If this site wants to stay relevant, it desperately needs to partner with a VTT like Foundry or Shard, in the same way they did with Avrae. As it is, Kakaroto, a volunteer coder behind Beyond20, is doing more to keep people using DDB than anyone.
First off, good luck to those leaving and thank you for all the content and support!
Second, stop throwing out speculations about the site going under or the boat sinking. I worked for a startup that our CEO came in on Friday and told everyone that we are going strong and have a new partner to inject some capital and we are going to be expanding..... then Monday fired half the staff. You won't know from them until it's done as they won't be told if the ship is on fire yet or not. Why worry about something ya can't control and put bad juju out there in the universe?
Third, buy the damn books! I have physical copies of everything here and so should you. Print out your character sheets every time you level too just in case. Can't cancel a physical book nor raise pricing on it after you own it.
Only 12% of fortune 500 companies are around from 1955 so the odds are DDB will go under or absorbed at some point in the decades to come, plan for it. I still have TSR books and can play AD&D if I like (not that I wanna ever see a THAC0 ever again in my life) and they have been gone almost a quarter century now. F*** I'M OLD! lol
Enjoy DDB while we have it, support each other, and wish those heading off well. We are only here a short time, smile and have some bourbon.
Does anyone really think DDB is in dire straits financially or that business is bad in some other way? With D&D booming and 10k people online here at minimum pretty much any time I log in? I have no reason to believe there's a company culture problem or a management issue driving people away, but that at least wouldn't sound crazy. The company folding or DDB no longer being supported properly on the other hand, that just seems completely unrealistic. Why are people worried about their content?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Somethings going on and it doesn't feel like just a coincidence because why won't you interduce all the new people, as right now we have no idea what's going on with their YouTube side and that's how people get their D&D news with WotC plugging books on this channel.
Somethings going on and it doesn't feel like just a coincidence because why won't you interduce all the new people, as right now we have no idea what's going on with their YouTube side and that's how people get their D&D news with WotC plugging books on this channel.
Somethings going on and it doesn't feel like just a coincidence because why won't you interduce all the new people, as right now we have no idea what's going on with their YouTube side and that's how people get their D&D news with WotC plugging books on this channel.
Do you know how long hiring processes can take? And then add in that there's this pandemic going on that makes it even slower?
They have already announced Lauren's replacement. Adam isn't even leaving yet. That only leaves Todd, and, sure, his videos are great, but DDB can so easily survive with a gap in their YouTube channel updates (honestly, I haven't even looked at it in months, and I'm not sure if any of my players - all of them DDB subscribers - even know it exists!).
I see they are still working hard on developing tools, so I'm confident the tools are not going to be negatively impacted by this. On the other hand, James was the creator of most (or even all?) Of the articles we used to see on the home page on a weekly basis. I did notice that nothing new has been posted since James' farewell (except the necroposting needed to hide that post) and that DID scare me a little. But I guess it will just take some time to find a suitable replacement?
Looks like James was brought on in 2018, though initially he was in a mix of writing with Todd and Lauren providing a fair balance of bylines, his writing the articles almost exclusively is a more recent thing. Prior to 2018 Todd did the bulk of the work extant in the articles tab. I could have sworn they had Adam Troy Castro writing for them with some frequency at some time, but I'm not finding his articles, but also not doing a deep dig.
My use of DDB in priority:
1. The Tools and compendium content
2. Forum antics
3. Articles
4. The various videos and streams.
I think most users have similar priorities, and I'm positive DDB has multiple types of metrics to prove that internally. That leads to 1. being the largest area for resource expenditures, logically, so folks working in the 3 or 4 area often find themselves eventually hitting a wall in terms of professional growth, and when members of a team who work together closely and are are largely compartmentalized from the rest of the enterprises operations, these sorts of announcements happen, and because of the nature of "creatives" this often happens with creative content workers and teams. Honestly I'm kind of curious what Todd and James and Lauren might be able to get up to with greater creative freedom, which seems to be a direction at least Todd's going in some capacity.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
FYI: People with far more experience in the industry found that article laughably inaccurate and nothing but unfounded speculation and clickbaiting. I'd take it with some massive grains of salt. I don't know anyone with any experience in the industry who took that article seriously, for what it's worth.
FYI: People with far more experience in the industry found that article laughably inaccurate and nothing but unfounded speculation and clickbaiting. I'd take it with some massive grains of salt. I don't know anyone with any experience in the industry who took that article seriously, for what it's worth.
Fair.
I wouldn't mind seeing it happen, though. I'd much prefer to see the D&D property owned by an entity that has strong roots in, or a genuine interest in, role-playing games.
FYI: People with far more experience in the industry found that article laughably inaccurate and nothing but unfounded speculation and clickbaiting. I'd take it with some massive grains of salt. I don't know anyone with any experience in the industry who took that article seriously, for what it's worth.
Fair.
I wouldn't mind seeing it happen, though. I'd much prefer to see the D&D property owned by an entity that has strong roots in, or a genuine interest in, role-playing games.
You don't think WotC has a genuine interest in D&D? WotC pretty much rescued D&D from the Pit of Despair better known as TSR.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I see they are still working hard on developing tools, so I'm confident the tools are not going to be negatively impacted by this. On the other hand, James was the creator of most (or even all?) Of the articles we used to see on the home page on a weekly basis. I did notice that nothing new has been posted since James' farewell (except the necroposting needed to hide that post) and that DID scare me a little. But I guess it will just take some time to find a suitable replacement?
Looks like James was brought on in 2018, though initially he was in a mix of writing with Todd and Lauren providing a fair balance of bylines, his writing the articles almost exclusively is a more recent thing. Prior to 2018 Todd did the bulk of the work extant in the articles tab. I could have sworn they had Adam Troy Castro writing for them with some frequency at some time, but I'm not finding his articles, but also not doing a deep dig.
My use of DDB in priority:
1. The Tools and compendium content
2. Forum antics
3. Articles
4. The various videos and streams.
I think most users have similar priorities, and I'm positive DDB has multiple types of metrics to prove that internally. That leads to 1. being the largest area for resource expenditures, logically, so folks working in the 3 or 4 area often find themselves eventually hitting a wall in terms of professional growth, and when members of a team who work together closely and are are largely compartmentalized from the rest of the enterprises operations, these sorts of announcements happen, and because of the nature of "creatives" this often happens with creative content workers and teams. Honestly I'm kind of curious what Todd and James and Lauren might be able to get up to with greater creative freedom, which seems to be a direction at least Todd's going in some capacity.
100%. One approach a lot of sites use is to do one-off articles that they hire out for. They can pay similar rates, but not have a full salaried person. DDB can also bring on third-party video creators. Production cadence will go down, and costs will go way down. Then DDB has resources for more engineering staff.
Thanks to Adam for all times he said my questions were good on the Dev Updates. I hope the new person has the same values and vision you've brought to this, when you stop and think about it, pretty major part of my life for the past 3+ years.
Thanks to Todd for all of the great video content that's helped me wrap my head around certain ideas that I didn't fully understand in the game. You seem like a giant sweetheart and the world needs more of that these days.
Thanks to Lauren for being a force for good. I don't have quite as much to say since I've only had a couple of interactions with you, but they were all positive (I mean, I got free dice one time so you can't beat that).
All 3 of you are rock stars and its no surprise you'd be in high demand.
---
With bit of sentimentality out of the way, I don't want to spend time speculating about things that may ultimately be none of my business. I personally prefer to keep my employment information private unless absolutely necessary, so I feel kind of silly demanding answers about that from other people. I know a lot of us, myself included, have made a pretty big investment into this site, but I think adding to the disarray of a rumor mill could only help to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if everything really is fine, but because of all the internet hoopla, it creates an artificial panic of customer confidence? Oh dang it I'm speculating again... I've posted some guesses in other places but ultimately we'll have to wait and see. Todd has an announcement on Monday, and Adam has one on this coming Thursday, and no matter what happens I'm almost 99.99999999% positive DDB will be fine until then at least. So I can wait.
To everyone talking about VTTs in this thread, here's some fun speculation. I just want to point out that Adam has never said that a "VTT" is coming. He has said that the DDB version of what we think of as a VTT is coming, but he was saying it would be the next step in the evolution of what we consider to be a VTT, or something to that effect (I'm working from memory here). I'm not totally sure what to make of that. I doubt it's going to be as big as something like TaleSpire, but I don't think he would say that if it was just the same "tokens on a grid" setup we've seen in every other VTT. I also don't think it would be as complicated as something like Roll20 or FoundryVTT. One of the main selling points of DDB has always been its accessibility, and I think anything with too much of a learning curve would go against the other benefits DDB offers. And even if it was just tokens on a grid, seeing how newer, more simplified VTTs work (like Tarrasque.io and Owlbear.rodeo) gives me a good bit of confidence that whatever form it ends up taking will be as intuitive and user-friendly as the rest of the site.
I mean, I could be wrong. The evil corporate overlords at Fandom could be waiting for Adam to leave so they can immediately press the "Screw Everyone Over" button and ruin D&D forever mwahahahaha! Sorry. Speculating again. I hope I'm not wrong. I just resubbed the Master Tier for another year in January, so I'm here until the wheels fall off, so to speak.
People come and go all the time, and workplaces carry on, business as usual. No matter how important a role a person has or appears to have, a company doesn't stop just because a few people leave. To be honest I have seen a couple of the videos made by Todd, and didn't think much of them. The character builds were basic, they kept wandering off on a tangent and it felt like they were literally holding the book open off camera and reading the character class text straight of the page. Sure their friends will miss them but the company as a whole will go on.
People come and go all the time, and workplaces carry on, business as usual. No matter how important a role a person has or appears to have, a company doesn't stop just because a few people leave. To be honest I have seen a couple of the videos made by Todd, and didn't think much of them. The character builds were basic, they kept wandering off on a tangent and it felt like they were literally holding the book open off camera and reading the character class text straight of the page. Sure their friends will miss them but the company as a whole will go on.
His talks with Jeremy Crawford were ok...but IMO JC really needs to step out of the design chair for 5e and let some new blood in. I always got the sense in the videos that he was just not into it anymore.
If this site wants to stay relevant, it desperately needs to partner with a VTT like Foundry or Shard, in the same way they did with Avrae. As it is, Kakaroto, a volunteer coder behind Beyond20, is doing more to keep people using DDB than anyone.
People come and go all the time, and workplaces carry on, business as usual. No matter how important a role a person has or appears to have, a company doesn't stop just because a few people leave. To be honest I have seen a couple of the videos made by Todd, and didn't think much of them. The character builds were basic, they kept wandering off on a tangent and it felt like they were literally holding the book open off camera and reading the character class text straight of the page. Sure their friends will miss them but the company as a whole will go on.
His talks with Jeremy Crawford were ok...but IMO JC really needs to step out of the design chair for 5e and let some new blood in. I always got the sense in the videos that he was just not into it anymore.
The last few Class 101 articles had a similar feel.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
But, I agree with you they saved it. Magic the Gathering and awful TSR releases had killed AD&D . If it wasnt for 3.0 I wouldnt be playing D&D at this point.
On one hand, it is a little suspect with four highly visible people leaving at once, but then again three were just community folks. For me, Beyond is 100% about my digital 5e products and the tools to support the actual gaming. I virtually never read any of the articles and have never watched a single video. Those things are not what I pay for and I won't miss them.
I'll remain an optimist, take people at their word, assume things here will carry on as they have been, and the tools will continue to improve. If the site does eventually shut down, whenever that is, I'll trust for now that we'll be taken care of and have a way to download/archive the content we paid for.
On one hand, it is a little suspect with four highly visible people leaving at once, but then again three were just community folks. For me, Beyond is 100% about my digital 5e products and the tools to support the actual gaming. I virtually never read any of the articles and have never watched a single video. Those things are not what I pay for and I won't miss them.
I'll remain an optimist, take people at their word, assume things here will carry on as they have been, and the tools will continue to improve. If the site does eventually shut down, whenever that is, I'll trust for now that we'll be taken care of and have a way to download/archive the content we paid for.
I mean one of those four is the actual founder.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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If this site wants to stay relevant, it desperately needs to partner with a VTT like Foundry or Shard, in the same way they did with Avrae. As it is, Kakaroto, a volunteer coder behind Beyond20, is doing more to keep people using DDB than anyone.
First off, good luck to those leaving and thank you for all the content and support!
Second, stop throwing out speculations about the site going under or the boat sinking. I worked for a startup that our CEO came in on Friday and told everyone that we are going strong and have a new partner to inject some capital and we are going to be expanding..... then Monday fired half the staff. You won't know from them until it's done as they won't be told if the ship is on fire yet or not. Why worry about something ya can't control and put bad juju out there in the universe?
Third, buy the damn books! I have physical copies of everything here and so should you. Print out your character sheets every time you level too just in case. Can't cancel a physical book nor raise pricing on it after you own it.
Only 12% of fortune 500 companies are around from 1955 so the odds are DDB will go under or absorbed at some point in the decades to come, plan for it. I still have TSR books and can play AD&D if I like (not that I wanna ever see a THAC0 ever again in my life) and they have been gone almost a quarter century now. F*** I'M OLD! lol
Enjoy DDB while we have it, support each other, and wish those heading off well. We are only here a short time, smile and have some bourbon.
Does anyone really think DDB is in dire straits financially or that business is bad in some other way? With D&D booming and 10k people online here at minimum pretty much any time I log in? I have no reason to believe there's a company culture problem or a management issue driving people away, but that at least wouldn't sound crazy. The company folding or DDB no longer being supported properly on the other hand, that just seems completely unrealistic. Why are people worried about their content?
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Somethings going on and it doesn't feel like just a coincidence because why won't you interduce all the new people, as right now we have no idea what's going on with their YouTube side and that's how people get their D&D news with WotC plugging books on this channel.
They dont have all the new people yet
Do you know how long hiring processes can take? And then add in that there's this pandemic going on that makes it even slower?
They have already announced Lauren's replacement. Adam isn't even leaving yet. That only leaves Todd, and, sure, his videos are great, but DDB can so easily survive with a gap in their YouTube channel updates (honestly, I haven't even looked at it in months, and I'm not sure if any of my players - all of them DDB subscribers - even know it exists!).
Looks like James was brought on in 2018, though initially he was in a mix of writing with Todd and Lauren providing a fair balance of bylines, his writing the articles almost exclusively is a more recent thing. Prior to 2018 Todd did the bulk of the work extant in the articles tab. I could have sworn they had Adam Troy Castro writing for them with some frequency at some time, but I'm not finding his articles, but also not doing a deep dig.
My use of DDB in priority:
1. The Tools and compendium content
2. Forum antics
3. Articles
4. The various videos and streams.
I think most users have similar priorities, and I'm positive DDB has multiple types of metrics to prove that internally. That leads to 1. being the largest area for resource expenditures, logically, so folks working in the 3 or 4 area often find themselves eventually hitting a wall in terms of professional growth, and when members of a team who work together closely and are are largely compartmentalized from the rest of the enterprises operations, these sorts of announcements happen, and because of the nature of "creatives" this often happens with creative content workers and teams. Honestly I'm kind of curious what Todd and James and Lauren might be able to get up to with greater creative freedom, which seems to be a direction at least Todd's going in some capacity.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Or Hasbro divesting itself of Wizards of the Coast?
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/47054/rolling-initiative-a-case-possible-sale-wizards-coast-being-horizon
FYI: People with far more experience in the industry found that article laughably inaccurate and nothing but unfounded speculation and clickbaiting. I'd take it with some massive grains of salt. I don't know anyone with any experience in the industry who took that article seriously, for what it's worth.
Fair.
I wouldn't mind seeing it happen, though. I'd much prefer to see the D&D property owned by an entity that has strong roots in, or a genuine interest in, role-playing games.
You don't think WotC has a genuine interest in D&D? WotC pretty much rescued D&D from the Pit of Despair better known as TSR.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
100%. One approach a lot of sites use is to do one-off articles that they hire out for. They can pay similar rates, but not have a full salaried person. DDB can also bring on third-party video creators. Production cadence will go down, and costs will go way down. Then DDB has resources for more engineering staff.
First of all, other than the obvious...
Thanks to Adam for all times he said my questions were good on the Dev Updates. I hope the new person has the same values and vision you've brought to this, when you stop and think about it, pretty major part of my life for the past 3+ years.
Thanks to Todd for all of the great video content that's helped me wrap my head around certain ideas that I didn't fully understand in the game. You seem like a giant sweetheart and the world needs more of that these days.
Thanks to Lauren for being a force for good. I don't have quite as much to say since I've only had a couple of interactions with you, but they were all positive (I mean, I got free dice one time so you can't beat that).
All 3 of you are rock stars and its no surprise you'd be in high demand.
---
With bit of sentimentality out of the way, I don't want to spend time speculating about things that may ultimately be none of my business. I personally prefer to keep my employment information private unless absolutely necessary, so I feel kind of silly demanding answers about that from other people. I know a lot of us, myself included, have made a pretty big investment into this site, but I think adding to the disarray of a rumor mill could only help to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if everything really is fine, but because of all the internet hoopla, it creates an artificial panic of customer confidence? Oh dang it I'm speculating again... I've posted some guesses in other places but ultimately we'll have to wait and see. Todd has an announcement on Monday, and Adam has one on this coming Thursday, and no matter what happens I'm almost 99.99999999% positive DDB will be fine until then at least. So I can wait.
To everyone talking about VTTs in this thread, here's some fun speculation. I just want to point out that Adam has never said that a "VTT" is coming. He has said that the DDB version of what we think of as a VTT is coming, but he was saying it would be the next step in the evolution of what we consider to be a VTT, or something to that effect (I'm working from memory here). I'm not totally sure what to make of that. I doubt it's going to be as big as something like TaleSpire, but I don't think he would say that if it was just the same "tokens on a grid" setup we've seen in every other VTT. I also don't think it would be as complicated as something like Roll20 or FoundryVTT. One of the main selling points of DDB has always been its accessibility, and I think anything with too much of a learning curve would go against the other benefits DDB offers. And even if it was just tokens on a grid, seeing how newer, more simplified VTTs work (like Tarrasque.io and Owlbear.rodeo) gives me a good bit of confidence that whatever form it ends up taking will be as intuitive and user-friendly as the rest of the site.
I mean, I could be wrong. The evil corporate overlords at Fandom could be waiting for Adam to leave so they can immediately press the "Screw Everyone Over" button and ruin D&D forever mwahahahaha! Sorry. Speculating again. I hope I'm not wrong. I just resubbed the Master Tier for another year in January, so I'm here until the wheels fall off, so to speak.
People come and go all the time, and workplaces carry on, business as usual. No matter how important a role a person has or appears to have, a company doesn't stop just because a few people leave. To be honest I have seen a couple of the videos made by Todd, and didn't think much of them. The character builds were basic, they kept wandering off on a tangent and it felt like they were literally holding the book open off camera and reading the character class text straight of the page. Sure their friends will miss them but the company as a whole will go on.
His talks with Jeremy Crawford were ok...but IMO JC really needs to step out of the design chair for 5e and let some new blood in. I always got the sense in the videos that he was just not into it anymore.
https://talespire.com/
I played in a beta game with this and it blew me away at how fun it was and how I play with my dwarven forge at home
The last few Class 101 articles had a similar feel.
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.
[REDACTED]
But, I agree with you they saved it. Magic the Gathering and awful TSR releases had killed AD&D . If it wasnt for 3.0 I wouldnt be playing D&D at this point.
On one hand, it is a little suspect with four highly visible people leaving at once, but then again three were just community folks. For me, Beyond is 100% about my digital 5e products and the tools to support the actual gaming. I virtually never read any of the articles and have never watched a single video. Those things are not what I pay for and I won't miss them.
I'll remain an optimist, take people at their word, assume things here will carry on as they have been, and the tools will continue to improve. If the site does eventually shut down, whenever that is, I'll trust for now that we'll be taken care of and have a way to download/archive the content we paid for.
I mean one of those four is the actual founder.