This if tough as I'm willing to pay something, but I'm not going to pay for digital content I have in hard copy format. And I don't feel like I'll be using the service if I do, even if they try the whole "only pay for what you want", I already have and if you the digital service doesn't account for that I'm not going to be that happy about it.
The only way I'll get on board is if you can access digital content you've already paid for through some sort of code I guess. Not sure how they could really do that, but from my perspective that's what they're up against.
Its been said 1000s of times but they have no way to know what you have purchased and its unlikely to be up to curse to decide so knowing what wotc have been doing with other licensed stuff its very unlikely the books content will be anything other than RRP.
There should be a way to buy a digital license. You buy the book. You go to WoTC and upload a receipt or do some other proof of purchase and this adds the book to your digital locker. Or the retailer does it at time of purchase. You then log in to Roll20, D&D Beyond or whatever site you're using. You then link your WoTC account and the third party site knows what you own and gives you access to it.
And how do the third party companies that run those services make any money? They are not being paid by WotC to make this stuff. They are paying WotC to use the license. That would be like saying if I bought the Player's Handbook digitally from Roll20, or DDB I should then be able to get a physical copy from Amazon.
It depends on what the ultimate goal of D&D Beyond. If digital rules are a side business to the core offering, then they could offer a significant discount for digital purchases. Proof of ownership gets you the digital copy for $5.00. If you're buying for the first time, then you pay $25.00. But, for me at least, there is little incentive to buy if the rules don't have offline access and are forever trapped within the product. It's as bad as dropping $49.99 on the Monster Manual on Roll20, and then joining a group that doesn't use Roll20.
Paizo has done a bang-up job of selling hardcover books for $50, and PDFs for $10.00, and quite a number of other companies offer print+digital bundles.
This if tough as I'm willing to pay something, but I'm not going to pay for digital content I have in hard copy format. And I don't feel like I'll be using the service if I do, even if they try the whole "only pay for what you want", I already have and if you the digital service doesn't account for that I'm not going to be that happy about it.
The only way I'll get on board is if you can access digital content you've already paid for through some sort of code I guess. Not sure how they could really do that, but from my perspective that's what they're up against.
Its been said 1000s of times but they have no way to know what you have purchased and its unlikely to be up to curse to decide so knowing what wotc have been doing with other licensed stuff its very unlikely the books content will be anything other than RRP.
There should be a way to buy a digital license. You buy the book. You go to WoTC and upload a receipt or do some other proof of purchase and this adds the book to your digital locker. Or the retailer does it at time of purchase. You then log in to Roll20, D&D Beyond or whatever site you're using. You then link your WoTC account and the third party site knows what you own and gives you access to it.
And how do the third party companies that run those services make any money? They are not being paid by WotC to make this stuff. They are paying WotC to use the license. That would be like saying if I bought the Player's Handbook digitally from Roll20, or DDB I should then be able to get a physical copy from Amazon.
That actually sounds reasonable to me. If I paid full price for the Player's Handbook on Roll20, then I should be able to cover cost of shipping and have WoTC send me a book. You should not need to buy the rules over and over again on every platform you plan to use it on.
And I would hope that D&D Beyond or Roll20 are not making the digital offering. I would think that WoTC would create the digital offering and these companies are just distributors. I'm sure both companies have an SDK.
As things are going now, it's far more valuable to me to buy the books on Amazon and send them to 1dollarscan.com than it is to jump through some loopholes to use these half baked digital offerings.
This if tough as I'm willing to pay something, but I'm not going to pay for digital content I have in hard copy format. And I don't feel like I'll be using the service if I do, even if they try the whole "only pay for what you want", I already have and if you the digital service doesn't account for that I'm not going to be that happy about it.
The only way I'll get on board is if you can access digital content you've already paid for through some sort of code I guess. Not sure how they could really do that, but from my perspective that's what they're up against.
Its been said 1000s of times but they have no way to know what you have purchased and its unlikely to be up to curse to decide so knowing what wotc have been doing with other licensed stuff its very unlikely the books content will be anything other than RRP.
There should be a way to buy a digital license. You buy the book. You go to WoTC and upload a receipt or do some other proof of purchase and this adds the book to your digital locker. Or the retailer does it at time of purchase. You then log in to Roll20, D&D Beyond or whatever site you're using. You then link your WoTC account and the third party site knows what you own and gives you access to it.
And how do the third party companies that run those services make any money? They are not being paid by WotC to make this stuff. They are paying WotC to use the license. That would be like saying if I bought the Player's Handbook digitally from Roll20, or DDB I should then be able to get a physical copy from Amazon.
That actually sounds reasonable to me. If I paid full price for the Player's Handbook on Roll20, then I should be able to cover cost of shipping and have WoTC send me a book. You should not need to buy the rules over and over again on every platform you plan to use it on.
And I would hope that D&D Beyond or Roll20 are not making the digital offering. I would think that WoTC would create the digital offering and these companies are just distributors. I'm sure both companies have an SDK.
As things are going now, it's far more valuable to me to buy the books on Amazon and send them to 1dollarscan.com than it is to jump through some loopholes to use these half baked digital offerings.
Well, that's just not how business works. Companies have costs (not your problem), and in this case DDB has to have everything made, from the UI, to the data entry, to the coding to ensure everything works for the end user. That's what you are really paying for if you want to use additional content beyond the SRD. I might have the PHB physically, and even have access to it on Fantasy Grounds, but those are two entirely different products, not due to the content, but the UI and usage experience of that content. The same can be said for PDFs, even though a lot of people expect them for free with their physical purchases.
I talked about this in another thread...I still play a lot of 4e and pay for subscription for Insider...I understand D&D Beyond will be produced by Curse but still would be nice to have a "bundle deal" if you want to use both. WOC could demand from Curse or at least lower fee for Insider. Maybe easier said than done but figure I'd throw suggestion out there.
I am holding off on looking at other digital packages for this. Much prefer an official subscription pack, and form the sounds of it will be a lot smoother and easier to use as it is designed specifically for 5E.
Besides, most of the other sites/packages are too full on for me, playing at home with the kids, where pen and paper are still the go to.
If the DM sub only gets you the "privilege" to share stuff you need to rebuy seems a little worthless. Either I get an added benefit ( at the very least discounts on buying those books) or it seems like this would be inferior to pretty much all the other systems out there. Why WotC won't just sell PDFs is still beyond me. It is not stopping people from pirating the game.
This if tough as I'm willing to pay something, but I'm not going to pay for digital content I have in hard copy format. And I don't feel like I'll be using the service if I do, even if they try the whole "only pay for what you want", I already have and if you the digital service doesn't account for that I'm not going to be that happy about it.
The only way I'll get on board is if you can access digital content you've already paid for through some sort of code I guess. Not sure how they could really do that, but from my perspective that's what they're up against.
Its been said 1000s of times but they have no way to know what you have purchased and its unlikely to be up to curse to decide so knowing what wotc have been doing with other licensed stuff its very unlikely the books content will be anything other than RRP.
There should be a way to buy a digital license. You buy the book. You go to WoTC and upload a receipt or do some other proof of purchase and this adds the book to your digital locker. Or the retailer does it at time of purchase. You then log in to Roll20, D&D Beyond or whatever site you're using. You then link your WoTC account and the third party site knows what you own and gives you access to it.
And how do the third party companies that run those services make any money? They are not being paid by WotC to make this stuff. They are paying WotC to use the license. That would be like saying if I bought the Player's Handbook digitally from Roll20, or DDB I should then be able to get a physical copy from Amazon.
That actually sounds reasonable to me. If I paid full price for the Player's Handbook on Roll20, then I should be able to cover cost of shipping and have WoTC send me a book. You should not need to buy the rules over and over again on every platform you plan to use it on.
And I would hope that D&D Beyond or Roll20 are not making the digital offering. I would think that WoTC would create the digital offering and these companies are just distributors. I'm sure both companies have an SDK.
As things are going now, it's far more valuable to me to buy the books on Amazon and send them to 1dollarscan.com than it is to jump through some loopholes to use these half baked digital offerings.
Well, that's just not how business works. Companies have costs (not your problem), and in this case DDB has to have everything made, from the UI, to the data entry, to the coding to ensure everything works for the end user. That's what you are really paying for if you want to use additional content beyond the SRD. I might have the PHB physically, and even have access to it on Fantasy Grounds, but those are two entirely different products, not due to the content, but the UI and usage experience of that content. The same can be said for PDFs, even though a lot of people expect them for free with their physical purchases.
PDFs have the added advantage of being DRM free (for the most part), and you can use them anywhere. If you want to buy the PHB on Fantasy Grounds, that's all fine and dandy. But it should not cost $50 to do it. It shoud cost a lot less.
Or perhaps these services need to come up with a reasonable subscription price such as $10/month that gives you access to all the rules at the same time. Those rules can be online only, and you lose access when you cancel your subscription.
If the DM sub only gets you the "privilege" to share stuff you need to rebuy seems a little worthless. Either I get an added benefit ( at the very least discounts on buying those books) or it seems like this would be inferior to pretty much all the other systems out there. Why WotC won't just sell PDFs is still beyond me. It is not stopping people from pirating the game.
I agree. To me it make more sense to charge the players to share from a DM rather than the DM to share with players. This current model is like me paying Home Depot a monthly fee to let my neighbors borrow the lawnmower I bought. The people who have not bought the content should be paying.
I get that they want to cash in on the DMs wanting to share the books as they are the only ones that truly need them, but there is a nice way and a anti consumer way to do it. Unlike with the books they do not have a monopoly on this. Far from it actually, they are rather late to the game. Some things that could make them cash in theory will need to be made baseline to draw people here. The Subscriptions and buy options need to be as attractive or better then the other options. They need to be convenient, practical and priced right. WotC has failed to really grasp the Internet and digital release in the past. The lack of PDFs is like I said before absolutely baffling and I would go as far as saying that it cost them a lot of money as it made people simply pirate it instead. There is quite literally no other option right now and if they don't make D&DB good price to content wise it will stay that way. Selling a book here for the same price as the hardcover will at this point send the system down as a lot of people will be turned of and just keep using what they are using right now. Unless they give people a lot with subs or even make certain things baseline it will hurt this platform. If they do understand that or not only time will tell. However this could sink rather fast if they over charge for a service other offer better for less.
If the DM sub only gets you the "privilege" to share stuff you need to rebuy seems a little worthless. Either I get an added benefit ( at the very least discounts on buying those books) or it seems like this would be inferior to pretty much all the other systems out there. Why WotC won't just sell PDFs is still beyond me. It is not stopping people from pirating the game.
I agree. To me it make more sense to charge the players to share from a DM rather than the DM to share with players. This current model is like me paying Home Depot a monthly fee to let my neighbors borrow the lawnmower I bought. The people who have not bought the content should be paying.
I believe it's a little closer to me talking to my friends about how we all need a good lawnmower to use, letting everyone contribute some amount of money that gets pooled together, then going to Home Depot to buy a lawnmower we can all use.
It's fairly simple to share money among friends with the options available today - this is the use case we're addressing.
We could just say "make all your players purchase his or her own copy of this material, forget about sharing," but we are intentionally deciding to avoid that kind of "cash grab" to use a term that's popped up several times in this thread.
I really, actually, truly encourage everyone to wait just a little while longer to hear the actual pricing details before making too many judgements.
If the DM sub only gets you the "privilege" to share stuff you need to rebuy seems a little worthless. Either I get an added benefit ( at the very least discounts on buying those books) or it seems like this would be inferior to pretty much all the other systems out there. Why WotC won't just sell PDFs is still beyond me. It is not stopping people from pirating the game.
I agree. To me it make more sense to charge the players to share from a DM rather than the DM to share with players. This current model is like me paying Home Depot a monthly fee to let my neighbors borrow the lawnmower I bought. The people who have not bought the content should be paying.
I believe it's a little closer to me talking to my friends about how we all need a good lawnmower to use, letting everyone contribute some amount of money that gets pooled together, then going to Home Depot to buy a lawnmower we can all use.
It's fairly simple to share money among friends with the options available today - this is the use case we're addressing.
We could just say "make all your players purchase his or her own copy of this material, forget about sharing," but we are intentionally deciding to avoid that kind of "cash grab" to use a term that's popped up several times in this thread.
I really, actually, truly encourage everyone to wait just a little while longer to hear the actual pricing details before making too many judgements.
Thanks!
Don't get me wrong. I do not think this is some kind of a cash grab. I just don't think it is an attractive option. At least for me, it is easier to get everyone to buy their own content than to get everyone to reimburse me every month for the subscription. For other people maybe this is not a problem. For me, it is much easier to tell my players to buy what they want. If they want to make a character using feats they can buy the player's handbook. I do plan on requiring my players to use BBD to make and manage their characters but I will leave it up to them how much they want to spend. I do plan to spend money of DDB buying the materials for my own use.
I get what you are trying to go for. Everyone chips in to buy the books and then pay monthly to share them (not everyone needs to buy the material). The problem is that only the DM ends up owning the material (even if other people helped pay for it). We do not co-own the material. Also with something like this you will likely reach a point where in a year or two it would have been cheaper, in the long run, to have everyone buy the material themselves and everyone would own those materials for themselves.
It is true that we do not have all the information yet. Maybe the master plan will be super cheap or come with undisclosed features that make the monthly fee worth it. We shall see.
I wish the DDB team nothing but the best of luck and I hope you make a ton of money.
So... At least two months to polish each phase? We should expect to see the official pay material around Halloween? Unless it's three months to polish then Xmas?
Be interesting to see, that's for sure. From I've been getting by reading between the lines of interviews and such, I think the next two should follow pretty close together, if not simultaneously..
could be wrong, and be interesting to see if BadeEye denies such a concept, or is silent :D
Be interesting to see, that's for sure. From I've been getting by reading between the lines of interviews and such, I think the next two should follow pretty close together, if not simultaneously..
could be wrong, and be interesting to see if BadeEye denies such a concept, or is silent :D
Rest assured, we are still talking weeks and we'll certainly launch with everything this summer as originally announced. I ask for everyone to hang in there a little longer - it's all for the best.
As for Phase 3, it is actually as close (if not closer) to done as the builder and the sheet. In fact, we could have conceivably released what's in Phase 3 before we release Phase 2. The problem is, homebrew and campaign management (in its first iteration) won't be as valuable without the integration with character management coming from the second phase.
I'm bringing this up mainly to assure the community that the wait for Phase 3 once Phase 2 hits will without a doubt be significantly shorter than the wait between the first two phases. We will move from Phase 3 to launch (where everyone will be able to finally move beyond the Basic Rules/ SRD content) quickly after.
So... At least two months to polish each phase? We should expect to see the official pay material around Halloween? Unless it's three months to polish then Xmas?
Just voted in the poll, and I chose "both, if...". But I want to add a caution to that vote...it's a BIG "if". We're late in the game, here, and a lot of people have a lot already invested in books, other e-tools, etc. The features and price point have to both be right, or that vote switches firmly to a "would not pay for 5e again". Some of these poll numbers might shift significantly at the end of Phase 2 or 3. Something to keep in mind...
Just voted in the poll, and I chose "both, if...". But I want to add a caution to that vote...it's a BIG "if". We're late in the game, here, and a lot of people have a lot already invested in books, other e-tools, etc. The features and price point have to both be right, or that vote switches firmly to a "would not pay for 5e again". Some of these poll numbers might shift significantly at the end of Phase 2 or 3. Something to keep in mind...
Very true. I am more one or the other. I either want to just buy the stuff one time OR pay a subscription and get the content as a service. I would be willing to do both BUT then the content and the subscription need to be very inexpensive. If DDB wants me to buy the content and then pay monthly it would need to have very extensive campaign management tools along the lines of something like Realm Works by Lone Wolf and it would need to be hosted in the cloud for all your players to access.
We all have different price tolerances. I am only expressing mine.
I don't want to pay both ways for the same thing. I'd rather pay once for content, but I'm fine paying for them to connect me to my players and host a bunch of information about my campaign.
What could get sticky is that something like an initiative tracker could be built as either a one-off tool or as part of an interconnected suite. Some folks are going to be just fine with all their content on one device and no online portion, even if it means they need to enter all the players' PCs into their iPad (or whatever) manually. Curse could monetize the tool as a one-off purchase and get some cash from some folks who wouldn't otherwise pay for it. In the process, folks like me, who see benefit in the online tool set via subscription, either have to pay for the initial download and the subscription, or there are two different downloads. Ick. I don't want to pay twice, but I also realize the other option sucks, too.
About the only solution would be to have tiered offerings for every tool. For the combat tracker, maybe the free version only has six encounter slots, which is enough for most DMs to prep one session at a time. At the master tier, I do like I do, with my current tool, and just sit down and enter all the encounters in a published adventure as I get free time. If you actually buy the content through DDB, maybe all the encounters show up, anyway. The perk of the master tier would (potentially) be that I could tweak more than six of them to fit my needs -- say, porting PotA over to Eberron.
I definately would normally expect a subscription to at least discount the books, but that is coming from playing a lot of "freemium" MMOs like DDO and LOTRO, where subscribers get all access, and premiums get what they pay for and some perks for having spent money. I know some folks hate that model, because it somehow causes them to spend a lot of money (i don't grok how, but I know it's a thing), but IMO it is the best possible model, for companies and consumers.
I can play months of DDO or Neverwinter or Lotro without spending money. I've purchased some account upgrades for DDO and Lotro, mostly DDO, but I haven't given them any money in over a year and a half, because I took a break from playing, and I have plenty of content I haven't played through. If my group gets back into DDO, I may sub for a few months/a year, build up that store currency (you get 500/mo I think, basically a rewards program for subscribing), and then buy some of the content I really like (like races and classes) when it's on sale.
Other people buy just about everything, including tons of perk stuff and consumables and cosmetics, while others just pay once a year for the year, and buy little stuff with their free points, and just have access to everything. I can't imagine a better model.
HOWEVER, that probably can't work here, because Curse doesn't own the books. If this was WOTC hiring Curse to make this for them, sure. But Curse has to pay for the right to sell the books. It isn't reasonable to expect to get the books for free just because I'm subscribed, as much as that was part of the reason the 4e tools suite was so excellent.
On the other hand, it already looks like DDB is going to be worth the money, even if I have to pay 30$ for the phb, and buy firbolgs and tabaxi, and dig through free homebrew stuff for monsters and items and stuff when I don't want to build my own.
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We do bones, motherf***ker!
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I talked about this in another thread...I still play a lot of 4e and pay for subscription for Insider...I understand D&D Beyond will be produced by Curse but still would be nice to have a "bundle deal" if you want to use both. WOC could demand from Curse or at least lower fee for Insider. Maybe easier said than done but figure I'd throw suggestion out there.
I am holding off on looking at other digital packages for this. Much prefer an official subscription pack, and form the sounds of it will be a lot smoother and easier to use as it is designed specifically for 5E.
Besides, most of the other sites/packages are too full on for me, playing at home with the kids, where pen and paper are still the go to.
Seriously looking forward to the full release.
-Stu
- Stu
#6321 on Discord.
If the DM sub only gets you the "privilege" to share stuff you need to rebuy seems a little worthless. Either I get an added benefit ( at the very least discounts on buying those books) or it seems like this would be inferior to pretty much all the other systems out there. Why WotC won't just sell PDFs is still beyond me. It is not stopping people from pirating the game.
I get that they want to cash in on the DMs wanting to share the books as they are the only ones that truly need them, but there is a nice way and a anti consumer way to do it. Unlike with the books they do not have a monopoly on this. Far from it actually, they are rather late to the game. Some things that could make them cash in theory will need to be made baseline to draw people here. The Subscriptions and buy options need to be as attractive or better then the other options. They need to be convenient, practical and priced right. WotC has failed to really grasp the Internet and digital release in the past. The lack of PDFs is like I said before absolutely baffling and I would go as far as saying that it cost them a lot of money as it made people simply pirate it instead. There is quite literally no other option right now and if they don't make D&DB good price to content wise it will stay that way. Selling a book here for the same price as the hardcover will at this point send the system down as a lot of people will be turned of and just keep using what they are using right now. Unless they give people a lot with subs or even make certain things baseline it will hurt this platform. If they do understand that or not only time will tell. However this could sink rather fast if they over charge for a service other offer better for less.
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D&D Beyond FoundersBeta testing stayed March 20 I believe.
still beta 1 and Currently may 16
So... At least two months to polish each phase? We should expect to see the official pay material around Halloween? Unless it's three months to polish then Xmas?
Be interesting to see, that's for sure. From I've been getting by reading between the lines of interviews and such, I think the next two should follow pretty close together, if not simultaneously..
could be wrong, and be interesting to see if BadeEye denies such a concept, or is silent :D
- Stu
#6321 on Discord.
Huh... knew I saw it somewhere... add that to the dragon talk interview and weeeeeeeeee
*runs around, arms flailing wildly*
as a new DM, and not having any other subscriptions anywhere, so frelling hyped right now.
How many mippippis mr B?
- Stu
#6321 on Discord.
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Just voted in the poll, and I chose "both, if...". But I want to add a caution to that vote...it's a BIG "if". We're late in the game, here, and a lot of people have a lot already invested in books, other e-tools, etc. The features and price point have to both be right, or that vote switches firmly to a "would not pay for 5e again". Some of these poll numbers might shift significantly at the end of Phase 2 or 3. Something to keep in mind...
I don't want to pay both ways for the same thing. I'd rather pay once for content, but I'm fine paying for them to connect me to my players and host a bunch of information about my campaign.
What could get sticky is that something like an initiative tracker could be built as either a one-off tool or as part of an interconnected suite. Some folks are going to be just fine with all their content on one device and no online portion, even if it means they need to enter all the players' PCs into their iPad (or whatever) manually. Curse could monetize the tool as a one-off purchase and get some cash from some folks who wouldn't otherwise pay for it. In the process, folks like me, who see benefit in the online tool set via subscription, either have to pay for the initial download and the subscription, or there are two different downloads. Ick. I don't want to pay twice, but I also realize the other option sucks, too.
About the only solution would be to have tiered offerings for every tool. For the combat tracker, maybe the free version only has six encounter slots, which is enough for most DMs to prep one session at a time. At the master tier, I do like I do, with my current tool, and just sit down and enter all the encounters in a published adventure as I get free time. If you actually buy the content through DDB, maybe all the encounters show up, anyway. The perk of the master tier would (potentially) be that I could tweak more than six of them to fit my needs -- say, porting PotA over to Eberron.
Dunno. Just train-of-thought musings.
I definately would normally expect a subscription to at least discount the books, but that is coming from playing a lot of "freemium" MMOs like DDO and LOTRO, where subscribers get all access, and premiums get what they pay for and some perks for having spent money. I know some folks hate that model, because it somehow causes them to spend a lot of money (i don't grok how, but I know it's a thing), but IMO it is the best possible model, for companies and consumers.
I can play months of DDO or Neverwinter or Lotro without spending money. I've purchased some account upgrades for DDO and Lotro, mostly DDO, but I haven't given them any money in over a year and a half, because I took a break from playing, and I have plenty of content I haven't played through. If my group gets back into DDO, I may sub for a few months/a year, build up that store currency (you get 500/mo I think, basically a rewards program for subscribing), and then buy some of the content I really like (like races and classes) when it's on sale.
Other people buy just about everything, including tons of perk stuff and consumables and cosmetics, while others just pay once a year for the year, and buy little stuff with their free points, and just have access to everything. I can't imagine a better model.
HOWEVER, that probably can't work here, because Curse doesn't own the books. If this was WOTC hiring Curse to make this for them, sure. But Curse has to pay for the right to sell the books. It isn't reasonable to expect to get the books for free just because I'm subscribed, as much as that was part of the reason the 4e tools suite was so excellent.
On the other hand, it already looks like DDB is going to be worth the money, even if I have to pay 30$ for the phb, and buy firbolgs and tabaxi, and dig through free homebrew stuff for monsters and items and stuff when I don't want to build my own.
We do bones, motherf***ker!