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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Bothsidesism is gross false equivalence and unproductive in serious conversation. Calling the updated 2024 ruleset 5.5 in 2024 was a dogwhistle and it was rooted in attempts to start edition wars and some of the people driving that activity were doing it because they were upset WotC was continuing the removal of racist stereotypes that they started back with Monsters of the Multiverse. There's no pretending those facts aren't facts.
New leadership at WotC decided only recently to adopt the 5.5 language for multiple reasons (not least of which is how awkward it was referring to everything released in 2025 and 2026 as 2024 products). But notice that there weren't cheers of joy for the 5.5 naming convention folks getting what they wanted. The perpetually angry crowd just kept being perpetually angry and re-litigating old issues. Oh, and they also got mad that WotC adopted the 5.5 naming convention after not adopting it earlier. As I've said several times now, there's no winning for WotC in regards to chasing after that crowd because nothing they do will make that crowd happy. They can only dig themselves deeper into a position of being resented by that crowd. When it comes to the extremely vocal, terminally online haters, Wizards of the Coast is trapped in zugzwang.
Meanwhile, the rest of us - the majority of their customers - can be critical of the occasional fumble but are otherwise happy with the products, services, and business decisions from Wizards of the Coast. When it comes to the Drops I don't even see anything to be mad about for my own sake, because as a longtime subscriber I'm already paying and now I'm getting additional stuff without paying additional money. From my point of view it's extremely difficult to argue WotC is being greedy by giving me more stuff without charging me more money. I've got practically every streaming service upping their subscription rates, and practically every SaaS application also upping subscriptions and shoehorning AI functionality no one wants into their products. WotC adding more content without increasing prices feels a lot like a value add to me. But just because I'm copacetic with the Drops doesn't me I - and the majority of content customers like me - are going to be toxic with the people who are complaining. Mostly I'm seeing folks who are happy with the Drops content offering helpful advice like "make homebrew copies to share with your players" to the folks who are grumbling. It's more than a stretch to call that toxic just to make a tortured "both sides are bad" argument in bad faith.
Virtually every other tabletop RPG sells their books in PDF format without any issues of piracy harming them in any major scale. There's nothing special about D&D that would cause it to be different in that respect.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The fact that D&D is far and away the biggest in the industry - and the one thus most likely to be pirated - is a pretty clear difference. But let us pretend piracy is not an issue. That does not mean Wizards would be better off selling PDFs.
Other companies sell PDFs not because they think it helps the customer per se - they sell PDFs because they have to. They simply do not have the audience to justify expensive digital platforms - platforms that are expensive to both build and maintain. Even games like Pathfinder are small fish compared to D&D, so they have to do what financially makes sense for them. I feel pretty confident that many of them would abandon PDFs for a Beyond like system if it financially made sense.
Why? Even ignoring piracy, Beyond offers more value to players. Digital tools. Search systems (which, while the current systems are terrible, are still better than a PDF’s complete lacking). Homebrew systems. Etc.
From the financial perspective, the ability to sell a subscription for content sharing, pages that remind you there’s content you do not own and could purchase, and an easy marketplace all are value adds for Wizards.
I find it extremely hard to buy the “Wizards would make more money if they sold PDFs” arguments. The value add would be “folks who want a digital version, but don’t want the digital perks that come with it”. Any time you are looking at a smaller part of a population, your expected value is diminished due to smaller expected returns. Your value loss is potential subscription funds (even ignoring piracy, folks might choose a PDF and loss of tools to easily share a document with their playgroup) and upsells when folks are looking at Beyond and say “maybe I want that also.” Not to mention any incidental infrastructure costs of selling the PDFs.
I think that delta works out for a net loss if Wizards sells PDFs. Whether it might be a good thing overall for the game (and I highly doubt it would be) is not really the point of this thread.
gonna file this under "Exhibit A"
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
The reality is, PDF is a kind of cruddy electronic format, properly hyperlinked text is much better.
I'd like to point out that WotC didn't even create this digital platform. A third party did and WotC just bought it a few years later. WotC has been spectacularly unsuccessful at digital content of any kind on their own.
And regarding piracy and how protective companies have to be regarding it, decades of research has shown that there's one thing that affects piracy of product more than anything else: the ease at which consumers can get access to the product legitimately.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Well as you can see, if you don't like certain content being locked behind a subscription, you are a WotC Hating Rable Rouser and Racist. So it is best if you don't like something, not to mention it here.
I personally don't like Character Content such as feats and subclasses to be tied to Subs. I think things that are tied to Maps makes sense. Maps is a very specifically a digital website dependent product. But, if I say that, I am a Rable Rousing Racist and should be ashamed for having an opinion that doesn't lick the boots of the great and powerful WotC. So I won't say it here.
Mother and Cat Herder. Playing TTRPGs since 1989 (She/Her)
If my memory serves me right, I seem to recall that when streaming services like Netflix became popular, piracy rates dropped.
We know very well that producing an animated series requires time, money and a team of professionals, but on YouTube we can see TV series from Hasbro franchises, and they are financed with advertising. Producing TTRPG online content doesn't need so much, and printing, transport and storage costs are saved.
The consumer who spends her money to buy official products is loyal but to earn this loyalty demands to obey certain principles. The consumer shouldn't feel to be tricked or abused by the company.
I am not a true player but a collector and I bought a lot of titles in the 3E. If I want to collect something I would rather to buy a physicial product, or maybe digital content it can be used in off-line mode. I bought all the things from the Sims 3 but after I lost total interest into the Sims 4. I bought some things from Fortnite but I don't play anymore because my graphic-card isn't enoughly good and playing stopped to be fun when I lost conection. I don't want to spend money on something that depends on an internet connection or external servers.
I don't like to pay by online but I do it to buy content of the online videogame "Shop Titans". And if I pay with my money I would rather content in my first languange.
I wonder about Epic Games producing its own VTT for Fornite and here Hasbro arrived for different collabs, for example VTT for a new edition of Gamma World (and skins of Fortnite could be used for virtual miniatures).
As a counter point, I don't particularly like things (e.g., the updated encounter builder) being tied to maps, because I don't use maps. That said, I know it's an extremely popular feature, so I understand why they do it and good for them. I think adding additional perks for subscribers makes sense but I'm a subscriber, so of course I'm biased (and I don't mean that to be sarcastic). Whether or not we agree, saying "I don't like character content being tied to subs" is a much more nuanced argument than much of what has been happening here.
Same boat with the encounter builder. I would have preferred it continuing to be developed as its own thing because I liked how the old one worked and haven't dived into using maps with my group. But I'm not going to get upsetti spaghetti about it because a lot of people really dig Maps and broadly speaking all the changes to the platform are making things better overall.
Nuance is good and and productive. Dishonest oversimplification like those two responses to my post, less so.
Wizards actually provided a response on this recently. Per a Q&A, the encounter builder, like so much else on this site, is built on top of really bad spaghetti code. The 2014 calculations are apparently structural to the entire pile of code and Wizards realized it would take more effort to fix the 2014 encounter builder than just build a new system from scratch as part of their overhaul of the entire site.
I recall they indicated the encounter builder was likely going to be in the second round of overhauls, after some of the more commonly used player-facing options get fixed.
To keep this on topic for the thread, I would point out this demonstrates two ways Wizards is trying to value add to the game - fixing the mess that is Beyond’s code is good for everyone, and Wizards’ current efforts to keep in communication with players go a long way toward building trust with the community. At least among those who are willing to actually accept the olive branch.
To make informed suggestions, a general consensus must first be reached about the nature and collateral effects of the problem. It’s like telling someone with a peanut allergy to use a non-peanut alternative. Technically its good advise, but ignores a lot of surrounding context (ie nut oil cross contamination is extremely common in industrial scale food processing) that is of critical importance in proposing an effective solution.
Having a dominant market share in of itself is not the problem. Steam has a massive share of the PC market, but its practices has not prevented other publishers from having a much bigger impact on the state of game design and monetization. The issue is the consistent pursuit of share value over sustainable, healthy business practices. And people are revolting and becoming overly cynical, because the company has already cashed out all of its trust and reputation in multiple get rich quick schemes.
So it should surprise no one when the burden of proof has been shifted on WOTC that this will not inevitably cost the players, fans and customer base when it doesn’t result in unrealistic, unsustainable profit growth. The only thing that keeps the real power and beneficiary, the share holders, at bay