I'd advise running your conversion to Canadian dollars & Brazilian real for counter-comparison of how others have it worse than you.
Nah, I'm gonna stay in my lane and stick to speaking to my own experience, not the experiences of others. That's why I said what the price converts to for me and why I said in my opinion it's a solid value proposition.
All I was doing was providing an example of how I evaluate the value of something when it comes to D&D. That's literally why I mentioned everything in terms of specific transactions from specific stores.
But those were on paper(which has a finite lifespan, just like websites) that you owned(Not strictly true if we look at just how unfettered the system really is & has been)
Totally (not) different.
The oldest book I own is from 1821 and has got a few centuries in it yet.
Are you of the mind D&D books no older than I are about to turn to dust? They still sell well on the second-hand market! My 1979 DMG and 1981 Fiend Folio are both in excellent condition. A 1981 Expert Set I found in a second-hand tabletop role-playing game shop looks and feels brand new. Box and all.
Physical books are very much different to digital content. And in more ways than one. Even the way our brains work and process what we read when we read things in a book or on a screen is different.
And as I said above: old game books appreciate in value. They are investments of sorts. Digital content is monetarily worth nothing the moment you have clicked beyond the checkout.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
The real question isn't pagecount ETC, it is "Is the content worth it?" and i haven't found out if the answer to that.
Cause the Content might be absolute Banger material that is worth every penny. Actually this is a good time to ask, those that have it, is the content worth the price? I have heard nothing either way.
I have only skimmed them so far, but yeah to me they are. In contrast to what has been said here I really like the Netheril book and it will very probably see use at my table. It is basically a small self contained setting with some ideas for adventures or a campaign set there included. If I hadnt gotten it with the bundle I would probably have still bought it at that price. The Astarion book is a little less useful to me personally, as I dont really need the player facing content, but it is also a nice little add on to the Baldurs Gate parts of Adventures in Faerun.
Really? Pretty sure I've seen mods suggest it in response to complaints about not being able to download content.
I assume someone has mentioned it, but probably not a mod, as it would seem to fall under
Restrictions. You agree not to engage in any of the following with respect to our Websites, Games, or Services:
Data mining: Use any unauthorized means, process, or software that accesses, collects, reads, intercepts, monitors, data scrapes, including without limitation, agents, robots, scripts, or spiders; or mines information (including reverse look-up or attempted tracing of Registration Data in any way and for any reason);
Printing pages/turning them into PDFs does not in any way count as 'Data Mining' per that section of the TOS
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Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue) Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Really? Pretty sure I've seen mods suggest it in response to complaints about not being able to download content.
I assume someone has mentioned it, but probably not a mod, as it would seem to fall under
Restrictions. You agree not to engage in any of the following with respect to our Websites, Games, or Services:
Data mining: Use any unauthorized means, process, or software that accesses, collects, reads, intercepts, monitors, data scrapes, including without limitation, agents, robots, scripts, or spiders; or mines information (including reverse look-up or attempted tracing of Registration Data in any way and for any reason);
I'm neither a lawyer nor a spokesman for WotC, but this is pretty clearly an attempt to forbid bulk scraping of data off the web site. Printing or saving a web page for your own personal use is not what they're talking about here.
People talking about splatbooks aren't going nearly far enough back to find the equivalent of DLC in D&D, because, well, literally everything that isn't a core book is functionally DLC, which puts the start of DLC in 1975 with the release of the Greyhawk supplement. Which was $5 (equivalent to $30 today) for 56 pages (first printing)/68 pages (subsequent printings). That was quickly followed by four more supplements for OD&D (Blackmoor - Eldritch Wizardry - Gods, Demigods, & Heroes - Swords & Spells), all at the same price point.
In any case, if Astarion's doesn't seem worth it to you, I suggest not buying it. There are many D&D products I have not bought.
Those OD&D supplements have appreciated in value.
5 dollars US then may very well be the equivalent of 30 dollars US today. But one can expect to pay between 150 to 350 today for just the Greyhawk supplement. Digitalsupplements like Astarion's Book of Hungers are monetarily worth nothing the moment you click beyond the checkout.
I know who I think got the better deal.
Their value as physical objects to collectors is mostly unrelated to their value as game supplements to players. To me, who doesn't play OD&D, they're worth nothing. (Well, maybe a little if there were ideas in there to strip-mine, but those ideas are going to largely be available elsewhere.)
Is ABoH worth nothing on the resale market? Sure. But so what? Most people aren't concerned with that. What matters to them is if it's good value for their entertainment dollar. They didn't buy their 5e24 PHB because it would appreciate. They bought it so they could play with their friends. And if they eventually move on and sell it on the secondary market for a little cash (It's unlikely to ever be worth a great deal --- too many were printed), that's nice. If they can't, they still likely are going to think they got their money's worth.
(Also, for some people, existing only digitally is a value-add. They don't need to be moved when you move, carried when you go to gaming, etc. They don't take up space.)
The whole point of this thread is that allegedly, DND Beyond only-post OGLgate operates on a DLC model, and my counter-example is pre-World Wide Web Dragon Magazine, which the bombastic OP still hasn't confirmed or denied experiencing) being inherently more monetized than ANYTHING electronic, historically speaking, & thus any arguments about this being new & unaccepted are recency biased.
Nitpicking my bringing up of paper, while ignoring that I was talking about MAGAZINE paper, not regular paper(Yes, there is a difference...I've worked in a paper mill), while still going on about how Beyond will go away(citation needed for this not from clickbait, other fandoms in-fighting or doom & gloom), despite that same argument regarding lack of kinetic satisfaction being able to be made about Dragon magazine physical copies due to the inferior quality by design of magazine paper (because repurchasing of magazines when missed, damaged or lost was extremely encouraged heavily(Hey, another thing that's more like DLC than this)) causing them to disintegrate far faster than most could preserve, doesn't help rebuttals.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
And as I said above: old game books appreciate in value.
Depends on the book, there are plenty of old game books that aren't worth much of anything, it's just that you rarely hear about those ones. However, even for the ones that do become collectors items... collectors generally like items in good quality. Which typically only happens with early game books if they were not actually used, being used as a gaming table resource is not great for the survival of even the best quality books, and those early books were not the best quality.
Really? Pretty sure I've seen mods suggest it in response to complaints about not being able to download content.
Unfortunately, Mods don't always know the rules, and IP law is one of those things where people often think they know how it works...but don't. 2.2.2 says you can't make copies of pretty much anything from the website. I went digging because in some jurisdictions, it's an actionable infraction of copyright to make copies of things, so you'd need permission, so I looked to see if they gave permission (I'm from one of those jurisdictions that doesn't allow copies - joys of having a spouse who works with IP law). Turns out they forbid it.
You'd probably want permission from staff to show good faith.
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.
I hate that these are locked to D&D Beyond, meaning that I can neither hold a physical copy for in-person games nor store a local backup just in case. If D&D Beyond ever disappears, goes down, etc. we lose it all, just like with D&D Insider during 4e. This is obviously unkind to end-users. Why does WotC not distribute pdfs like every other ttrpg company?
Sure you can. You use the print function of any web browser to save the pages as PDFs, and print off hard copies if you want them for offline non-electronic reference.
This is a pain in the ass, and makes it difficult to compare pagination in the physical and digital copies. Also, to do this efficiently, I'd have to use some sort of web scraping script, which would probably get me banned. Again, every other TTRPG company I know of offers pdfs, this is not a crazy request.
I hate that these are locked to D&D Beyond, meaning that I can neither hold a physical copy for in-person games nor store a local backup just in case. If D&D Beyond ever disappears, goes down, etc. we lose it all, just like with D&D Insider during 4e. This is obviously unkind to end-users. Why does WotC not distribute pdfs like every other ttrpg company?
Sure you can. You use the print function of any web browser to save the pages as PDFs, and print off hard copies if you want them for offline non-electronic reference.
This is a pain in the ass, and makes it difficult to compare pagination in the physical and digital copies. Also, to do this efficiently, I'd have to use some sort of web scraping script, which would probably get me banned. Again, every other TTRPG company I know of offers pdfs, this is not a crazy request.
OtherStuffExists is a fallacy for a reason.
Also, mass piracy Day 0 of 4e's material fricked up any chance of PDFs being allowed by Hasbro corporate or the venture capitalist firms who use boomer money to ruin good things.
How does anyone un-scare executives, & ESPECIALLY shareholders, about that happening again, in reality as it exists now?
Because a lot of good ideas get shot down by shareholders, stockbrokers, upper management, lawyers & accountants, not Beyond devs or mods, WotC game designers, or even WotC's planted CEO who works for Hasbro first & foremost.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Really? Pretty sure I've seen mods suggest it in response to complaints about not being able to download content.
Unfortunately, Mods don't always know the rules, and IP law is one of those things where people often think they know how it works...but don't. 2.2.2 says you can't make copies of pretty much anything from the website. I went digging because in some jurisdictions, it's an actionable infraction of copyright to make copies of things, so you'd need permission, so I looked to see if they gave permission (I'm from one of those jurisdictions that doesn't allow copies - joys of having a spouse who works with IP law). Turns out they forbid it.
You'd probably want permission from staff to show good faith.
Making copies for your own use, so long as you are not handing them out to others, is usually within fair use. Handing them out to others (for them to keep, not just for them to see in the privacy of your own home) or worse, selling them to others, usually is what would cross outside of fair use.
At least that is my understanding of normal copyright laws. Curious where and why it would be stricter. Edit: For content you have paid for, rather than content you have just found freely viewable somewhere.
"Fair use" is "fair dealing" in the UK, and no, fair dealing doesn't include making digital copies even for personal use. Notice that making whole copies is explicitly mentioned as generally not being acceptable.
It was made an exception for a few years ago, but then the industry lobbied against it and the exception was removed. I'd need permission from WotC to legally implement the solution, and I don't have it - and I'd be shocked if I ever did, for a host of reasons.
Anyway, this is going way off topic. The "simple" solution is against TOS as written, and that's about as far as relevant to the topic goes, really.
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.
OP hasn't come back regarding my example of Dragon Magazine being something similar, if not more egregious, monetization-wise that was previously found acceptable, & is similarly unable to give kinetic satisfaction due to how easily magazines of yesteryear decay due to their inferior quality, paper-wise, indicating a recency bias regarding "over-monetization/DLC".
& given their bombastics regarding WotC in their post history, I'm not inclined to take this matter seriously.
If OP thinks Astarion & Nethereil should have been part of the release of the physical Faerun books, that's fine.
But if they're only NOW calling this sort of thing exploitative, even after Eldraine & other works that are intangible, then I think that they're running on early OGLgate vibes that their post history gap dates back to.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Nah, I'm gonna stay in my lane and stick to speaking to my own experience, not the experiences of others. That's why I said what the price converts to for me and why I said in my opinion it's a solid value proposition.
All I was doing was providing an example of how I evaluate the value of something when it comes to D&D. That's literally why I mentioned everything in terms of specific transactions from specific stores.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Not to distract from a long running debate on international socio-economic disparity, but the entire D&D Beyond Website is "Downloadable Content".
The oldest book I own is from 1821 and has got a few centuries in it yet.
Are you of the mind D&D books no older than I are about to turn to dust? They still sell well on the second-hand market! My 1979 DMG and 1981 Fiend Folio are both in excellent condition. A 1981 Expert Set I found in a second-hand tabletop role-playing game shop looks and feels brand new. Box and all.
Physical books are very much different to digital content. And in more ways than one. Even the way our brains work and process what we read when we read things in a book or on a screen is different.
And as I said above: old game books appreciate in value. They are investments of sorts. Digital content is monetarily worth nothing the moment you have clicked beyond the checkout.
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
We don't even have any official releases in Brazil yet for a proper comparison.
I have only skimmed them so far, but yeah to me they are. In contrast to what has been said here I really like the Netheril book and it will very probably see use at my table. It is basically a small self contained setting with some ideas for adventures or a campaign set there included. If I hadnt gotten it with the bundle I would probably have still bought it at that price. The Astarion book is a little less useful to me personally, as I dont really need the player facing content, but it is also a nice little add on to the Baldurs Gate parts of Adventures in Faerun.
Printing pages/turning them into PDFs does not in any way count as 'Data Mining' per that section of the TOS
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I'm neither a lawyer nor a spokesman for WotC, but this is pretty clearly an attempt to forbid bulk scraping of data off the web site. Printing or saving a web page for your own personal use is not what they're talking about here.
Their value as physical objects to collectors is mostly unrelated to their value as game supplements to players. To me, who doesn't play OD&D, they're worth nothing. (Well, maybe a little if there were ideas in there to strip-mine, but those ideas are going to largely be available elsewhere.)
Is ABoH worth nothing on the resale market? Sure. But so what? Most people aren't concerned with that. What matters to them is if it's good value for their entertainment dollar. They didn't buy their 5e24 PHB because it would appreciate. They bought it so they could play with their friends. And if they eventually move on and sell it on the secondary market for a little cash (It's unlikely to ever be worth a great deal --- too many were printed), that's nice. If they can't, they still likely are going to think they got their money's worth.
(Also, for some people, existing only digitally is a value-add. They don't need to be moved when you move, carried when you go to gaming, etc. They don't take up space.)
The whole point of this thread is that allegedly, DND Beyond only-post OGLgate operates on a DLC model, and my counter-example is pre-World Wide Web Dragon Magazine, which the bombastic OP still hasn't confirmed or denied experiencing) being inherently more monetized than ANYTHING electronic, historically speaking, & thus any arguments about this being new & unaccepted are recency biased.
Nitpicking my bringing up of paper, while ignoring that I was talking about MAGAZINE paper, not regular paper(Yes, there is a difference...I've worked in a paper mill), while still going on about how Beyond will go away(citation needed for this not from clickbait, other fandoms in-fighting or doom & gloom), despite that same argument regarding lack of kinetic satisfaction being able to be made about Dragon magazine physical copies due to the inferior quality by design of magazine paper (because repurchasing of magazines when missed, damaged or lost was extremely encouraged heavily(Hey, another thing that's more like DLC than this)) causing them to disintegrate far faster than most could preserve, doesn't help rebuttals.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Depends on the book, there are plenty of old game books that aren't worth much of anything, it's just that you rarely hear about those ones. However, even for the ones that do become collectors items... collectors generally like items in good quality. Which typically only happens with early game books if they were not actually used, being used as a gaming table resource is not great for the survival of even the best quality books, and those early books were not the best quality.
Unfortunately, Mods don't always know the rules, and IP law is one of those things where people often think they know how it works...but don't. 2.2.2 says you can't make copies of pretty much anything from the website. I went digging because in some jurisdictions, it's an actionable infraction of copyright to make copies of things, so you'd need permission, so I looked to see if they gave permission (I'm from one of those jurisdictions that doesn't allow copies - joys of having a spouse who works with IP law). Turns out they forbid it.
You'd probably want permission from staff to show good faith.
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.
Noted.
Joke's on them I'm poor.
This is a pain in the ass, and makes it difficult to compare pagination in the physical and digital copies. Also, to do this efficiently, I'd have to use some sort of web scraping script, which would probably get me banned. Again, every other TTRPG company I know of offers pdfs, this is not a crazy request.
OtherStuffExists is a fallacy for a reason.
Also, mass piracy Day 0 of 4e's material fricked up any chance of PDFs being allowed by Hasbro corporate or the venture capitalist firms who use boomer money to ruin good things.
How does anyone un-scare executives, & ESPECIALLY shareholders, about that happening again, in reality as it exists now?
Because a lot of good ideas get shot down by shareholders, stockbrokers, upper management, lawyers & accountants, not Beyond devs or mods, WotC game designers, or even WotC's planted CEO who works for Hasbro first & foremost.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Making copies for your own use, so long as you are not handing them out to others, is usually within fair use. Handing them out to others (for them to keep, not just for them to see in the privacy of your own home) or worse, selling them to others, usually is what would cross outside of fair use.
At least that is my understanding of normal copyright laws. Curious where and why it would be stricter. Edit: For content you have paid for, rather than content you have just found freely viewable somewhere.
"Fair use" is "fair dealing" in the UK, and no, fair dealing doesn't include making digital copies even for personal use. Notice that making whole copies is explicitly mentioned as generally not being acceptable.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright#fair-dealing
It was made an exception for a few years ago, but then the industry lobbied against it and the exception was removed. I'd need permission from WotC to legally implement the solution, and I don't have it - and I'd be shocked if I ever did, for a host of reasons.
Anyway, this is going way off topic. The "simple" solution is against TOS as written, and that's about as far as relevant to the topic goes, really.
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.
Back on subject:
OP hasn't come back regarding my example of Dragon Magazine being something similar, if not more egregious, monetization-wise that was previously found acceptable, & is similarly unable to give kinetic satisfaction due to how easily magazines of yesteryear decay due to their inferior quality, paper-wise, indicating a recency bias regarding "over-monetization/DLC".
& given their bombastics regarding WotC in their post history, I'm not inclined to take this matter seriously.
If OP thinks Astarion & Nethereil should have been part of the release of the physical Faerun books, that's fine.
But if they're only NOW calling this sort of thing exploitative, even after Eldraine & other works that are intangible, then I think that they're running on early OGLgate vibes that their post history gap dates back to.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.