Seems kinda like DnDBeyond is on the way to going full Bethesda with the pre-order bonuses and micro transaction. Really, a $15 dollar dice roller when the VTT isn't even visible in the pipeline? Why? Yes, I'm aware that a portion of sales benefits a worthy cause but I'm also aware World of Warcraft starting slipping in MXTs using the same method and there's about 47 pages of that stuff now.
Also, how long does it take to program a dice roller? Random generation is easy. Adding modifiers is easy. Getting said modifiers from an existing document... also easy. A week? Then you'll use the same code on 1000 other quick skins and sell those at $15 each? The profit margin on that is insane. Like soft drink levels of insane(fyi the paper cup costs more to make than the liquid.)
I'm kinda expecting loot boxes within the next year, assuming they don't get banned. Dice roller with VTT not in sight is putting the money cart way before the horse.
And with all that said, if you're gonna bend us over the barrel and shake use for nickles and dimes, could you at least put a nice sheet on it first?
Finish the table top so all of us web dms can stop paying for like 3 different subs each month.
Really, a $15 dollar dice roller when the VTT isn't even visible in the pipeline? Why?
Finish the table top so all of us web dms can stop paying for like 3 different subs each month.
Beyond was originally envisioned to be a supplement for real-life table-top play to only replace pen and paper character sheets. It was not intended to be a VTT to completely replace real-life table-top play.
While having a VTT would be nice, I much rather have Beyond focus on their core strengths first, which are their searchable database of monsters and items, compendium app, and most importantly their flagship character creation/character sheet. I want them to focus on making real life table top experience better first and foremost, even if I cannot play D&D in real life with my friends right now. The pandemic is a temporary thing and will come to pass. VTT can come later after they have more or less perfected their character sheets. While their characters sheets are great, there are still many things to improve upon and iron out.
I am not a huge fan of the dice roller since it lags my old computer a bit and I already got my own dice that I can roll in real life, but the dice roller is absolutely free. $15 is only for cosmetics, and while it is a little steep, cosmetics are totally optional and have no impact on actual play, so high cosmetic prices are not really an issue in my opinion. Developers have to eat and got bills to pay just like the rest of us. I rather have Beyond charge a high price on cosmetics than to charge a high price on books.
Beyond was originally envisioned to be a supplement for real-life table-top play to only replace pen and paper character sheets. It was not intended to be a VTT to completely replace real-life table-top play.
With Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 in the market already they needed to find another niche to start a new D&D platform that was not a VTT. They focused on live table-top play. It was a good move. However, that problem is largely solved and all they have to do update with new content as WotC releases them.
The VTT market is up for grabs. Plenty of groups (mine included) still play on Roll20 because of switching costs (i.e., we've already spent a fair bit on that platform). It was the best platform 4 years ago and, unfortunately, still is even though they barely improved on it. Fantasy Grounds has a devoted but niche community that don't like the SaaS model. Scads of groups (again, mine included) are waiting for DNDB to release their VTT to switch over. When that happens, Roll20 shuts down the next month.
"Hmm... should I create a VTT and basically own the VTT market?"
Beyond was originally envisioned to be a supplement for real-life table-top play to only replace pen and paper character sheets. It was not intended to be a VTT to completely replace real-life table-top play.
With Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 in the market already they needed to find another niche to start a new D&D platform that was not a VTT. They focused on live table-top play. It was a good move. However, that problem is largely solved and all they have to do update with new content as WotC releases them.
The VTT market is up for grabs. Plenty of groups (mine included) still play on Roll20 because of switching costs (i.e., we've already spent a fair bit on that platform). It was the best platform 4 years ago and, unfortunately, still is even though they barely improved on it. Fantasy Grounds has a devoted but niche community that don't like the SaaS model. Scads of groups (again, mine included) are waiting for DNDB to release their VTT to switch over. When that happens, Roll20 shuts down the next month.
"Hmm... should I create a VTT and basically own the VTT market?"
Roll Intelligence!
Putting out new content as Wizards release them is not the only thing Beyond has to do. Beyond is still in the process of overhauling their infrastructure to better handle character sheets and improve homebrew in general, and they are still working on it for at least the last two years. Beyond does not seem to have the resources nor manpower to develop a VTT right now nor in the foreseeable future.
The VTT market is not up for grabs. There are a lot of VTT competitors out there and most of them are system neutral, and they can run anything from Pathfinder to Cyberpunk to any previous editions of D&D. Beyond can offer a more tailored VTT experience for D&D 5th Edition, but competing against system neutral VTTs is extremely risky. Even if they have the resources to pursue such a project, it is not guaranteed that it will attract enough customers for it to be financially viable. You might jump ship to D&D's VTT, but Beyond does not know if there are enough you out there to make the project worth it, and making a VTT is not something that you can just try out overnight since it is expensive and time consuming to develop.
Beyond was originally envisioned to be a supplement for real-life table-top play to only replace pen and paper character sheets. It was not intended to be a VTT to completely replace real-life table-top play.
With Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 in the market already they needed to find another niche to start a new D&D platform that was not a VTT. They focused on live table-top play. It was a good move. However, that problem is largely solved and all they have to do update with new content as WotC releases them.
I don't know if I'd say the live tabletop play problem has been largely solved. From the player perspective, possibly. There's a million things they could do to help out the DM. The DDB campaign-management tools are rudimentary.
Putting out new content as Wizards release them is not the only thing Beyond has to do. Beyond is still in the process of overhauling their infrastructure to better handle character sheets and improve homebrew in general, and they are still working on it for at least the last two years. Beyond does not seem to have the resources nor manpower to develop a VTT right now nor in the foreseeable future.
Isn't DNDB owned by Twitch? Isn't Twitch owned by Amazon? They should have money...
The VTT market is not up for grabs. There are a lot of VTT competitors out there and most of them are system neutral, and they can run anything from Pathfinder to Cyberpunk to any previous editions of D&D. Beyond can offer a more tailored VTT experience for D&D 5th Edition, but competing against system neutral VTTs is extremely risky. Even if they have the resources to pursue such a project, it is not guaranteed that it will attract enough customers for it to be financially viable. You might jump ship to D&D's VTT, but Beyond does not know if there are enough you out there to make the project worth it, and making a VTT is not something that you can just try out overnight since it is expensive and time consuming to develop.
Unfortunately, nobody really plays these other systems. I know because I play some of them and it's hard to find groups/players. When you do find a group, you don't have to spend a dime on any platform to enjoy yourself. Furthermore, most people that play other systems also play D&D.
The fact remains that D&D 5e is where the money is. The system screams for tactical maps, character and monster tokens and such. For that you need a VTT. Half of the games in Roll20 are D&D 5e and this number used to be even higher (around 70-80%) before the Nolan fallout a few years ago, when a large portion of the community left for Fantasy Grounds because it was the only other sensible choice at the time.
Last, but certainly not least, don't overlook the fact that a VTT greatly improves the live tabletop experience. I have a group of RL friends who are coming back to D&D after being away from the game for over a decade. Their plan is to play a weekly live game like in the good ol' days. They had already heard of DNDB and I showcased Roll20 to them so they'd know what a VTT is. Their response? "The site looks like sh*t, but these tactical maps and tokens are great. Where are all these features in DNDB?"
You can guess what my reply was.
So yea, it is up for grabs because D&D 5e is all that really matters.
I don't know if I'd say the live tabletop play problem has been largely solved. From the player perspective, possibly. There's a million things they could do to help out the DM. The DDB campaign-management tools are rudimentary.
I'm running Avernus right now and we should wrap it up in a couple of months. Purchased the module here in DNDB and my notes are neatly organized in One Note. Whatever DM tools you name, I'm pretty sure I can live and thrive without them.
Isn't DNDB owned by Twitch? Isn't Twitch owned by Amazon? They should have money...
D&D Beyond is owned by Fandom. They used to be owned by Twitch, which itself is a subsidiary of Amazon, but that's no longer the case.
On the note of resources, personpower and funding, you can't simply throw more money and/or devs at a problem and make it go faster. There's a point of diminishing returns as you expand a team size. It's the old adage of "Nine women can't make a baby in a month".
At this stage, suggesting features is better feedback. There are threads with VTT feature suggestions. If using external search engines to search the forums, add dndbeyond to the search words.
Please, do not be a hobbyist CEO. This thread has demonstrated that we are not well aware of what is on the other side of the screen.
Personal opinion: (As one who has been on the other side of the screen for other projects, this site's services has evidence of series of cohesive modules. One cannot just slap on another series of cohesive modules to such a system and expect it to function at all, and it should not be attempted by a new team without any experience with the existing systems. This will take time. Integrated virtual dice would very likely be part of the process of integrating DDB with a VTT and that feature here at DDB might be at a stage where its modules can be carefully integrated into new systems, but that's only an idea from observation. If I'm right, the virtual dice show that they're definitely working on it and making progress.)
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
At this stage, suggesting features is better feedback. There are threads with VTT feature suggestions. If using external search engines to search the forums, add dndbeyond to the search words.
Please, do not be a hobbyist CEO. This thread has demonstrated that we are not well aware of what is on the other side of the screen.
Personal opinion: (As one who has been on the other side of the screen for other projects, this site's services has evidence of series of cohesive modules. One cannot just slap on another series of cohesive modules to such a system and expect it to function at all, and it should not be attempted by a new team without any experience with the existing systems. This will take time. Integrated virtual dice would very likely be part of the process of integrating DDB with a VTT and that feature here at DDB might be at a stage where its modules can be carefully integrated into new systems, but that's only an idea from observation. If I'm right, the virtual dice show that they're definitely working on it and making progress.)
IMO they need to focus on what they are clearly the best at: Character sheet development/support.
Their character sheet is heads and tails above anything else out there and building a character is super easy once you get the feel for it.
I see about 1-2 threads a month (if that) about VTT vs. like 9-10 threads about implimenting different features/changes to the character sheets. Its not even close the amount of requests for character sheet upgrades vs. VTT requests. The character sheet is far and away their bread/butter. They recently made a huge step in the right direction by finally implementing the Spells of the Mark and other baseline changes to the character sheet but it was almost a year after they were introduced in Eberron.
CFV was far and away the most requested feature for a long long time as evidenced by the sheer amount of time Badeye spent talking about it on the Devtalks. If they fail to implement in time for Tasha's it will be a huge blow to the service IMO. The fact they haven't announced a pre-order yet could be telling as I think they will not have it done in time for the November release despite having a year to work on it. While I understand the lift to make the back-end work with this kind of change is massive, they have also introduced several other things during that time which have had some changes/updates (Combat Tracker, Encounter Builder, Digital Dice, etc....) but they have all been in alpha/beta for a long time as well.
Now some like these features and I think they show promise....but they are a LONG way off from being fully functional and to be honest little progress has been made on them since introduction.
I think this is where it leads people to wonder WHAT priorities there are and what the team breakdown looks like....I know there is diminishing returns by having too many cooks in the kitchen but ultimately it comes across as "These things are more important than upgrading our character sheet" While I do not think that is the honest truth....its hard to see it any other way.....especially if you are active in the DnD Beyond community. I see 10x as many requests for the character sheet upgrades vs. things like Digital Dice. I would understand if they just came out to say we need the dice for revenue to ensure we have a healthy bottonline....I would not fault them for that. Its a business after all and they need income to make the dream work just like all of us.
Honestly the thing that bothers me the most is that these books that did not have full integration (Theros with Supernatural Gifts, Eberron with Spells of the Mark, etc...) were not marketed as such. They never warned customers in the marketplace that some features would NOT work with the character sheet before purchase. You would have to go the forums and search for it to find out a core piece of the book is not integrated and you were expected to make your own solution to the problem....honestly that is pretty bad IMO.
Now I hope they listen to feedback and do not make the same mistake with Tasha's....just be honest and say that if the CFV will not be available right away you let people know...otherwise it will be a HUGE PR knock and they will have lost the trust of a LOT of people.
Also....I hope they just drop the VTT angle...they are too far behind at this point to catch up with the market. If they can't produce a fully functional VTT by now they are not going to before Astral or Foundry just blows them out of the water. I love DnD Beyond but I also hope they realize their place in the market and not devote too much time/effort into something that I think will be futile for them.
A public API would probably be a lot more rewarding than a custom VTT. Allowing players to integrate all of their characters and data they bought here into the VTT system of choice.
That in turn would probably convince a lot of people to buy their resources here rather than in the Roll20 store.
Also....I hope they just drop the VTT angle...they are too far behind at this point to catch up with the market. If they can't produce a fully functional VTT by now they are not going to before Astral or Foundry just blows them out of the water. I love DnD Beyond but I also hope they realize their place in the market and not devote too much time/effort into something that I think will be futile for them.
I'd suggest just buying Astral or Foundry but apparently they don't have the deep pockets I thought they had.
A public API would probably be a lot more rewarding than a custom VTT. Allowing players to integrate all of their characters and data they bought here into the VTT system of choice.
That in turn would probably convince a lot of people to buy their resources here rather than in the Roll20 store.
Right on. However, if all books are bought in DNDB, all that's left for the VTTs to make money is monthly subs and maybe some micro-transactions like custom token borders. Can they survive on that alone? Hard to say (I'm guessing the answer is no).
Anyway, this is my last post in here. Learned some things. Good stuff. I'm out.
Honestly I never thought about them just buying a VTT....if that was an option it would seem odd they are trying to build on from scratch with the Combat Tracker, Encounter Builder, etc...
Could be an option in the future though I guess. Would likely be the better option if they did want to get into the game and it could be what they are doing with money from the dice and other stuff.
Just buying a VTT is a looooooooooooooooooooooooong way from having it integrated into the rest of their systems. Having had to do similar things for my career (never for things as fun as D&D unfortunately), it is quite often easier to build a system from scratch than to try retrofitting an existing one built by someone else into your own systems. Depends on far too many variables that we don't have access to, but in my experience, the majority of the time it can easily take less time and effort to build from scratch as counter intuitive as that may seem.
Its not just a case of building a VTT. They can build one but it has to be better than the alternatives out there. Foundry/Roll20 are pretty advanced so having people commit to a new platform is a big leap unless you have a product just as feature rich. Integration with the character sheet is nice but its not worth taking an inferior VTT to achieve it. The character sheet builder, the book content is the real value of DDB. One day we will be past Covid and online play will be less important. IMHO of course.
Putting out new content as Wizards release them is not the only thing Beyond has to do. Beyond is still in the process of overhauling their infrastructure to better handle character sheets and improve homebrew in general, and they are still working on it for at least the last two years. Beyond does not seem to have the resources nor manpower to develop a VTT right now nor in the foreseeable future.
Isn't DNDB owned by Twitch? Isn't Twitch owned by Amazon? They should have money...
The VTT market is not up for grabs. There are a lot of VTT competitors out there and most of them are system neutral, and they can run anything from Pathfinder to Cyberpunk to any previous editions of D&D. Beyond can offer a more tailored VTT experience for D&D 5th Edition, but competing against system neutral VTTs is extremely risky. Even if they have the resources to pursue such a project, it is not guaranteed that it will attract enough customers for it to be financially viable. You might jump ship to D&D's VTT, but Beyond does not know if there are enough you out there to make the project worth it, and making a VTT is not something that you can just try out overnight since it is expensive and time consuming to develop.
Unfortunately, nobody really plays these other systems. I know because I play some of them and it's hard to find groups/players. When you do find a group, you don't have to spend a dime on any platform to enjoy yourself. Furthermore, most people that play other systems also play D&D.
The fact remains that D&D 5e is where the money is. The system screams for tactical maps, character and monster tokens and such. For that you need a VTT. Half of the games in Roll20 are D&D 5e and this number used to be even higher (around 70-80%) before the Nolan fallout a few years ago, when a large portion of the community left for Fantasy Grounds because it was the only other sensible choice at the time.
Last, but certainly not least, don't overlook the fact that a VTT greatly improves the live tabletop experience. I have a group of RL friends who are coming back to D&D after being away from the game for over a decade. Their plan is to play a weekly live game like in the good ol' days. They had already heard of DNDB and I showcased Roll20 to them so they'd know what a VTT is. Their response? "The site looks like sh*t, but these tactical maps and tokens are great. Where are all these features in DNDB?"
You can guess what my reply was.
So yea, it is up for grabs because D&D 5e is all that really matters.
What that tells me is that there is a large user base for playing D&D 5e via virtual tabletops, not that it is a lucrative market where the customer base is easy to monetize. I have not taken a lot of time to do research, but based on a few rudimentary Google searches, I have not been able to find any reports on how much revenue the VTT market is generating, nor can I find any financial statements on how profitable VTT companies are (Roll20, D20Pro, Fantasy Grounds, and Beyond are all owned by privately held companies). Without these key pieces of information, we cannot really say the VTT market is up for grabs nor that it is anywhere near lucrative.
Roll20 is a several years older than Beyond (I think they began around 2012) and they started as a VTT platform right from the get go and based their business model around that. Fantasy Grounds and D20Pro are even older. Beyond is a relatively new comer into the digital landscape, and their business model is based around easing real life tabletop play via ebooks, databases, and character sheets, not around a VTT. Beyond will need to invest a large sum of resources into making that VTT, and once it is ready, they still have to maintain the VTT platform resulting in higher recurring costs. In order for developing a VTT to make financial sense, Beyond has to be relatively certain that project will generate enough additional revenue to get their return on investment in a reasonable time frame and to cover the additional recurring expenses in maintaining a VTT.
Unless you can find new information to prove otherwise, we have no idea how lucrative the market is, I think the VTT market seems pretty saturated already, and the barrier to entry is relatively high. It is extremely risky to dive into the VTT market, and I do not think it makes financial sense to do so when Beyond seems to be doing relatively well without going into that market.
Even if the market is viable and ready for Beyond, I do not think Beyond itself is ready yet. Beyond seems to have a manpower issues since they do not seem to have a big enough team that is free who can tackle a VTT project, and I assume the team that is working on their character sheets and homebrew infrastructure is their main team, but they have been working on that for years already. I believe the teams working on the encounter builder and dice roller are separate teams, but they seem to be much smaller teams and I am not sure they can tackle building a VTT.
Exactly this. I've started using Roll20 and I like it so much that I feel I'm now at a crossroads where I need to decide whether to move over entirely or not. At present I'm using the beyond20 extension, but really, it's not the same as having a full VTT as a lot of functionality is lost. Biggest among them is not being able to import your full character sheet.
So they either need to more fully integrate with roll20 or provide their own sharpish.
Exactly this. I've started using Roll20 and I like it so much that I feel I'm now at a crossroads where I need to decide whether to move over entirely or not. At present I'm using the beyond20 extension, but really, it's not the same as having a full VTT as a lot of functionality is lost. Biggest among them is not being able to import your full character sheet.
So they either need to more fully integrate with roll20 or provide their own sharpish.
You don't need to integrate your full character sheet with roll20. All my players use the sheet in dndbeyond, and only move their token around in roll20.
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Seems kinda like DnDBeyond is on the way to going full Bethesda with the pre-order bonuses and micro transaction.
Really, a $15 dollar dice roller when the VTT isn't even visible in the pipeline? Why?
Yes, I'm aware that a portion of sales benefits a worthy cause but I'm also aware World of Warcraft starting slipping in MXTs using the same method and there's about 47 pages of that stuff now.
Also, how long does it take to program a dice roller? Random generation is easy. Adding modifiers is easy. Getting said modifiers from an existing document... also easy.
A week? Then you'll use the same code on 1000 other quick skins and sell those at $15 each? The profit margin on that is insane. Like soft drink levels of insane(fyi the paper cup costs more to make than the liquid.)
I'm kinda expecting loot boxes within the next year, assuming they don't get banned.
Dice roller with VTT not in sight is putting the money cart way before the horse.
And with all that said, if you're gonna bend us over the barrel and shake use for nickles and dimes, could you at least put a nice sheet on it first?
Finish the table top so all of us web dms can stop paying for like 3 different subs each month.
Take a look at the D&D Beyond Feature Roadmap: https://trello.com/b/vIKxuEs8/dd-beyond-feature-roadmap
A VTT is listed under the "Planned - Long Term" section. Of course, that probably means it's about 2-3 years away.
Once we get a VTT they can have my money.
The dice roller is free, it's just alternative skins that have a cost
Beyond was originally envisioned to be a supplement for real-life table-top play to only replace pen and paper character sheets. It was not intended to be a VTT to completely replace real-life table-top play.
While having a VTT would be nice, I much rather have Beyond focus on their core strengths first, which are their searchable database of monsters and items, compendium app, and most importantly their flagship character creation/character sheet. I want them to focus on making real life table top experience better first and foremost, even if I cannot play D&D in real life with my friends right now. The pandemic is a temporary thing and will come to pass. VTT can come later after they have more or less perfected their character sheets. While their characters sheets are great, there are still many things to improve upon and iron out.
I am not a huge fan of the dice roller since it lags my old computer a bit and I already got my own dice that I can roll in real life, but the dice roller is absolutely free. $15 is only for cosmetics, and while it is a little steep, cosmetics are totally optional and have no impact on actual play, so high cosmetic prices are not really an issue in my opinion. Developers have to eat and got bills to pay just like the rest of us. I rather have Beyond charge a high price on cosmetics than to charge a high price on books.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
With Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 in the market already they needed to find another niche to start a new D&D platform that was not a VTT. They focused on live table-top play. It was a good move. However, that problem is largely solved and all they have to do update with new content as WotC releases them.
The VTT market is up for grabs. Plenty of groups (mine included) still play on Roll20 because of switching costs (i.e., we've already spent a fair bit on that platform). It was the best platform 4 years ago and, unfortunately, still is even though they barely improved on it. Fantasy Grounds has a devoted but niche community that don't like the SaaS model. Scads of groups (again, mine included) are waiting for DNDB to release their VTT to switch over. When that happens, Roll20 shuts down the next month.
"Hmm... should I create a VTT and basically own the VTT market?"
Roll Intelligence!
Putting out new content as Wizards release them is not the only thing Beyond has to do. Beyond is still in the process of overhauling their infrastructure to better handle character sheets and improve homebrew in general, and they are still working on it for at least the last two years. Beyond does not seem to have the resources nor manpower to develop a VTT right now nor in the foreseeable future.
The VTT market is not up for grabs. There are a lot of VTT competitors out there and most of them are system neutral, and they can run anything from Pathfinder to Cyberpunk to any previous editions of D&D. Beyond can offer a more tailored VTT experience for D&D 5th Edition, but competing against system neutral VTTs is extremely risky. Even if they have the resources to pursue such a project, it is not guaranteed that it will attract enough customers for it to be financially viable. You might jump ship to D&D's VTT, but Beyond does not know if there are enough you out there to make the project worth it, and making a VTT is not something that you can just try out overnight since it is expensive and time consuming to develop.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
I don't know if I'd say the live tabletop play problem has been largely solved. From the player perspective, possibly. There's a million things they could do to help out the DM. The DDB campaign-management tools are rudimentary.
Isn't DNDB owned by Twitch? Isn't Twitch owned by Amazon? They should have money...
Unfortunately, nobody really plays these other systems. I know because I play some of them and it's hard to find groups/players. When you do find a group, you don't have to spend a dime on any platform to enjoy yourself. Furthermore, most people that play other systems also play D&D.
The fact remains that D&D 5e is where the money is. The system screams for tactical maps, character and monster tokens and such. For that you need a VTT. Half of the games in Roll20 are D&D 5e and this number used to be even higher (around 70-80%) before the Nolan fallout a few years ago, when a large portion of the community left for Fantasy Grounds because it was the only other sensible choice at the time.
Last, but certainly not least, don't overlook the fact that a VTT greatly improves the live tabletop experience. I have a group of RL friends who are coming back to D&D after being away from the game for over a decade. Their plan is to play a weekly live game like in the good ol' days. They had already heard of DNDB and I showcased Roll20 to them so they'd know what a VTT is. Their response? "The site looks like sh*t, but these tactical maps and tokens are great. Where are all these features in DNDB?"
You can guess what my reply was.
So yea, it is up for grabs because D&D 5e is all that really matters.
I'm running Avernus right now and we should wrap it up in a couple of months. Purchased the module here in DNDB and my notes are neatly organized in One Note. Whatever DM tools you name, I'm pretty sure I can live and thrive without them.
Do you know what I can't live without? A VTT.
D&D Beyond is owned by Fandom. They used to be owned by Twitch, which itself is a subsidiary of Amazon, but that's no longer the case.
On the note of resources, personpower and funding, you can't simply throw more money and/or devs at a problem and make it go faster. There's a point of diminishing returns as you expand a team size. It's the old adage of "Nine women can't make a baby in a month".
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
At this stage, suggesting features is better feedback. There are threads with VTT feature suggestions. If using external search engines to search the forums, add dndbeyond to the search words.
Please, do not be a hobbyist CEO. This thread has demonstrated that we are not well aware of what is on the other side of the screen.
Personal opinion: (As one who has been on the other side of the screen for other projects, this site's services has evidence of series of cohesive modules. One cannot just slap on another series of cohesive modules to such a system and expect it to function at all, and it should not be attempted by a new team without any experience with the existing systems. This will take time. Integrated virtual dice would very likely be part of the process of integrating DDB with a VTT and that feature here at DDB might be at a stage where its modules can be carefully integrated into new systems, but that's only an idea from observation. If I'm right, the virtual dice show that they're definitely working on it and making progress.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
IMO they need to focus on what they are clearly the best at: Character sheet development/support.
Their character sheet is heads and tails above anything else out there and building a character is super easy once you get the feel for it.
I see about 1-2 threads a month (if that) about VTT vs. like 9-10 threads about implimenting different features/changes to the character sheets. Its not even close the amount of requests for character sheet upgrades vs. VTT requests. The character sheet is far and away their bread/butter. They recently made a huge step in the right direction by finally implementing the Spells of the Mark and other baseline changes to the character sheet but it was almost a year after they were introduced in Eberron.
CFV was far and away the most requested feature for a long long time as evidenced by the sheer amount of time Badeye spent talking about it on the Devtalks. If they fail to implement in time for Tasha's it will be a huge blow to the service IMO. The fact they haven't announced a pre-order yet could be telling as I think they will not have it done in time for the November release despite having a year to work on it. While I understand the lift to make the back-end work with this kind of change is massive, they have also introduced several other things during that time which have had some changes/updates (Combat Tracker, Encounter Builder, Digital Dice, etc....) but they have all been in alpha/beta for a long time as well.
Now some like these features and I think they show promise....but they are a LONG way off from being fully functional and to be honest little progress has been made on them since introduction.
I think this is where it leads people to wonder WHAT priorities there are and what the team breakdown looks like....I know there is diminishing returns by having too many cooks in the kitchen but ultimately it comes across as "These things are more important than upgrading our character sheet" While I do not think that is the honest truth....its hard to see it any other way.....especially if you are active in the DnD Beyond community. I see 10x as many requests for the character sheet upgrades vs. things like Digital Dice. I would understand if they just came out to say we need the dice for revenue to ensure we have a healthy bottonline....I would not fault them for that. Its a business after all and they need income to make the dream work just like all of us.
Honestly the thing that bothers me the most is that these books that did not have full integration (Theros with Supernatural Gifts, Eberron with Spells of the Mark, etc...) were not marketed as such. They never warned customers in the marketplace that some features would NOT work with the character sheet before purchase. You would have to go the forums and search for it to find out a core piece of the book is not integrated and you were expected to make your own solution to the problem....honestly that is pretty bad IMO.
Now I hope they listen to feedback and do not make the same mistake with Tasha's....just be honest and say that if the CFV will not be available right away you let people know...otherwise it will be a HUGE PR knock and they will have lost the trust of a LOT of people.
Also....I hope they just drop the VTT angle...they are too far behind at this point to catch up with the market. If they can't produce a fully functional VTT by now they are not going to before Astral or Foundry just blows them out of the water. I love DnD Beyond but I also hope they realize their place in the market and not devote too much time/effort into something that I think will be futile for them.
A public API would probably be a lot more rewarding than a custom VTT. Allowing players to integrate all of their characters and data they bought here into the VTT system of choice.
That in turn would probably convince a lot of people to buy their resources here rather than in the Roll20 store.
Hmm, interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks for that info.
It's hard when alternating between consulting and CEO is what I do for a living. Bear with me.
I'd suggest just buying Astral or Foundry but apparently they don't have the deep pockets I thought they had.
Right on. However, if all books are bought in DNDB, all that's left for the VTTs to make money is monthly subs and maybe some micro-transactions like custom token borders. Can they survive on that alone? Hard to say (I'm guessing the answer is no).
Anyway, this is my last post in here. Learned some things. Good stuff. I'm out.
Honestly I never thought about them just buying a VTT....if that was an option it would seem odd they are trying to build on from scratch with the Combat Tracker, Encounter Builder, etc...
Could be an option in the future though I guess. Would likely be the better option if they did want to get into the game and it could be what they are doing with money from the dice and other stuff.
Just buying a VTT is a looooooooooooooooooooooooong way from having it integrated into the rest of their systems. Having had to do similar things for my career (never for things as fun as D&D unfortunately), it is quite often easier to build a system from scratch than to try retrofitting an existing one built by someone else into your own systems. Depends on far too many variables that we don't have access to, but in my experience, the majority of the time it can easily take less time and effort to build from scratch as counter intuitive as that may seem.
Its not just a case of building a VTT. They can build one but it has to be better than the alternatives out there. Foundry/Roll20 are pretty advanced so having people commit to a new platform is a big leap unless you have a product just as feature rich. Integration with the character sheet is nice but its not worth taking an inferior VTT to achieve it.
The character sheet builder, the book content is the real value of DDB. One day we will be past Covid and online play will be less important. IMHO of course.
What that tells me is that there is a large user base for playing D&D 5e via virtual tabletops, not that it is a lucrative market where the customer base is easy to monetize. I have not taken a lot of time to do research, but based on a few rudimentary Google searches, I have not been able to find any reports on how much revenue the VTT market is generating, nor can I find any financial statements on how profitable VTT companies are (Roll20, D20Pro, Fantasy Grounds, and Beyond are all owned by privately held companies). Without these key pieces of information, we cannot really say the VTT market is up for grabs nor that it is anywhere near lucrative.
Roll20 is a several years older than Beyond (I think they began around 2012) and they started as a VTT platform right from the get go and based their business model around that. Fantasy Grounds and D20Pro are even older. Beyond is a relatively new comer into the digital landscape, and their business model is based around easing real life tabletop play via ebooks, databases, and character sheets, not around a VTT. Beyond will need to invest a large sum of resources into making that VTT, and once it is ready, they still have to maintain the VTT platform resulting in higher recurring costs. In order for developing a VTT to make financial sense, Beyond has to be relatively certain that project will generate enough additional revenue to get their return on investment in a reasonable time frame and to cover the additional recurring expenses in maintaining a VTT.
Unless you can find new information to prove otherwise, we have no idea how lucrative the market is, I think the VTT market seems pretty saturated already, and the barrier to entry is relatively high. It is extremely risky to dive into the VTT market, and I do not think it makes financial sense to do so when Beyond seems to be doing relatively well without going into that market.
Even if the market is viable and ready for Beyond, I do not think Beyond itself is ready yet. Beyond seems to have a manpower issues since they do not seem to have a big enough team that is free who can tackle a VTT project, and I assume the team that is working on their character sheets and homebrew infrastructure is their main team, but they have been working on that for years already. I believe the teams working on the encounter builder and dice roller are separate teams, but they seem to be much smaller teams and I am not sure they can tackle building a VTT.
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Exactly this. I've started using Roll20 and I like it so much that I feel I'm now at a crossroads where I need to decide whether to move over entirely or not. At present I'm using the beyond20 extension, but really, it's not the same as having a full VTT as a lot of functionality is lost. Biggest among them is not being able to import your full character sheet.
So they either need to more fully integrate with roll20 or provide their own sharpish.
You don't need to integrate your full character sheet with roll20. All my players use the sheet in dndbeyond, and only move their token around in roll20.