Quote from Buzzardoftheages >>

Hi there. I am curious about how many more books you plan to do facelifts for like you just did with the PHB and DMG.

It's ongoing effort, when our team has available time between new books, and working on other projects.

So far, we've updated:

• Curse of Strahd
• Lost Mines of Phandelver
• Tales from the Yawning Portal (7 full adventures!)
• Tyranny of Dragons (Hoard of the Dragon Queen & Rise of Tiamat)
• Player's Handbook
• Dungeon Master's Guide

I expect that the Basic Rules will be next up.

I plan for us to keep improving what we deliver with each book though, so there will always be some rolling background work to update older books.

Quote from Spideycloned >>

What are some of the biggest issues you and your team deal with when assessing books for the first time?

Good morning!

As part of D&D Beyond's book process, the first thing that happens when we receive all of the files digitally, is our team goes into "read through mode" where we fully document all of the entities in the book: races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters etc. This is all built into a comprehensive tracking document, that allows us to see the state of each entity, who is working on it, who is doing QA on it, and whether there are any issues/blockers.

We also create another document, that gives a, "what you need to know about this book" overview, as well as highlighting any areas where we, as a business, need to make decisions about how content may be handled, or where our tools don't currently allow a piece of new content to be built. We then have a meeting with the various teams to go through that, which determines actions and what is possible to support in the timeframe prior to release.

None of that is any sort of trade secret - it's just good analysis and management strategy.

The biggest issues we face are when an entirely new mechanic is presented in the book, such as sidekicks, or vehicle statblocks.

We're very customer-focussed in terms of our discussion on what approach we should take - I hope this isn't a surprise, as we're all D&D players/DMs here and love the game ourselves, which makes it fairly easy to think about things from that perspective.

So the hardest part of those big issues, is deciding how to approach any of these new mechanics - do we say, "We've managed to sort of get this working, but it's not ideal and may cause future issues," or do we say, "sorry, we're not going to be able to support this new mechanic at release, because we want to build it correctly to support in the future"

Quote from Arcadium77 >>

How long does it take to implement books into DDB?

We work to a deadline - from the point we receive the files, we determine when we need to be complete and plan accordingly, to ensure we deliver.

That timespan from receiving the files, to the deadline for being complete with the build, has historically varied between 1 week and 14 weeks.

Quote from Estaln >>

Hola!

[1] We've had some awesome traction with containers and cointainers. Are there plans to push this further to have mounts as containers? It makes so much sense to me, if a dragon flies off with your horse then anything on the horse is gone. I have ended up putting the horse and everything on it in the saddle bags ... but that seems a bit half baked.

[2] On the topic of assorted books. The DMG has some lovely tables for random loot, but of course there is no facility to incorporate the "newer" magic items (or even home brew) into those tables. The advent of computers easily allows us to mathematically roll percentages over 100%, so it should be fairly easy to have an online resource that can incorporate non DMG magic items into loot tables etc. Can such a thing be done or will it forever sit outside the remit of DDB as it is not a WotC concept?

Cheers
GC

Hi there!

1/ I worked on an analysis piece for the containers project that does indeed identify mounts, and vehicles, as something we should allow to be containers. The problem we ran into was that we can't place containers inside other containers. As we wanted to ensure that equipment like saddlebags was functional as a container, we held off on flagging horses etc as containers.

I'll follow up on that today, to see if we're good to go with implementing now though. 😊

2/ Loot tables. They used to be one of my favourite things about 2nd edition D&D. At times, I would even roll infront of the players, for what was inside a dragon's hoard after the players had slain the dragon. Made for some fun. It's absolutely something we've thought about, in terms of adding a "roll dice on this table" to the tables in the DMG, but like you mentioned, what I REALLY want is some sort of configurable loot generator where I can say, "I want 3 uncommon, 2 rare and a very rare," then probably the ability to reroll individual items that don't fit what I want. That would be pretty cool. I think I will push for that to be something we test out at our next internal Hackathon event.

Quote from V2Blast >>

What D&D adventure (official or unofficial) would you like to play that you haven't played (or haven't finished) yet?

I prefer more "open world" adventures to the classic dungeon setting, and can get a little carried away with the roleplay side of things occasionally.

I'm currently playing in a Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus game, which is the adventure I'd most been looking forward to being able to play.

Unofficial? I love Norse mythology and would love to play in a Svilland campaign.

Quote from Z3DT >>

Hey there Faith, thanks for the AMA! Here are my questions

1. There are many features from character classes that have not been implemented yet, such as the Superior Technique fighting style from the Fighter class. If I can make a custom feat that lets me track the uses of Superior Technique just fine, what is the difficulty with implementing it directly? (I realize this might seem like I'm attacking you, but it really is just curiosity. I can make do with workarounds. Text makes tone of voice hard)

2. You've answered a few questions about the GFS in this thread already, and I've seen a lot of mentions about it, but what I don't really understand is what it is. Is it a framework that will make implementing new features easier? Also, do we have a rough ETA on when it might arrive? It seems that a lot of things will be relying on it, and I'm eager to see what this new system will be capable of and how it could speed up implementation of new features.

3. What is your personal favorite D&D adventure book, in this Edition or a previous one? 

4. What is your favorite Chinese food?

Hey there, no problems - it's my pleasure!

1/ It's ok, I don't feel attacked. I want these things to work too! I wouldn't say that there are many features from character classes that aren't implemented - it's mostly a few edge cases where the system struggles. In this case, an optional fighting style introduced in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, that grants a feature from a subclass. I can honestly say there is no way we saw that coming - the ability to grab bits and pieces of other classes/subclasses and just graft them onto your character.

We looked at whether there were simple ways of doing this - we could have manually built something as a workaround. The problem is it's not just this, as you noted, there's also things like feats (fighting initiate) and we already have a problem where it's possible to select the same fighting style multiple times by multiclassing, when the rules say this is not allowed. So we had to make the tough decision to say, for now, that this option would only display the text of the feature, as we're going to have to rebuild it properly in the future.

The gateway to doing that is probably GFS (mentioned in above posts). I am hopeful that this will allow us to define a pool of simple features and then just draw upon them to build more complex features as and where needed. In this case, the theory is that we would build a single pool of fighting styles, and various classes/feats would allow you to select from that pool (with some restrictions based on class).

I will stress that, at this point, this is intended design and not something that has been coded.

2/ What is GFS? That's a pretty complex question, that is almost certainly better answered by someone from the Characters team who are working on it. From my perspective, it is a set of tools that will allow our team to build out the rules of the D&D game in a more modular manner. It'll start fairly simple with delivering blessings, boons, charms, dark gifts etc. From there, I expect we'll be able to overhaul feats. So in many ways, yes, it is an upgraded framework that could impact how everything is built. As always, it is super important to us that we don't break people's existing characters, so we have to be very mindful of that too when implementing new things.

As for an ETA, that's a solid nope, sorry! You know that we'll talk about this a LOT when it's close to ready though.

3/ My favourite D&D adventure book is a tough one. It's probably Night's Dark Terror, which was really something I'd never seen before at the time. It's an introductory adventure for the D&D Expert set. It's been many years since I looked at it though, so I am not sure how well it holds up against today's adventures. It was something special in it's day though and, IIRC, credited with being the inspiration for Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Close behind it for me is Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden - I loved the Crystal Shard books when I was young, so having this much open world information just ready to go for a campaign is amazing as a DM. I've done something that I think many DMs do, which is take more of the back history of those old books and cram that in as well.

4/ I struggle with the concept of favourite foods. It's probably an ADHD thing, but I love variety and trying new things. A strong favourite though has to be Crispy Duck Pancakes with hoisin sauce. Sooooo good when done properly.

Quote from Estaln >>

[1] We've had some awesome traction with containers and cointainers. Are there plans to push this further to have mounts as containers? It makes so much sense to me, if a dragon flies off with your horse then anything on the horse is gone. I have ended up putting the horse and everything on it in the saddle bags ... but that seems a bit half baked.

Oh hey, update on this - we've gone ahead and updated the following mounts, so they now function as containers: Axe Beak, Camel, Donkey (or Mule), Draft Horse, Elephant, Mastiff, Pony, Riding Horse, Warhorse.

This is live now - you can put your stuff on your horse.  😊

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Good evening, Faith.  Thanks for taking this step.  Gonna keep it simple and avoid my usual, ahhh...spice.

What're your kitties' names?  Mine are Miso and Tali.  No idea why Miso's previous owners named him after soup, but what can you do, huh?

EDIT: (if allowed) Ooooh, just thought of a good one.

If DDB could implement third-party books, which one would you/your team be most excited to bring to DDB?

I mean, I do like spicy... 😄

Our kitties are called George and Goose (nothing to do with Top Gun - but like you say, if the kitty has a name, it's rude to change it).

George is a large tabby (8 kg / 18 lbs) and isn't fat with it, he's just big. He's a super-friendly cat who loves to be with and around people. He also loves to snooze under blankets.

Goose is orange and VERY chatty. He's the clever one of the two and loves climbing and investigating.

Here's some artwork of them, and a Halloween photo of them from 2020.

Third party books? I would love to be able to build out the whole of the Svilland campaign setting. I am a big fan of Norse mythology and that book has done a great job of capturing the feel of the setting. I just asked Jay (GPyromania) and he says Odyssey of the Dragonlords.

Quote from Gamemaster76 >>

Hi! I hope your having a good day! I'm not sure if your the right person to ask but I had a couple questions:

1) I was wondering if there are any plans\progress on allowing users to copy their homebrew subclasses and subraces?

Like when you go make homebrew and it asks you if you want to use something existing as a template, if you made a homebrew revision of the Elf race and a new elf subrace, you could use the homebrew race as a template but for subrace your stuck with official ones. From what I understand subraces and subclasses are apparently more difficult to copy then other homebrew. 

2) Any plans\progress on integrating templates in some form to homebrew monsters (like applying the Half-dragon template to say, a wolf or giant for example?) and allowing use to make our own templates?

Hey, I am having a great day thanks! 💗

1/ There's no plans that I am aware of around that, but I'm not part of the Characters team, who would be handling any work like that. I'm hopeful that we'll see some simplification of the way that races/subraces/variants are built.

2/ There's no plans to implement a template system for monsters in the way you're talking about. It's possible that GFS allows us to do this in the future, but I am reticent to say, "GFS will do all of the things!" because that's unfair pressure on the Characters team who are building GFS. That's not to say that this isn't something we'll ever do, just that there's no work currently planned to make this happen (that I am aware of).

Quote from Magidad77 >>

2 competing ideas here.  I'm sorry. 

I keep thinking that a digital DM screen would be a perfect fit as a perk for subscribers.  I know this is a huge ask.  The app campaign view is getting really close and is a great addition to our setup, but it requires an extra screen.  Any thoughts on a DDB Digital DM Screen? 

Regardless of the answer to above I wanted to thank you and the DDB team for all your work.  My children 14 and 12 use the tools on DDB exclusively.  Based on the last few years they are very comfortable with the online aspects.  They gather their friends at the house and everyone plays from their devices.  This is because the DDB team has made things simple and helpful.  The easy thing is to talk about what needs help or what we're unhappy with.  But I just wanted to say that this old man and his 2 boys and their group of friends are very happy with what is there!  Thank you.  

Hey, no need to apologise!

Digital DM screen you say? That's something that our team leader, Elliot (DiceyDM) has been talking about us needing since this site was first built. Certainly, I feel that the campaign screen could be vastly improved by pulling in a bunch of live data from character sheets - just simple stuff like showing the current hit points and passive perception for each character. For my own games I run, I currently keep a character summary in a separate doc from DDB, which I shouldn't need to do - the info should be right there.

Thank you for the praise - it's super appreciated and I will absolutely pass this on to the rest of the DDB team as a whole.

Everyone here is passionate about D&D, so having to make prioritisation calls, and figure out not just what gets built, but what doesn't, can be a tough discussion to have.

Quote from Wyrmwrath >>

Out of curiosity, why do spells like Hideous laughter and floating disc show up with AND without the attributed mages name in them on the spell lists? (as in....why a Tensers disc AND a no name floating disc version)

That's because both spells exist within official publications.

The named versions are from the Player's Handbook, and the versions without names are from the Basic Rules / SRD (Systems Reference Document). As such, technically they both exist within the rules.

We have talked in the past about setting up some sort of alias between them, so that the system shows the ones from the Basic Rules by default, but if you own the Player's Handbook (or have it shared with you) then you see the named version. It's on a backlog list. 😊