And as a final note, I'm actually not wondering why anything isn't well-received. For starters, I've seen far more positive-to-measured responses to our pricing announcement than could be expected, especially with this being the internet. As a longtime player and super-fan of D&D, I can assure you that I fought hard for the pricing to be as low as possible, and the end result is the lowest digital cost that's been seen for these products. I'll also reiterate that buying these products does not equal buying a book - it's already more than that even with the toolset in its early days. As we grow and add more and more functionality, the value will continue to increase.
I'm mostly happy with the subscription price and the price of the full books, especially after seeing the CoS preview since I didn't initially realise that it was full text (I had thought it might only be rules content) and pictures (although still not clear on maps/NPC art).
What I think people are griping about and what I'm not keen on, is the pricing of individual components. They're a very, very large mark-up for a small component. I can also see them being a disincentive to purchase full products unless there's some sort of in-built discount on full prices after having bought some content. For instance, you buy a couple of classes, a couple of races and then you're thinking you should probably just go the whole hog and get the full PHB but you've already spent $14 and think that paying $29.99 for the rest of it isn't fair.
I'm just pointing out how people are going to react to it. I, personally, would never buy individual components because they simply don't represent good value to me. So it doesn't concern me in that respect. I would make a decision between purchasing the full books or not at all. But I can definitely understand the sentiment of others looking at the price for individual components and thinking it's quite high.
At the end of the day, I'm a fan, I've decided to buy in, I think you're all doing a great job and I honestly believe that this will not only be a great success, in the long run, but that it will get better and better as time goes on. But none of that is going to stop me from criticising things I think are deserving of criticism, and this is one of those things.
I bought Overwatch on PC and would love to play with my PS4 friends, but Blizzard isn't reimbursing my copy, nor providing access to the same game on the console.
I'm not seeing why this is expected to be different with D&D Beyond, as it's a proven business practice across multiple products/genres.
Ever bought an MP3 on the iTunes store? A PDF on DM's Guild? Amazon WhisperSync. Heck, almost every kickstarter RPG is PDF+Print at a certain price point.
And just because it's proven business practice doesn't mean it's user friendly. Insurance, autoplay video ads and ISP monopolies are all "proven business practice" too. And customers hate them.
I'm the type of customer that's a bit overboard; I've bought every book, have an expensive huge battlemat and a shelf full of minis. I have an Obsidian Portal membership. I run a home game and DM at cons and sometimes I just sit around at night futzing with MPMB's PDF character sheet coming up with kooky builds. I don't want stuff for free. I want an "and" price. I want to buy books and D&D Beyond. $6/month + $30/book + $25/adventure isn't an and price, it's an or price. And replacing physical books with D&D Beyond stiffs my FLGS and can magically disappear one day.
To me this feels very similar to the pricing problem I have with FG/Roll20 (which I also don't buy). As a customer I don't care that Curse is doing it and WotC is not; I want them to figure it out, because the sum total of the offering is beyond my equilibrium price. And that makes me sad because I'm your target demo. If you're not getting me I don't know who you're getting, and I want this to be successful.
EDIT:
So to make this feedback a bit more actionable:
Expecting me to sub and do a one-time-purchase is a non-starter. I'm happy to pay for a sub; I'm happy to unlock content. Both is not happening. Do the math on ARPU and figure it out; is a pre-paid yearly sub worth giving me the PHB, MM and DMG for free? Because I don't blink at the price of pre-paid yearly WoW sub.
$60 for a digital + physical books is bearable, which is about where you land minus a sub and switching from FLGS to Amazon. Heck: you should be making deals with Amazon. Send me a physical book in the mail when I unlock content from you. Psychologically that would probably work.
Don't nickel-and-dime me for player content. If I have a character in DDB and my DM (not digital) is running me through Curse of Strahd, let me unlock the items & character options in it (no maps, fluff, monster stats, etc) for a reasonable price.
Books are never outdated and also continue even if the company that makes them no longer exists. Digital subscriptions not so much. A discount would probably cause more people to actually purchase the product as I'm sure a lot more people will side with buying physical copies and going places without ads.
Until people realize they have paid $2 for a magic item that their character no longer needs or has a week later. Or their character dies the day after buying all the individual components.
Until people realize they have paid $2 for a magic item that their character no longer needs or has a week later. Or their character dies the day after buying all the individual components.
People don't have to. They can homebrew the item for their personal use, and the homebrew feature of DDB is always free.
I don't think I can add too much to the conversation. I feel Curse made a good faith effort with their pricing announcement. They were not going to please everyone, even if they tried. However, I do understand the concern. Personally, I'll more than likely pick up the 3 core books and DM Tier subscription. My plans include getting my players to use DDB. It's a fantastic toolset, but not for everyone. Again, just for me, even in the 'free state' I found DDB invaluable as I was writing up encounters and treasure, late at night on my laptop.
I wonder how much excitement for DDB was a result of prior experiences with failed digital tools from WoTC (anecdotal because I took a hiatus between 2e and 4e). I also wonder how much consternation is a result of Curse doing a fan-freaking-tanstic job on DDB; everyone _really_ wants to use it but are scared off by the sticker shock. I also wonder how many folks were/are disappointed because they were hoping for a tool befitting their needs when Curse (most likely) had a slightly different user base in mind.
And because we don't know the future, I would hope that Curse considers some of the suggestions being made and implement some in the coming years. Who knows? maybe we'll have digital access codes from WoTC - maybe we'll have "Deity Tier" However, until then, Curse, and rightly so in my opinion, has to concern themselves with "keeping the lights on" so they can continue to improve and support DDB.
The pricing sounds reasonable to me and I really like DDB. So most likely, I will join the club on August 15. But there are still some things that bother me.
There is the campaign management. The tool so far, can hardly be called a campaign management tool, since you only have three textboxes. No adventure log for the players, calendar, handouts, encounter or maps section. So what will it look like and will it be available when DDB is released?
Second, many of us play D&D on a VTT. Will there be an export function for ROLL20 or FG? This was mentioned some time ago. But I did not find any information about that. It would be awesome if players can manage their characters in DDB and use them in Roll20 (with a proper character sheet) or if a DM can export monsters to reuse them on Roll20. But I can see that there might be a conflict of interest. Is there a possibility that Curse will release their own VTT?
Another thing is, that you keep saying that users do not have to buy the digital content and that you can recreate everything as homebrew content. This is not entirely true. There is for example no option to create homebrew cleric domains or other character options. Is this a planned feature?
As I see it, the current version is more a player tool. For the DM it is just a little more than searchable database. There were some announcements for some interesting features, like a combat tracker, encounter builder, etc., but it would be nice to have some kind of road map to see what the future of DDB will look like.
So, no word on redeeming physical books as digital or dual purchases? Because as an Aussie, I paid AU$70 for my PHB. I paid AU$70 for my DMG. No way am I paying another AU$37 at current exchange rates for access to their digital equivalents, toolkit or no - there are usable free equivalents out there for almost any platform, and even over having to manually enter everything myself into a poorly designed application, you're not adding AU$37 per book of value. And let's tally it up: I own a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide, a Monster Manual, and Volo's Guide to Monsters. That's a total of US$119.96, or AU$154.46. Add onto that roughly AU$101 for a future purchase of Xanathar's Guide to Everything in both formats, and you've got a lost customer on your hands.
I love that you're doing this, and as far as I know you'd be the first company to have a first-party, officially supported digital platform of any kind (even a digital character sheet for people playing physically!) for a pen and paper game. And I'd love to support it. But at these prices, and especially given that I'm expected to re-purchase content I already own there's pretty much zero chance I'll be buying in. It looks outright hostile to customers as it is, or like Curse and/or Wizards are in a huge rush to recoup the sunk cost of this platform as though they expect it to fail before they have a chance to make any money back. I do hope it goes well, though, both for the prospects of this platform and of investment in this kind of thing in the future.
It makes no sense to expect to get a discount on a DVD because you own the VHS. The content may be the same, but you are in fact buying two separate products.
I'm not taking a side with your response, but a more accurate comparison would be getting a discount on a digital copy of a DVD/Blu-Ray that you own. In fact, this is possible in the US with the Walmart/VUDU partnership for Ultraviolet movies. Outside of that, you have to specifically choose to buy a DVD/Blu-Ray with a digital copy included to avoid paying full price.
You are half correct. Again, I am just correcting your comparison, not taking a side on the discounted digital copy of D&D products.
Don't know if it hasn't been said before... but for those complaining about d&d being an expensive hobby and this service "ripping off" people:
1) The free rules and SRD is MORE than enough to play the game and have tonnes of fun.
2) CCGs (Collectible Card Games) cost WAAAYYYY more in the long run. Like horrendously so.
3) Warhammer... not even going there (price wise)
4) Master sub is less than a cup of coffee a week
5) Proving you own a copy of the book to get cheaper digital subs would mean WIZARDS would need to hire someone (pretty much full time) to check receipts and verify EVERY purchase. They may be able to include vouchers from here on in but who knows.
6) You don't have to buy any of this stuff... no-one is forcing you to buy anything, you're paying for the convenience. Wizards nor Curse owe you anything. Here is a great new service and if you would like to use it, go for it. Roll20 and Fantasy grounds, last I looked, have even more expensive options with way less utility.
7) Buying an audio book does not ENTITLE you to a copy of the paperback, buying Vinyl does not ENTITLE you to a digital copy, sometimes you get it, often you don't. If you would like to type out a book, or record your own audio book/vinyl into a digital format. That is your prerogative to take that time to do so.
8a) Don't want to pay for it? Then spend the time homebrewing it. You're paying for convenience. If the argument is, "but XYZ has this info in their (probably inferior) toolset", well that's awesome that they donated their time, but no-one should be EXPECTED to give away their time and effort.
9) As soon as the campaign management stuff is expanded, holy moly, this is worth its weight in gold
That's my thoughts on it all. To the whole Curse DDB team. Thank you a million times over, I've been trying to create something like this in onenote, but this is so much more elegant, and so much less work. Time is money, and the money I'll pay on this, is MUCH cheaper than what my time is worth.
Seeing WotC track record of digital tools I cannot buy the books again. I paid print, paid Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 (over $350us). I am not going to pay again for another tool. Why do I need to pay again to look at the options for a pally on the computer. Just let me buy a PDF and use it in any tool I want.
I know if you buy a VHS tape of a movie you dont get the DVD for free but i bught the DVD and i get recharged everytime i put it in as different DVD player.
Want me to buy the books for D&D beyond, then buy back my books on Fantasy Grounds.
You bought the DVD, this is the BluRay sorry homie.
Win. 10 points to you.
He should take it to Walmart (or use the VUDU app) to convert that DVD to HDX (Ultraviolet) for 5 bucks lol
I bought Overwatch on PC and would love to play with my PS4 friends, but Blizzard isn't reimbursing my copy, nor providing access to the same game on the console.
I'm not seeing why this is expected to be different with D&D Beyond, as it's a proven business practice across multiple products/genres.
You should try Rocket League or Minecraft (non-java). You still can't play with your PS4 friends (due to Sony's decision), but you can play Rocket League with your XBone and PC friends or Minecraft (after the update this summer) with your XBone, PC , iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch friends. :-)
I'm not saying everything is cross-platform (or even should be as it is the platform owner and publishers choice), but you picked one specific example (Blizzard/Overwatch - WoW is cross-platform) so I just thought I'd pick another example to balance it out.
Don't take this to mean I'm siding against you in this argument. I know very well that there is more work to digitizing content (especially in a new usable format like DDB). I just cringe and believe that sometimes bad or incomplete comparisons bring down a side of the argument for everyone else kind of like a weakest link.
Is it the norm? no, definitely not. Does it happen? yes, more and more as we move into the future. Steam is pretty good about allowing you to buy a game once that will play on any platform it supports (PC, Mac, Linux) now.
So if I'm a DM, I understand that I can set up a campaign and invite players to join. Once those players join, they have access to all of my purchased content. Is that the only function of joining a campaign?
Or would I have a dashboard of sorts where I can see each character's stats and HP? If a character takes damage, can I as the DM apply that damage and have it update live to their device? If a character is poisoned, can I set that as a status effect that I'll be able to see as a reminder?
Currently, as you've seen, the functionality in the Campaign Manager is fairly limited - it allows grouping of the DM and characters in a campaign, with the DM adding notes etc. However, there will be a LOT of additional functionality getting added to the Campaign Manager.
I know that the staff team are planning to continue development and new feature release for a long time after the site goes live in August and the Campaign Manager is one of the areas where D&D Beyond can really provide a huge amount of benefit to everyone.
Something to remember is that all of the staff and moderators are super-keen D&D fans, a mixture of DMs and players and want D&D Beyond to deliver all of the functionality that can make our games awesome.
Books are never outdated and also continue even if the company that makes them no longer exists. Digital subscriptions not so much. A discount would probably cause more people to actually purchase the product as I'm sure a lot more people will side with buying physical copies and going places without ads.
The current standard retail price for the physical Player's Handbook is $50, which is about the same from other digital platforms.
On D&D Beyond it will be $30, discounted to $20 for the first week.
There is the campaign management. The tool so far, can hardly be called a campaign management tool, since you only have three textboxes. No adventure log for the players, calendar, handouts, encounter or maps section. So what will it look like and will it be available when DDB is released?
Second, many of us play D&D on a VTT. Will there be an export function for ROLL20 or FG? This was mentioned some time ago. But I did not find any information about that. It would be awesome if players can manage their characters in DDB and use them in Roll20 (with a proper character sheet) or if a DM can export monsters to reuse them on Roll20. But I can see that there might be a conflict of interest. Is there a possibility that Curse will release their own VTT?
Another thing is, that you keep saying that users do not have to buy the digital content and that you can recreate everything as homebrew content. This is not entirely true. There is for example no option to create homebrew cleric domains or other character options. Is this a planned feature?
As I see it, the current version is more a player tool. For the DM it is just a little more than searchable database. There were some announcements for some interesting features, like a combat tracker, encounter builder, etc., but it would be nice to have some kind of road map to see what the future of DDB will look like.
Lots to answer there!
The campaign manager, as I mentioned above, is planned to receive plenty of additional functionality. The ideas you mentioned are only part of the many, many ideas that I have seen thrown around. Whilst I'm a moderator and not part of the development team, I'm really excited to see which features they build in. I'm currently hoping for much of what you stated: Campaign/Session log; in-game calendar & maps; status overviews for characters; handouts etc.
Export with Roll20 & FG. Again, this is just my perspective as a moderator. I know that the staff have been talking with a number of other sites about integration. I also know that Roll20 has a published API for interaction with their website. With that information, I expect that the priority would be to import/export characters.
As for Curse releasing their own VTT? No idea, but there is Twitch integration on the horizon and that could be pretty interesting.
Homebrew - yes, there are plans to expand homebrew past the current items/monsters/spells. It has confirmed that there will be backgrounds, subclasses, races and more. Cleric Domains may be part of that, but I don't know currently.
DM features. This is edging into stuff that the staff team need to talk about, but some of the things that BadEye has mentioned publically include: encounter builder, with ability to scale the difficulty/stats of the monsters used; treasure generation for encounters; a wishlist/pinboard function where the DM can pin all of the rules sections they think they might need for a session, for easy access;
So, no word on redeeming physical books as digital or dual purchases?
In short, there is word and the word is no.
There are many long explanations across this thread, about the commercial reasons why.
Simply though, the book costs $50 and on D&D Beyond it costs $30. If you wanted the code bundled with your physical book, then the book would cost $80, rather than allow the option for people to just have a book.
As an extreme example, and let me say first that I'm really complaining to Hasbro/WoTC, not really with Curse:
So, are you saying that if all I ever wanted to do was to create an Aasimar Paladin with the Oath of Vengeance subclass, with the Purple Dragon Knight Background, equipped with a Dawnbringer and a Blod Stone in his inventory, that I would have to purchase:
Player's Handbook for $29.99
Dungeon Master's Guide for $29.99
Volo's Guide to Monsters for $29.99
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide for $29.99
Storm King's Thunder for $24.99
Out of the Abyss for $24.99
In addition, say I subscribed at just the $3/mo for the next 12 months to see if this actually develops into a proper service and add a homebrew magic shield that the DM created to this character
For a grand total of $205.94 ?
And, mind you, that I've already purchased each of these books (and every other 5e book) twice already, as well as purchasing each for use within Fantasy Grounds in addition to all kinds of stuff off DMs Guild. And even more, having to pay for a separate "real" campaign management package since it looks like you guys are misinterpreting what that term means.
And then nothing at all to show for the 12 months of paying into a subscription model vs just let me pay once for the satisfaction that I've paid my dues and I'm done for the lifetime of 5e.
And, still, none of this includes a legal PDF copy of any of these books?
I just want to be sure I'm fully understanding the extent of how much WoTC is expecting to rip us off.
I mean, I'm a sucker, and I'm lucky to have very good income for hobbies [I've certainly wasted a lot more money on other things *cough* KS1-5 of Dwarven Forge...] I may very well do it if there is something... anything... that you will offer that I really want to use that I can't get elsewhere. But, I guess I'm saying I just want to understand the full extent of how much I'm being taken advantage of before I willingly to go along with it...
No, if that's specifically what you want to play, you could alternatively make for a minimum purchase: Aasimar Paladin with the Oath of Vengeance subclass, with the Purple Dragon Knight Background, equipped with a Dawnbringer and a Blod Stone in his inventory
Aasimar Race - $2.99
Paladin Class (with all PHB options) - $3.99
(Purple Dragon Knight is actually a fighter subclass, but let's assume that you mean some kind of background from SCAG): Shhh, don't tell anyone, but you will be able to customize a background entirely, so if you don't mind a little bit of typing, then the cost is $0. If you really wanted to buy one, then it's $1.99.
The two magic items for $1.99 each
For a total of $12.95.
There will also be other "bundles" that will give you those things and other things like them for a good bit less than your original assessment.
The model has flexibility. Again, this is framed using your words of "if all I ever wanted to do."
Thanks!
Yeah Its 12.95 for one character. but what about when you start a new game and are playing a tibaxi rogue criminal who ends up getting different magical items. That's another 12.95. What about when they play a 3rd character and 4th? I have 15 characters saved right now in Hero Lab, and I only had to pay one price. I can also use that to run encounters as well. With Realm Works I can also track an entire campaign and what the party knows. Yes for pre-generated content I will have to pay for the book again but then its mine, no micro transactions to nickle and dime me.
You have the option to buy the core books and Volo's. It will be cheaper that buy the single races and classes. And the prices for those books are less than the physiscal books.
This all looks good when comparing similar pricing schemes (such as DnDClassics.com and the various Virtual TableTop vendors), but I have a few questions that appear to be shared.
From my understanding D&D Beyond does not (and according to a linked interview) have a virtual tabletop. The linked interview mentioned that you folks will be working to integrate D&D Beyond into being somewhat usable with those other vendors. I believe the example mentioned was exporting characters.
1) Is there a plan, that you are aware of, to implement some sort of Ultraviolet-like digital library for source material between DDB and the VTTs or DDB and DnDClassics? As an example, Ultraviolet is a modern system that allows a consumer to buy one digital copy of a product and access it through any of the vendors backed by Ultraviolet.
2)What is the strategy for providing the source material that was bought through DDB (source books, for example) when DDB ceases operation? Will it be unavailable from that point forward? Will it be downloadable in some format for permanent use later? Will it be provided in some other manner? Note: We realize that you don't intend to cease the product any time soon, but that's not really a prediction that you can make so I'd appreciate if that was not the answer. Many products have made the same claim and due to issues 'beyond their control' it has happened.
3) I believe this has been answered, but I will ask it for completion. I am going to assume that physical source material already bought will not interact in any way with DDB (including any discounts). It probably would not be feasible to verify physical products for digital conversion similar to the Walmart and VUDU process for verifying DVDs/Blu-Rays for UltraViolet HDX conversion. Therefore, is there a plan, that you are aware of, to offer a digital copy in future physical products that will work with DDB (or any other system) whether it be scratch off codes inside, serial number, purchase from WotC, etc? I am guessing it would require a system as mentioned in question 1, but there may be a plan outside the box of normal thinking.
It looks pretty good, on its own, to me. Only when you consider people using other virtual products do there appear to be some concerns.
NOTE: This is intended to be posed to DDB folks and/or moderators that may be able to answer any of these questions for certain (or officially). For other users that are just speculating, please refrain from answering these questions because your answer would be no better than my guess (or for that matter just pasting the lyrics to an Iron Maiden song as the answer) in answering these questions and may dilute them ;-)
if you have 15 characters and are expecting plenty more, then I'd have to say that buying single classes/races really isn't designed for you.As BadEye explained very eloquently, it's designed for players who don't want to buy a whole rulebook, but just want one class/race.
As BadEye explained very eloquently, it's designed for players who don't want to buy a whole rulebook, but just want one class/race, to allow them to do this without a large outlay of money.
This isn't being done to try to fleece money from users with multiple characters - it's in response to user feedback, to allow a cheaper route into playing for new players.
What I think people are griping about and what I'm not keen on, is the pricing of individual components. They're a very, very large mark-up for a small component. I can also see them being a disincentive to purchase full products unless there's some sort of in-built discount on full prices after having bought some content. For instance, you buy a couple of classes, a couple of races and then you're thinking you should probably just go the whole hog and get the full PHB but you've already spent $14 and think that paying $29.99 for the rest of it isn't fair.
I'm just pointing out how people are going to react to it. I, personally, would never buy individual components because they simply don't represent good value to me. So it doesn't concern me in that respect. I would make a decision between purchasing the full books or not at all. But I can definitely understand the sentiment of others looking at the price for individual components and thinking it's quite high.
At the end of the day, I'm a fan, I've decided to buy in, I think you're all doing a great job and I honestly believe that this will not only be a great success, in the long run, but that it will get better and better as time goes on. But none of that is going to stop me from criticising things I think are deserving of criticism, and this is one of those things.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
You (The awesome people at Wizards/Curse) forgot the
Unlock Everything Hero tier for xx.xx per month.
and the
Unlock Everything Master Tier for 2(xx.xx) per month.
People want an unlock all option, even if it has to be pricey. (Cheaper is better of course :) )
Sell these "Unlock Everything" tiers in one-year chunks if you are worried that people will sign up for a month and quit.
Books are never outdated and also continue even if the company that makes them no longer exists. Digital subscriptions not so much. A discount would probably cause more people to actually purchase the product as I'm sure a lot more people will side with buying physical copies and going places without ads.
Until people realize they have paid $2 for a magic item that their character no longer needs or has a week later. Or their character dies the day after buying all the individual components.
I am so down with this. And I hope my group follows.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
I don't think I can add too much to the conversation. I feel Curse made a good faith effort with their pricing announcement. They were not going to please everyone, even if they tried. However, I do understand the concern. Personally, I'll more than likely pick up the 3 core books and DM Tier subscription. My plans include getting my players to use DDB. It's a fantastic toolset, but not for everyone. Again, just for me, even in the 'free state' I found DDB invaluable as I was writing up encounters and treasure, late at night on my laptop.
I wonder how much excitement for DDB was a result of prior experiences with failed digital tools from WoTC (anecdotal because I took a hiatus between 2e and 4e). I also wonder how much consternation is a result of Curse doing a fan-freaking-tanstic job on DDB; everyone _really_ wants to use it but are scared off by the sticker shock. I also wonder how many folks were/are disappointed because they were hoping for a tool befitting their needs when Curse (most likely) had a slightly different user base in mind.
And because we don't know the future, I would hope that Curse considers some of the suggestions being made and implement some in the coming years. Who knows? maybe we'll have digital access codes from WoTC - maybe we'll have "Deity Tier" However, until then, Curse, and rightly so in my opinion, has to concern themselves with "keeping the lights on" so they can continue to improve and support DDB.
My 2 cents... :-D
I wear pants, short pants.
I also ask a lot of questions; insatiably curious
The pricing sounds reasonable to me and I really like DDB. So most likely, I will join the club on August 15. But there are still some things that bother me.
There is the campaign management. The tool so far, can hardly be called a campaign management tool, since you only have three textboxes. No adventure log for the players, calendar, handouts, encounter or maps section. So what will it look like and will it be available when DDB is released?
Second, many of us play D&D on a VTT. Will there be an export function for ROLL20 or FG? This was mentioned some time ago. But I did not find any information about that. It would be awesome if players can manage their characters in DDB and use them in Roll20 (with a proper character sheet) or if a DM can export monsters to reuse them on Roll20. But I can see that there might be a conflict of interest. Is there a possibility that Curse will release their own VTT?
Another thing is, that you keep saying that users do not have to buy the digital content and that you can recreate everything as homebrew content. This is not entirely true. There is for example no option to create homebrew cleric domains or other character options. Is this a planned feature?
As I see it, the current version is more a player tool. For the DM it is just a little more than searchable database. There were some announcements for some interesting features, like a combat tracker, encounter builder, etc., but it would be nice to have some kind of road map to see what the future of DDB will look like.
So, no word on redeeming physical books as digital or dual purchases? Because as an Aussie, I paid AU$70 for my PHB. I paid AU$70 for my DMG. No way am I paying another AU$37 at current exchange rates for access to their digital equivalents, toolkit or no - there are usable free equivalents out there for almost any platform, and even over having to manually enter everything myself into a poorly designed application, you're not adding AU$37 per book of value. And let's tally it up: I own a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide, a Monster Manual, and Volo's Guide to Monsters. That's a total of US$119.96, or AU$154.46. Add onto that roughly AU$101 for a future purchase of Xanathar's Guide to Everything in both formats, and you've got a lost customer on your hands.
I love that you're doing this, and as far as I know you'd be the first company to have a first-party, officially supported digital platform of any kind (even a digital character sheet for people playing physically!) for a pen and paper game. And I'd love to support it. But at these prices, and especially given that I'm expected to re-purchase content I already own there's pretty much zero chance I'll be buying in. It looks outright hostile to customers as it is, or like Curse and/or Wizards are in a huge rush to recoup the sunk cost of this platform as though they expect it to fail before they have a chance to make any money back. I do hope it goes well, though, both for the prospects of this platform and of investment in this kind of thing in the future.
You are half correct. Again, I am just correcting your comparison, not taking a side on the discounted digital copy of D&D products.
Don't know if it hasn't been said before... but for those complaining about d&d being an expensive hobby and this service "ripping off" people:
1) The free rules and SRD is MORE than enough to play the game and have tonnes of fun.
2) CCGs (Collectible Card Games) cost WAAAYYYY more in the long run. Like horrendously so.
3) Warhammer... not even going there (price wise)
4) Master sub is less than a cup of coffee a week
5) Proving you own a copy of the book to get cheaper digital subs would mean WIZARDS would need to hire someone (pretty much full time) to check receipts and verify EVERY purchase. They may be able to include vouchers from here on in but who knows.
6) You don't have to buy any of this stuff... no-one is forcing you to buy anything, you're paying for the convenience. Wizards nor Curse owe you anything. Here is a great new service and if you would like to use it, go for it. Roll20 and Fantasy grounds, last I looked, have even more expensive options with way less utility.
7) Buying an audio book does not ENTITLE you to a copy of the paperback, buying Vinyl does not ENTITLE you to a digital copy, sometimes you get it, often you don't. If you would like to type out a book, or record your own audio book/vinyl into a digital format. That is your prerogative to take that time to do so.
8a) Don't want to pay for it? Then spend the time homebrewing it. You're paying for convenience. If the argument is, "but XYZ has this info in their (probably inferior) toolset", well that's awesome that they donated their time, but no-one should be EXPECTED to give away their time and effort.
9) As soon as the campaign management stuff is expanded, holy moly, this is worth its weight in gold
That's my thoughts on it all. To the whole Curse DDB team. Thank you a million times over, I've been trying to create something like this in onenote, but this is so much more elegant, and so much less work. Time is money, and the money I'll pay on this, is MUCH cheaper than what my time is worth.
I'm not saying everything is cross-platform (or even should be as it is the platform owner and publishers choice), but you picked one specific example (Blizzard/Overwatch - WoW is cross-platform) so I just thought I'd pick another example to balance it out.
Don't take this to mean I'm siding against you in this argument. I know very well that there is more work to digitizing content (especially in a new usable format like DDB). I just cringe and believe that sometimes bad or incomplete comparisons bring down a side of the argument for everyone else kind of like a weakest link.
Is it the norm? no, definitely not. Does it happen? yes, more and more as we move into the future. Steam is pretty good about allowing you to buy a game once that will play on any platform it supports (PC, Mac, Linux) now.
Morning all - going to try to answer a few questions here.
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
You have the option to buy the core books and Volo's. It will be cheaper that buy the single races and classes. And the prices for those books are less than the physiscal books.
This all looks good when comparing similar pricing schemes (such as DnDClassics.com and the various Virtual TableTop vendors), but I have a few questions that appear to be shared.
From my understanding D&D Beyond does not (and according to a linked interview) have a virtual tabletop. The linked interview mentioned that you folks will be working to integrate D&D Beyond into being somewhat usable with those other vendors. I believe the example mentioned was exporting characters.
1) Is there a plan, that you are aware of, to implement some sort of Ultraviolet-like digital library for source material between DDB and the VTTs or DDB and DnDClassics? As an example, Ultraviolet is a modern system that allows a consumer to buy one digital copy of a product and access it through any of the vendors backed by Ultraviolet.
2) What is the strategy for providing the source material that was bought through DDB (source books, for example) when DDB ceases operation? Will it be unavailable from that point forward? Will it be downloadable in some format for permanent use later? Will it be provided in some other manner? Note: We realize that you don't intend to cease the product any time soon, but that's not really a prediction that you can make so I'd appreciate if that was not the answer. Many products have made the same claim and due to issues 'beyond their control' it has happened.
3) I believe this has been answered, but I will ask it for completion. I am going to assume that physical source material already bought will not interact in any way with DDB (including any discounts). It probably would not be feasible to verify physical products for digital conversion similar to the Walmart and VUDU process for verifying DVDs/Blu-Rays for UltraViolet HDX conversion. Therefore, is there a plan, that you are aware of, to offer a digital copy in future physical products that will work with DDB (or any other system) whether it be scratch off codes inside, serial number, purchase from WotC, etc? I am guessing it would require a system as mentioned in question 1, but there may be a plan outside the box of normal thinking.
It looks pretty good, on its own, to me. Only when you consider people using other virtual products do there appear to be some concerns.
NOTE: This is intended to be posed to DDB folks and/or moderators that may be able to answer any of these questions for certain (or officially). For other users that are just speculating, please refrain from answering these questions because your answer would be no better than my guess (or for that matter just pasting the lyrics to an Iron Maiden song as the answer) in answering these questions and may dilute them ;-)
Hi Ray 57913,
if you have 15 characters and are expecting plenty more, then I'd have to say that buying single classes/races really isn't designed for you.As BadEye explained very eloquently, it's designed for players who don't want to buy a whole rulebook, but just want one class/race.
As BadEye explained very eloquently, it's designed for players who don't want to buy a whole rulebook, but just want one class/race, to allow them to do this without a large outlay of money.
This isn't being done to try to fleece money from users with multiple characters - it's in response to user feedback, to allow a cheaper route into playing for new players.
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Also, fingers crossed that third party publishers will be included soon!
Homebrewing Tome of Beasts? Pass.