Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I mean, I loath the truism "You don't own anything digitally", for these content drops that kinda the case. You have access to them as long as you have a subscription, you don't own them. They're not purchased or claimed, they're active subscription perks. It's more akin to how you can't re-share shared content.
And even if you did "own" the drop content, that wouldn't change the substance of my point that the content being sharable cannot possibly deduct value because it's a perk of the subscription itself, granted without any increase in cost. It's purely additive value, not at all logically subtractive simply because it's not shareable. The only way you can subtract value from the subscription would be to either remove options or increase the price.
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But the distinction between owned and licensed isn't any different from Drops, any book and any freely claimed content either
There's no difference. The pedantry here doesn't matter.
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Ok there's a lot of posts happening quickly and I can't keep up but I am seriously struggling to understand what the opposition to drops still is?
If you're a player who has a Hero sub, you get a lot of extras for free. If the DM doesn't have any sub and wants to see them then you can share them via a number of ways. Easiest is a screenshot, or you can make a homebrew copy since homebrew is automatically shared no sub needed. Either way, very easy for the DM to still be able to see and approve. This is no different than if a player had a book like Xanathars or Tasha's or whatever - ask the DM if you can play, give them details, they approve or decline. So all normal standard fare here. Nothing to argue over unless you also disapprove of players having books the DM doesn't - in which case you're weird and shouldn't be a DM and probably need some form of therapy (control issues red flag).
If you're a DM with a hero or master sub you can let your players know and can share info via screenshot or make homebrew copies or just go in and add it to their sheet. Either way this is a way to share the content without the players needing any subs. Also, it has been mentioned they are looking into possibly making the player options shareable via Content Sharing to bypass that minor inconvenience.
People have been asking for subs that unlock content since day 1. People have been asking for their subs, particularly Hero subs, to give them more than the monthly perks have been giving them. WotC have listened and are coming up with a way to do precisely this.
And yet people are arguing and upset? Why? No matter how much I try to read these arguments there is no reason that specifically details these points and explains why they're bad. Paywalls? Non-issue, same as any book or whatever. Not-Shareable Via Master Tier? Non-issue, they are indeed very easily shared with everyone in your campaign and you don't need a sub to do that either. Some waffle-y attempts at making up some WotC nefarious intent or "classist" divide? Non-issue - it's obtainable for a 1-month hero tier and can be shared with everyone in the campaign easily and this is all something fans have asked for since the beginning.
Can somebody 'explain like I'm 5' why WotC giving these free extra bonuses that are usable by the whole party, in response to fans requesting this, is somehow a bad thing?
"Oh no, it's $3 and 2-3 mins of inconvenience for my entire party to have extra player options, oh no, this is terrible" --- like, seriously, what?
It's like somebody complaining to the chef that the food tastes too good. I don't understand.
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Here is the list of features for Master tier from the subscribe pages as of April 15th according to the Wayback machine:
Share purchased content with friends
Two weeks of early access to new books
Use homebrew monsters on Maps VTT
Upload custom maps with Maps VTT
And here it is now:
Two week early access to core rulebooks
Create unlimited characters
Create unlimited encounters
Add publicly shared homebrew content
Exclusive subscriber perks every month
Share unlocked content with other players
Use homebrew monsters on Maps VTT
Upload custom maps with Maps VTT
Nothing has been removed, only added. Saying that the Master Tier has less value because they've decided to add extra content for subscribers is patently ridiculous. They have expanded subscriber perks. That's it.
People who've wrapped their entire self worth up in D&D but also have a pathological belief that WOTC is a comic book villian, have decided that this is proof that they're going to take away our ability to own anything, and force every player to pay a subscription.
Surely the workarounds mentioned here for accessing drops content as a non-subscriber are in violation of the ToS of dndbeyond?
You are free to make homebrew of any content you have access to for personal use in your campaign.
This has been actively suggested many times by moderators and devs over the years and IIRC even by Adam Bradford who was one of the founders of this site.
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Nope. It's the system set up as designed. You cannot share these kind of Homebrew copies with the public you can only use them in your own campaigns. They have a filter setup to make sure that's the way it happens. It's meant to work that way. Kind of weird for an evil with cash grabby Corporation isn't it? It's almost like they want to encourage people to subscribe but still have options for people who can't or don't want to.
As a subscriber, I am a fan of the Drops.
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Actually, that's precisely the difference, though you're both right, and in being right, wrong about the reality.
You do have a license to everything you own and everything you've claimed. In perpetuity (as long as the site remains). Everything you have a license for, you can share.
You do NOT have a license to Drops. It's part of your subscription, and ending your subscription ends your access. Since you don't have a license for it, you can't share it.
You can call pedantry, but that's generally what legal licensing is. Precise dividing lines that people don't understand.
The terms under which the drops are licensed is entirely up to WotC. If they wanted to enable sharing, they could.
(And you absolutely have a license to drops if you're a subscriber. It's just a different license from the digital books.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tbibyv/comment/olhrvza/
This is the problem though. Over the last two years, and even more so over the last 6 months, the D&D Beyond team, and to some extend the WOTC D&D Franchise team have shown that they aren't taking those routes. Yes, Hasbro breathing down their neck for a while made them take missteps, but they've listened, they've actively become more communicative, they've done a lot of things to be better.
But D&DTube especially, has risen on the back of drama and outrage, and now that they're making steps in the right direction, this massive and misdirected outrage is not going to help improve the situation, or encourage them that those good steps that they've taken were the right ones.
Clearly most people here have never raised a child. If they're generally doing the right thing, you don't slam down on them for a tiny and likely innocent misstep. You can redirect it, and they are listening to reasonable arguments (see my post above), but most of this thread is just a pile on without cause.
I can't speak for others, but my concern with drops is that it is part of a greater trend towards platform-exclusive and/or subscription-based content. If drops are not considered official wotc releases, then I have no issue with them, but who knows if that will last?
I get that and the concern is valid. The thing is, they emphasized that this content wouldnt be available at all if we want only what gets printed in books. they have said that before with similar digital only releases. So I guess we have to decide, more content lieke the stuff dragon magazine used to provide but only digital? Skip that stuff and only rely on what makes it into the books?
Yeah but most of the digital only stuff was still shareable without the extra trouble of the dm manually adding them to a player’s sheet or making a homebrew version or they were a preview of what’s coming in a future book like the Astarion one that came with Heroes of Faerun. If someone at WotC came out and said “these are a preview of a future release” then we’d have far fewer issues
Yeah, but we also would have fewer issues (if sensationalized, made-up issues can be called issues in the first place) if players stopped complaining over getting additional content for no additional price. Frankly, that option seems far more reasonable than what you are proposing - your option limits the amount of usable content generated for use in games, thus punishing players who are sensible enough to realize this is a non-issue.
But it isn’t usable if fewer people have access to it
This may surprise you, but something available to people with subscriptions and people with DMs who are not too lazy to copy is more useful than something that does not exist.
Now, could it be more useful than it currently is? Sure - and Wizards is looking into that. But the obvious fact (that you continue to ignore because it is fatal to your arguments) remains that this is more useful, even with limitations, than the nothing substantive we were getting before.
It's absolutely still useable. For players who have a subscription it's useable straight out of the gate. Even if making homebrew versions of the player facing options weren't so easy as to be almost trivial, allowing players who do have subscriptions to use it is still possible. It's up to the group/DM to decide if they think that is somehow unfair or unbalanced or should be disallowed (just as it is with any content).