's quite time consuming and produces an inferior product. I would much rather pay an online store $15 to get a high quality pdf than spend three hours making my own low quality pdf.
If someone owns a hard copy (as we all should, for the reasons given about wotc behaviour), and is not planning on distributing copies illegally, why on earth would they destroy the hard copy to make a .pdf?
I assume this is responding to my comment about destroying the hard copy, even though it's not quoted? The issue is that paper feeders don't generally like bound books, so you'd have to cut off the spine (turning it into looseleaf pages) to run it through an automated scanner. You could manually open the book and scan it, but flattening it enough to produce a good scan, over the number of pages involved, will likely destroy the spine anyway.
There's always hand scanners, though those have their own limitations.
Sure. I suspect you can scan a book with a cell phone if you don't mind the quality you get as a result. The problem is that scanning a book would really prefer the pages be flat, and Wizards (like most publishers) does not use a lay-flat binding, so to actually flatten the pages you have to break the spine.
Yeah, I agree with you. I don't understand the logic of tearing apart a hard copy to make a soft copy that you can't legally distribute. Chances are a player (or DM) is only accessing a small section of any book during a session, and it is way easier to read a full size copy compared to try to read it on a 7 x 5 screen, or maybe a 2 x 2 screen.
I mean it's partly a digital storefront, selling thousands of items from hundreds of studios, many of which have gone under, or have their own sublicensing to worry about. And AFAIK, everything I've ever bought from them, I can still redownload, assuming it works on the console I'm on. (And they've made significant attempts to keep that possible.)
Given that, of course things are going to become unavailable. What WotC are doing is closer to the MS first-party games, which AFAIK have remained available continuously for the consoles they run on. (But I admit I haven't checked, nor can I be bothered to just to win internet points.)
It does raise one question: how are things going to work over the long term with the third-party books?
They really aren't. They're not eternal, but track records matter. Google, who can't even stick to a single chat system for more than five minutes, are much less trustworthy than, well, pretty much everybody established. (And Stadia was particularly speculative even for a google product.)
I expect we would see something similar to what happened when the Rick & Morty license expired - Wizards lost the right to sell new products, but those who already purchased the content retained access to it. I am guessing Wizards structured similar licenses with the third party publishers.
That seems likely. I'd completely forgotten Rick and Morty D&D existed.
Location, location, location. A gaming table is not always the best place for books, and table real estate is not always in plentiful supply. For example, MM is nice book to read at home, but it is a completely utter shit tool at the table due to how clunky and inconvenient it is. I did not realize how absolutely stupid the MM is until I lugged it around, brought it to my friend's house, sat down, and then realized I am never going to crank open that book at a game, especially when I can whip out my phone for Beyond's database, or use Gale Force 9's cards if I plan my encounters in advance and do not want to use my phone for both referencing stat blocks and running the adventure at the same time. If I am cranking open a physical book at the table, it is going to be an adventure book. For a person who already bought the physical MM, but realized too late it is a shit tool, destroying the physical book is a small price to pay when you can turn it into a tool that you will actually use, like a PDF or a series of cropped images of the statblocks. Personally, I would just buy the book again on Beyond or as the monster cards (I got all three formats), but not everyone likes Beyond or Wizards, and/or they might be afraid of keeping track of so many physical cards.
And I imagine for some people, they would not even want to crank open a clunky adventure book. A lot of people have at least two devices (one old and one new phones; one phone and one tablet; or two phones and a tablet; etc.), and running an adventure on one device while referencing stat blocks on another is an extremely clean setup.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
And why should all player characters in a fantasy sword and sorcery setting be able to fly, use any weapon, and wear full plate while casting spells all at level 3? D&D is a fantasy game, not a superhero game.
Late comment, but I think they are going to have to make the 2014 book a legacy book, and just sell and use the new one going forward as the baseline for all products. Hopefully, one of the first products in 2025 will be an update of the rest of the subclasses that are not in the new PHB. They just need to add an option in the character builder to use legacy products, just like they do for other products, for this to work.
I still have my access to other legacy books.