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 think a better way to frame it would be the predatory practices. They're pretending it's "free" but in reality it costs the monthly subscription. I'll pay my tier for DM tools, but making my players pay monthly for content in the campaign is shitty. I'd gladly pay extra for content to be able to use it and share it with my players, but that's not -as- profitable as making everyone that wants to use it pay monthly. Pretty soon, they'll likely up subscription prices justified by "covering the cost" of the drops, too. And people will retroactively justify it despite no one actually asking for "free" content. It always costs, eventually. Use of tools, a subscription makes sense. Not for content. Like you say, this is fundamentally different from Netflix. The monetization strategy is to dip their hands in both pots, the subscription market AND the paid content market, and milk the consumers for as much profit from each as possible.
1. As a DM, you can easily copy the object on the homebrew system if your player wants to use it - it takes like 4 clicks. Wizards is also reconsidering allowing the player-focused options to be shareable. Therefore, your first sentence is not quite accurate to reality - this is a minor inconvenience at most and might be changing anyway.
2. As a player, once you add it to your sheet, it will remain on your sheet even if you unsubscribe (unless you choose to remove it). You can also use the homebrew system to keep access for new characters after you unsubscribe.
3. To pretend it is going to cause some rot in th community is very silly - other editions of D&D had had similar content, available only in limited forms, and it absolutely did nothing to create major rifts. The fact folks ignore those prior edition limited-releases in this conversation kind of proved the “rifts” were too inconsequential to be remembered.
4. Your entire last paragraph seems more based in anger than reality. Players have been complaining for years that subscriber perks are useless cosmetics. The Wizards of the Coast staff member who introduced them literally said this was something they were disappointed as when a player, remain disappointed with now that they are hired as a WotC staff member, and now are glad they are in a position to fix the problem. You are basically saying “How dare Wizards, in particular the player-turned-Wizards-staff-member, for taking the profit-driven, anti-player action of…. responding to longstanding complaints of players by giving them additional content they have been asking for… at no additional cost… with multiple work arounds that keep the content accessible…”
No one with any sense would buy that argument - yet it is essentially what you are trying to sell.
Caerwyn, your work around method in point 1 could easily be deemed Piracy, and i think it would be as i have been penalized for piracy for sharing Archived materials that WoTC only later gained the rights to. So it isn't so much a "minor inconvenience" as it appears to be to those that want to remain honest. It feels like piracy even if it isn't treated like it.
i would also like to point out that the "limited content in other editions" is not analogous at all to this, as they were physical, and could be readily shared between people, and even transferred from one person to another by just handing it to them.
I gave people my Dragon Magazines when i stopped playing for a while and they still were. It was simple as this. Physical media and Digital DRM restricted content are not analogous in the ways many people find important.
D&D has had a widespread sharable culture of play that the drops go against in their current implementation, and people don't like it. Why else would they be considering changing it to something that is more palatable to the customer base?
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Yes Dragon magazine was physical and could be passed around but you’re missing the other big difference between Dragon and Drops; if you missed buying Dragon Magazine and all your friends missed it then it was gone forever. With Drops if you subscribe in a year’s time you’ll get access to the whole back catalogue. As a format both have their strengths and weaknesses but pretending that Dragon didn’t also create a system where some players had access to stuff others did not based on a willingness to pay or a proximity to a FLGS is just false
Wizards has consistently said that using hombrew for your own purposes and group, as long as it is not publicly published, is fine. Your post is not an accurate statement of D&D Beyond’s policies.
"They're considering changing it" =/= "arguing against it is moot"
They're considering changing it because it's unpopular, just like with other controversial decisions. You're literally citing changes that were made due to complaints...
If a character dies, that player has to resub to access the features again. If multiple players want access to that feature, they all have to sub. You're ignoring the actual point.
The thing the player-turned-employee is "fixing" should not be locked behind subscriber paywalls for players, it should either be linked directly to the DM-oriented subscriber tier OR be paid content that can be shared. The complaint isn't that it exists, it's the pay-model used. It's a lie to say it's a "free perk" when it requires a monthly subscription. Period. You are changing the framing of what I'm complaining about, and offering solutions in a nebulous area that overlook the fact that some players will go along with it, and some players will implement this workarounds, and if these work arounds impact profit margins, then WotC/Hasbro will start to crack down on them.
My last paragraph isn't -anger-, it's based in a realistic view of how corporations have approached their digital platforms in the past decade. We're only 9 years in to DDB, it's not like we've got a long track record to trust here. There's a model all of these platforms follow, and pretending Hasbro isn't trying to enforce that platform while also trying to force WotC to implement AI isn't realistic.
What WotC says and what Hasbro does are not always going to vibe, that's the entire reason WotC is attempting to unionize.
I didn't claim or pretend that there wasn't a system of scarcity with dragon. you are reacting to words I never said. Please refrain from putting words in my mouth.
I just pointed out sharing was easy and unrestricted, which was in character with the Culture of play that D&D has long operated under.
of course we had to buy the magazine or subscribe to the mailing service, I never anywhere said we didn't. We just paid once per issue and had to take care of them, and we could freely give them to people and lose access while others gained access.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
It is moot because you can solve your own problem - something I already pointed out and you ignored because it is inconvenient to your fearmongering. The fact that might change it to be more convenient is the icing on the cake.
The rest of your post, of course, is just plain silly. “If they actually wanted to fix subscriber perks, they would make them available to non subscribers” is a truly ridiculous position to take.
Wizards gave players more content for no additional price… and players who are too lazy for easy work arounds, a who apparently are dripping with entitlement, apparently are bashing them for it. I hope that Wizards can see through the transparent nonsense that is being pushed on their site, and that the new staff will continue to engage with the community at the high level they had been… instead of becoming cynical at the absurd level of complaints all their actions bring… even actions that give long-requested benefits.
It also really feels like you're missing the greater point. If hero tier subs don't grow and the data shows an increase use of homebrew by master tier subs to work these features in, do you really believe there won't be some kind of response akin to either raising sub prices or limiting homebrew options? Basic content access makes sense to make the platform usable, the tools are realistically what attracts DMs to master tier subs, and content sharing is one of those tools. Having some content avoid content sharing looks more like testing the waters for a change in how the platform handles content under the guise of "free" content.
Nothing is free, nothing is bonus, it is all covered in what you pay per month, and the price is is never approved without a cost-profit analysis. The content itself may be from the player-turned-employee, but the method it's implemented is determined by cost/profit analysis. Someone at WotC determined it would be more profitable to model this as account-locked subscription perks instead of a sharable purchase. That's not something that follows the standard model of DDB and very much looks like testing a new model for future content.
You seem to be missing that, and are digging your head in the sand by suggesting "we can just abuse the tools they give us to bypass anyone actually paying extra according to the model they want us to use. This isn't netflix, afterall." Netflix loved account-sharing until profit-margins said they didn't.
I get your point - I just think, as I have said repeatedly, that it is a bad point, based on nonsensical slippery slope arguments that ignore longstanding realities and pure conjecture. You have provided no facts to back up your claim other than “but this is the way of the world” and that is not actually a valid argument.
The simple reality is that Wizards has been a historically good steward of digital tools. They kept their 4e tools going as long as they could, including providing active customer support, an have warnings months in advance of it ending to allow folks to save their information. They have allowed folks to copy their physical books with homebrew on this site - so the idea they might change that is very silly based on upon established evidence.
And, of course, you are ignoring the fact that players have been asking for this for years. Sure, they determined this would be more profitable - but they determined that because it was something players say they wanted. Sometimes everyone does get what they want.
Discussing this matter further with you, unfortunately, is pointless. You have been given multiple chances to provide actual sound arguments, but are making the same tired points over and over again. If this were a court, I’d be getting my summary judgment and calling it a day - you have failed to state any claim based upon the actual facts in evidence.