Let's get right into it, yes? Hasbro wants money, WotC wants money, they want to make a *****-TON of money off D&D. I'm sure CEOs at these companies are concerned about the bottom line and are concerned about having to drop D&D as a brand if it doesn't make *enough* money. (Enough here being as much money as possible, obviously.) Fine you're just like other corporations out there, can't fault a business trying make money. Correction, you absolutely can fault a business for *how* they're trying to make money, and clearly they're all at fault with their current strategies. So how could they make as much - in fact vastly more - money as they wanted to with these horrible licenses without resorting to utterly evil, tone death, and utterly ignorant methods.
The two things they most want to accomplish is growing the D&D brand into a billion+ dollar property, and they want to have a digital presence that can generate constant revenue. As part of that they're developing their own VTT that they invested so much money into they need to make it successful. The thing they don't understand (and there is A LOT they don't understand) is that this has been done before. So how do they accomplish all these goal without being evil?
The first and simplest thing they should have done is ... nothing. Leave things alone with the OGL and other VTTs. There is this false notion that if someone is using a different product then yours then by simply removing the other product they will use yours. That doesn't happen. That doesn't happen in video games, it absolutely doesn't happen in table top games. All WotC had to do was release their own VTT. That's it. If it's any good, even if it doesn't live up to all their promises, the fact that it's an official D&D VTT, complete with detailed character integration, all in a single online destination, absolutely people would use it! Anyone who didn't use this VTT probably wasn't going to use it anyway.
Incidentally, these terrible bullying tactics that WotC tried to force other VTTs out of the market has now only served to bring doubt to their own product. Now I can only assume that they can't get even basic VTT functionality as they themselves have no confidence in their own product. Congratulations on this "brilliant" stroke of anti-marketing.
But let's assume it's at least a good enough VTT that you can enjoy playing D&D on it. Great, now you can start monetizing it. As much as people might complain about microtransactions, everyone I know (prior to this month) who used D&DBeyond LOVED the custom digital dice. Now being able to roll those dice on a VTT for everyone to see is a huge draw incenting more people, other then the DMs, to buy additional digital dice. As much as people might complain, if there was monetized customization for character art, custom minis and tokens, people absolutely would buy that up.
But we're not done here. Clearly this is not enough money, so how could they make more. By encouraging MORE third party publishers to make D&D content with a truly open OGL. Seriously. But instead of demanding royalties to everything sold anywhere, let them do whatever they want. BUT offer the opportunity to sell their content through official D&D online channels. Imagine as a player being able to find even more amazing and unique content directly on the same platform as all the official D&D books. Imagine as a 3pp creator being able to sell your content to the millions and millions of people that (used to) go through D&DBeyond alone. You wanted 25% royalty? Imagine being able to charge 30-50% royalty here. The difference is that anyone can still create and sell their content through all of the old channels, but now they can choose to also sell that same open content through your own sight. Of course they'd be happy to pay that much of their revenue for that kind of exposure. In addition you can keep your sweetheart deals to draw in more external publishers to work with you. In fact you can make great deals with the third party creators to grow the brand, not just in terms of content but marketing and impressions, as they all encourage their own customers to buy their own products through your market. ( and if you want to go into detail on how to do this, here's a great video by actual experts in the various fields involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFR0NqlrxI8 )
To put it in simple terms, you can become Steam but for TTRPGs.
But they didn't do this, and the reason why is obvious. For starters they would never think about it, because these executives don't understand the market they're working in. They don't even understand the market they claim to come from. Their previous executive experiences in the video game industry have been utter failures as well. The reason why they think it would work leads us to reason number two. They only know how to squeeze their customers for short term gains. They don't want to put in the effort and investment to actually grow the product in a meaningful way, they just want big numbers as quickly as possible. Unfortunately the only 'tactics' they understand only work in certain markets and even then will always end up failing the product in the long term. In other words they're lazy and stupid.
One of the reasons they don't do this is because DDB doesn't have one percent of the manpower they'd need to implement all the thousands and thousands and thousands of third-party books out there, especially when many of them make drastic, fundamental overhauls to the 5e ruleset. There's simply no way to make that work, they can't even keep up with Wizards' regular releases.
As for being Steam but for TTRPGs, that's what DM's Guild is. Anybody can release their thing on DMGuild and get whatever traction they get, and Wizzie takes its cut. Spoilers: it's not a significant revenue generator.
One of the reasons they don't do this is because DDB doesn't have one percent of the manpower they'd need to implement all the thousands and thousands and thousands of third-party books out there, especially when many of them make drastic, fundamental overhauls to the 5e ruleset. There's simply no way to make that work, they can't even keep up with Wizards' regular releases.
As for being Steam but for TTRPGs, that's what DM's Guild is. Anybody can release their thing on DMGuild and get whatever traction they get, and Wizzie takes its cut. Spoilers: it's not a significant revenue generator.
Software has limits. Unfortunately.
Have you been on the Homebrew pages recently? DnDB doesn't need to use their manpower, the third party publisher would be responsible for their own uploads, ie just like Steam. At most they would need a small editorial review staff, to make sure 3rd party content doesn't violate internal publishing policies.
One of the reasons they don't do this is because DDB doesn't have one percent of the manpower they'd need to implement all the thousands and thousands and thousands of third-party books out there, especially when many of them make drastic, fundamental overhauls to the 5e ruleset. There's simply no way to make that work, they can't even keep up with Wizards' regular releases.
As for being Steam but for TTRPGs, that's what DM's Guild is. Anybody can release their thing on DMGuild and get whatever traction they get, and Wizzie takes its cut. Spoilers: it's not a significant revenue generator.
Software has limits. Unfortunately.
Have you been on the Homebrew pages recently? DnDB doesn't need to use their manpower, the third party publisher would be responsible for their own uploads, ie just like Steam. At most they would need a small editorial review staff, to make sure 3rd party content doesn't violate internal publishing policies.
Too much of the homebrew is entirely or mostly the text description, doesn't mechanically do what the text says it should, and looks like a 3rd grader wrote it.
Plus, the DDB engine simply isn't up to making a good chunk of WotC materials (even years later), much less what a 3PP comes up with. Asmodeus take us all if the DDB staff had to turn whatever janky ideas the homebrew crowd comes up with into viable code. Remember the Mardi Gras party that was having Light Clerics finally work as advertised?
One of the reasons they don't do this is because DDB doesn't have one percent of the manpower they'd need to implement all the thousands and thousands and thousands of third-party books out there, especially when many of them make drastic, fundamental overhauls to the 5e ruleset. There's simply no way to make that work, they can't even keep up with Wizards' regular releases.
As for being Steam but for TTRPGs, that's what DM's Guild is. Anybody can release their thing on DMGuild and get whatever traction they get, and Wizzie takes its cut. Spoilers: it's not a significant revenue generator.
Software has limits. Unfortunately.
Have you been on the Homebrew pages recently? DnDB doesn't need to use their manpower, the third party publisher would be responsible for their own uploads, ie just like Steam. At most they would need a small editorial review staff, to make sure 3rd party content doesn't violate internal publishing policies.
Too much of the homebrew is entirely or mostly the text description, doesn't mechanically do what the text says it should, and looks like a 3rd grader wrote it.
Plus, the DDB engine simply isn't up to making a good chunk of WotC materials (even years later), much less what a 3PP comes up with. Asmodeus take us all if the DDB staff had to turn whatever janky ideas the homebrew crowd comes up with into viable code. Remember the Mardi Gras party that was having Light Clerics finally work as advertised?
That's where WotC should be hiring staff to do such a thing. They could allow publishers to "badge" their products and allow easy access to filtering to professionally done stuff when a user wants to. They have the money. The could literally have the Steam of TTRPG's but they are too busy trying to prop up whatever aborted monstrosity they are concocting in their rot-infested HQ.
Too much of the homebrew is entirely or mostly the text description, doesn't mechanically do what the text says it should, and looks like a 3rd grader wrote it.
Plus, the DDB engine simply isn't up to making a good chunk of WotC materials (even years later), much less what a 3PP comes up with. Asmodeus take us all if the DDB staff had to turn whatever janky ideas the homebrew crowd comes up with into viable code. Remember the Mardi Gras party that was having Light Clerics finally work as advertised?
/lesigh, this is why sometimes it's better to just ignore people.
Q: How can 3rd party content go up when DnDB is under staffed.
A: Let the professional 3rd party content creators upload their own material and only do editorial review on the content. Basically using the same tools already available to Homebrew content.
R: Homebrew content is poorly written, OMG dumb.
Rant: Seriously, I could go on for an hour on what has been happening since WotC took over at DnDB, and now all the bugs and layoffs make sense. Yes DnDB is understaffed, and they have been for almost a year now, the site is buggy as all heck, and it's been the same damned bugs for over a year now. The Encounter Beta has been in Beta for over a year with no updates. None of the inhouse books digital books for D&D have been posted here on DnDB, and are still locked to GMs Guild, no attempt at integration to GMs Guild has happened. You would think WotC is doing the bare minimum to keep subs at DnDB until their VTT launches, and then they'll switch the DnDB subs over to the VTT and kill DnDB as a Tool for Table Top games. They have already closed the ability to link it to Roll20, the free simple VTT website. I wonder why? We're here showing a way for DnD to be saved, and you are like naaa doesn't need to be saved, no need to upgrade DnDB, no need for 3rd Party conent sold here, no need for the short one offs written by WotC to be sold here, no need to fix and repair the website before it becomes unusable. No need for easy integration with Roll 20, Foundry, and talespire. No need to save the Table Top RPG Community, and the games we love.
Your right, D&D is going to burn, it's not worth the effort to help motivate saving it. Not worth the stress. Not worth the Time. Esp when there are other systems willing to work with the community, willing to grow our hobby, willing to improve and make life better. Bye...
Too much of the homebrew is entirely or mostly the text description, doesn't mechanically do what the text says it should, and looks like a 3rd grader wrote it.
Plus, the DDB engine simply isn't up to making a good chunk of WotC materials (even years later), much less what a 3PP comes up with. Asmodeus take us all if the DDB staff had to turn whatever janky ideas the homebrew crowd comes up with into viable code. Remember the Mardi Gras party that was having Light Clerics finally work as advertised?
/lesigh, this is why sometimes it's better to just ignore people.
Q: How can 3rd party content go up when DnDB is under staffed.
A: Let the professional 3rd party content creators upload their own material and only do editorial review on the content. Basically using the same tools already available to Homebrew content.
R: Homebrew content is poorly written, OMG dumb.
Rant: Seriously, I could go on for an hour on what has been happening since WotC took over at DnDB, and now all the bugs and layoffs make sense. Yes DnDB is understaffed, and they have been for almost a year now, the site is buggy as all heck, and it's been the same damned bugs for over a year now. The Encounter Beta has been in Beta for over a year with no updates. None of the inhouse books digital books for D&D have been posted here on DnDB, and are still locked to GMs Guild, no attempt at integration to GMs Guild has happened. You would think WotC is doing the bare minimum to keep subs at DnDB until their VTT launches, and then they'll switch the DnDB subs over to the VTT and kill DnDB as a Tool for Table Top games. They have already closed the ability to link it to Roll20, the free simple VTT website. I wonder why? We're here showing a way for DnD to be saved, and you are like naaa doesn't need to be saved, no need to upgrade DnDB, no need for 3rd Party conent sold here, no need for the short one offs written by WotC to be sold here, no need to fix and repair the website before it becomes unusable. No need for easy integration with Roll 20, Foundry, and talespire. No need to save the Table Top RPG Community, and the games we love.
Your right, D&D is going to burn, it's not worth the effort to help motivate saving it. Not worth the stress. Not worth the Time. Esp when there are other systems willing to work with the community, willing to grow our hobby, willing to improve and make life better. Bye...
Meanwhile, all the people they laid off from DnDBeyond took all of their experience and know how, and founded Demiplane, which is basically DnDBeyond for Pathfinder, Vampire, Avatar Legends, Alien RPG, Mutant Year Zero, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Hunter the Reckoning, and a bunch more as yet unnanounced games, and according to the devs, once they've finished the Toolset, will be able to role out new a game system in a matter of weeks.
Meanwhile, all the people they laid off from DnDBeyond took all of their experience and know how, and founded Demiplane, which is basically DnDBeyond for Pathfinder, Vampire, Avatar Legends, Alien RPG, Mutant Year Zero, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Hunter the Reckoning, and a bunch more as yet unnanounced games, and according to the devs, once they've finished the Toolset, will be able to role out new a game system in a matter of weeks.
I am of legal age, but still would like to know why they are asking birthdays, which DDB does not seem to do.
I don't know, but it might have something to do with their matchmaking system? Maybe an option to exclude minors when you open up a game.
In a best case scenario they plan to bake you a homemade cake.
Also maybe it's to be ready for the possibility of content that isn't for minors.
How is that not censorship? Not sure about you, but I wasn't 18 yet when I started playing. The game itself has no official age rating and it is considered quite legitimate for younger players.
There is the risk of misuse there but that risk exists with all telecommunications.
It could be that they just don't want to be bothered with moderation or really want to run it as an adult service, but that would be both limiting their customer base and just inviting criticism of the games they support.
Which game though? Demiplane currently hosts Avatar Legends, Pathfinder 2e, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Vampire the Masquerade, Hunter the Reckoning, Alien the RPG, and Mutant: Year Zero. Of those, Vampire, Hunter and Alien are games which lean into very adult themes (I would expect the same of Mutant: Year Zero, but I've never played it, so IDK). I know if I were running any of those games, I would not want to run a campaign with any minors in it. If I were playing any of those games, I would not want to be in a group with minors. It's also possible, given that they are adding more games this year, that we'll see even more games that ring the 'mature content' bell. Restricting Mature content isn't censorship.
Meanwhile, all the people they laid off from DnDBeyond took all of their experience and know how, and founded Demiplane, which is basically DnDBeyond for Pathfinder, Vampire, Avatar Legends, Alien RPG, Mutant Year Zero, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Hunter the Reckoning, and a bunch more as yet unnanounced games, and according to the devs, once they've finished the Toolset, will be able to role out new a game system in a matter of weeks.
I am of legal age, but still would like to know why they are asking birthdays, which DDB does not seem to do.
Demiplane was first and foremost a place to gather people for tables. Facts being facts, age is a thing people consider when looking for TTRPG friends. I'm a 37 year old white dude, and I doubt an 18 year old girl wants to play with me. That's fine, and I don't even find it exclusionary that she doesn't. It's a choice she makes, a choice anyone is allowed to make.
D&D Beyond also doesn't care how old you are. its terms of service let it ban people who openly admit they are underage, but if someone underage buys content? Oh well, they made money. Also it isn't a huge issue because D&D Beyond isn't trying to facilitate actual game groups. Hell, even on its discord its basically closing down voice channels because they can't moderate it other than the big ones.
Meanwhile, all the people they laid off from DnDBeyond took all of their experience and know how, and founded Demiplane, which is basically DnDBeyond for Pathfinder, Vampire, Avatar Legends, Alien RPG, Mutant Year Zero, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Hunter the Reckoning, and a bunch more as yet unnanounced games, and according to the devs, once they've finished the Toolset, will be able to role out new a game system in a matter of weeks.
I am of legal age, but still would like to know why they are asking birthdays, which DDB does not seem to do.
It has to do with them working with Vampire the Masquerade. The publisher has an over 18 rule for their content.
Too much of the homebrew is entirely or mostly the text description, doesn't mechanically do what the text says it should, and looks like a 3rd grader wrote it.
Plus, the DDB engine simply isn't up to making a good chunk of WotC materials (even years later), much less what a 3PP comes up with. Asmodeus take us all if the DDB staff had to turn whatever janky ideas the homebrew crowd comes up with into viable code. Remember the Mardi Gras party that was having Light Clerics finally work as advertised?
/lesigh, this is why sometimes it's better to just ignore people.
Q: How can 3rd party content go up when DnDB is under staffed.
A: Let the professional 3rd party content creators upload their own material and only do editorial review on the content. Basically using the same tools already available to Homebrew content.
R: Homebrew content is poorly written, OMG dumb.
From my point of view, the main issue isnt that it is poorly written. The "meat" of the issue really feels like the part I bolded from Jaeken's comment. Even if the 3rd party creators worked in their content themselves, there a strict limitations to what can be mechanically integrated using the tools coded into D&D Beyond.
Say for example I designed a construct race that had a Damage Threshold as a racial feature. The mechanical concept of a Damage Threshold in 5e only applies to objects thus far, and as far as I am aware, there are no tools in the kit for making a homebrew race option that would allow me to add a Damage Threshold to the character sheet. So while I could work in all the descriptive text for how my feature works, and players could read that, there is no means to make it function within the automatic bonuses of the D&DBeyond character sheet.
Coding in new mechanical tools and kits to keep up with 3PPs ideas would require significant manpower on D&DBeyond's end. Thats not to say that its a bad idea, but there would need to be a massive expansion of the D&DBeyond team that regularly works with 3PP content creators.
----
As an aside, if we assume 3PP was sponsored on D&D beyond in the way suggested would the D&D Beyond team be responsible for policing the actual homebrew creations if a 3PP creator found that a user had made a copy of a subclass/spell/etc they are trying to sell?
To put it in simple terms, you can become Steam but for TTRPGs.
Could have been a gold mine.
Imagine a Steam that you open up, and there's a D&D Tavern that's like a constant twitch stream where various D&D groups could submit content to be aired, fake advertisements, real advertisements, fun little snippets and jokes made by the community, TTRPG sessions that are like Dimension 20 but are a low budget way to get your foot in the door streaming to the community at large, a way to show off various games or new books or minis or anything else.
Then you click over to your library, and you see all the various digital books and games you've bought resources for. You click Call of Cthulu and open the book, peruse the rules, see that there's 'new content available!' and click the link, and it shows you all the fanmade and professionally made new icons, tokens, digital music files, maps, everything that COULD be used for a Cthulu game all sorted into this digital marketplace where you can easily buy and integrate new things to your games.
You go over to your Archive and write some notes for your next game, so that when you open it all up again they'll be right there with that specific game. Shoot one of your players a note in the game so that the next time they open the game, it reminds pops up for them and lets them know what their DM wanted to tell them. The links for foundry or other VTT's you use could all be there, or even integrated if they got that far, because that'd be pretty amazing, all of it just in one place.
There's even a little calendar / scheduling feature that allows you to run reminders so you can have a 30 minute warning before games on game day, and it sends you a digital text or something too.
To put it in simple terms, you can become Steam but for TTRPGs.
Could have been a gold mine.
Imagine a Steam that you open up, and there's a D&D Tavern that's like a constant twitch stream where various D&D groups could submit content to be aired, fake advertisements, real advertisements, fun little snippets and jokes made by the community, TTRPG sessions that are like Dimension 20 but are a low budget way to get your foot in the door streaming to the community at large, a way to show off various games or new books or minis or anything else.
Then you click over to your library, and you see all the various digital books and games you've bought resources for. You click Call of Cthulu and open the book, peruse the rules, see that there's 'new content available!' and click the link, and it shows you all the fanmade and professionally made new icons, tokens, digital music files, maps, everything that COULD be used for a Cthulu game all sorted into this digital marketplace where you can easily buy and integrate new things to your games.
You go over to your Archive and write some notes for your next game, so that when you open it all up again they'll be right there with that specific game. Shoot one of your players a note in the game so that the next time they open the game, it reminds pops up for them and lets them know what their DM wanted to tell them. The links for foundry or other VTT's you use could all be there, or even integrated if they got that far, because that'd be pretty amazing, all of it just in one place.
There's even a little calendar / scheduling feature that allows you to run reminders so you can have a 30 minute warning before games on game day, and it sends you a digital text or something too.
Could have been so sweet.
And then WotC gets a cut of revenue from everything offered, just as Steam does for its sales? Isn't that exactly what 3P are demanding they should not have to pay?
incorrect, the 3p creators want to self publish without WotC breathing down their necks, stealing their content, or telling them they can't publish. By offering up a platform which takes a large cut, has rules of content, and filled with everything in the "OGL 1.1" people would still do it, because they would still have their own outlets and physical book sales. The option to publish on DnDB is just a method of distribution, not the full industry.
Basically no different than the app stores for iphone and android. You can make the "app" and self publish, and people could go and get your app without itunes or Google Play, but it's easier and a larger market to let apple and google take 20% and have them distribute. It becomes WotC/Hasbro offering a service and platform for a big fee, or self publish with no oversite or royalties. Eventually everyone would publish on the large monetized service if it reached a large enough customer base.
In economics it's referred to the "invisible hand". What WotC is trying to do is kill the coemption, prior to releasing their VTT to minimize the impact of the hand, instead of using their power in the market to make a distribution platform. By trying to establish a monopoly they have killed their advantage. I would say it's almost too late for them to recover, but I am hopeful they will.
I doubt it, they would have to fire the leadership behind this situation before any community goodwill could be reestablished.
what i don't get, Hasbro, a toy company, doesn't make D&D DICE ... you know the one thing every and i mean EVERY D&D player has like 20 sets of just because each week they want new dice.
what i don't get, Hasbro, a toy company, doesn't make D&D DICE ... you know the one thing every and i mean EVERY D&D player has like 20 sets of just because each week they want new dice.
There you go Hasbro, you monetized players
Hasbro, which owns the largest RPG company in the world, also doesn't make the Officially Licensed RPG for 4 of their most Popular Brands. The Power Rangers, GI Joe, Transformers and My Little Pony RPG's are all licensed out to a 3rd Party. No one is sure what the heck is going on inside that corporate hive, but most people agree it's not a lot of deep, long term thinking.
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Let's get right into it, yes? Hasbro wants money, WotC wants money, they want to make a *****-TON of money off D&D. I'm sure CEOs at these companies are concerned about the bottom line and are concerned about having to drop D&D as a brand if it doesn't make *enough* money. (Enough here being as much money as possible, obviously.) Fine you're just like other corporations out there, can't fault a business trying make money. Correction, you absolutely can fault a business for *how* they're trying to make money, and clearly they're all at fault with their current strategies. So how could they make as much - in fact vastly more - money as they wanted to with these horrible licenses without resorting to utterly evil, tone death, and utterly ignorant methods.
The two things they most want to accomplish is growing the D&D brand into a billion+ dollar property, and they want to have a digital presence that can generate constant revenue. As part of that they're developing their own VTT that they invested so much money into they need to make it successful. The thing they don't understand (and there is A LOT they don't understand) is that this has been done before. So how do they accomplish all these goal without being evil?
The first and simplest thing they should have done is ... nothing. Leave things alone with the OGL and other VTTs. There is this false notion that if someone is using a different product then yours then by simply removing the other product they will use yours. That doesn't happen. That doesn't happen in video games, it absolutely doesn't happen in table top games. All WotC had to do was release their own VTT. That's it. If it's any good, even if it doesn't live up to all their promises, the fact that it's an official D&D VTT, complete with detailed character integration, all in a single online destination, absolutely people would use it! Anyone who didn't use this VTT probably wasn't going to use it anyway.
Incidentally, these terrible bullying tactics that WotC tried to force other VTTs out of the market has now only served to bring doubt to their own product. Now I can only assume that they can't get even basic VTT functionality as they themselves have no confidence in their own product. Congratulations on this "brilliant" stroke of anti-marketing.
But let's assume it's at least a good enough VTT that you can enjoy playing D&D on it. Great, now you can start monetizing it. As much as people might complain about microtransactions, everyone I know (prior to this month) who used D&DBeyond LOVED the custom digital dice. Now being able to roll those dice on a VTT for everyone to see is a huge draw incenting more people, other then the DMs, to buy additional digital dice. As much as people might complain, if there was monetized customization for character art, custom minis and tokens, people absolutely would buy that up.
But we're not done here. Clearly this is not enough money, so how could they make more. By encouraging MORE third party publishers to make D&D content with a truly open OGL. Seriously. But instead of demanding royalties to everything sold anywhere, let them do whatever they want. BUT offer the opportunity to sell their content through official D&D online channels. Imagine as a player being able to find even more amazing and unique content directly on the same platform as all the official D&D books. Imagine as a 3pp creator being able to sell your content to the millions and millions of people that (used to) go through D&DBeyond alone. You wanted 25% royalty? Imagine being able to charge 30-50% royalty here. The difference is that anyone can still create and sell their content through all of the old channels, but now they can choose to also sell that same open content through your own sight. Of course they'd be happy to pay that much of their revenue for that kind of exposure. In addition you can keep your sweetheart deals to draw in more external publishers to work with you. In fact you can make great deals with the third party creators to grow the brand, not just in terms of content but marketing and impressions, as they all encourage their own customers to buy their own products through your market. ( and if you want to go into detail on how to do this, here's a great video by actual experts in the various fields involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFR0NqlrxI8 )
To put it in simple terms, you can become Steam but for TTRPGs.
But they didn't do this, and the reason why is obvious. For starters they would never think about it, because these executives don't understand the market they're working in. They don't even understand the market they claim to come from. Their previous executive experiences in the video game industry have been utter failures as well. The reason why they think it would work leads us to reason number two. They only know how to squeeze their customers for short term gains. They don't want to put in the effort and investment to actually grow the product in a meaningful way, they just want big numbers as quickly as possible. Unfortunately the only 'tactics' they understand only work in certain markets and even then will always end up failing the product in the long term. In other words they're lazy and stupid.
Sylnache Ashrain - 7th Sojourn
One of the reasons they don't do this is because DDB doesn't have one percent of the manpower they'd need to implement all the thousands and thousands and thousands of third-party books out there, especially when many of them make drastic, fundamental overhauls to the 5e ruleset. There's simply no way to make that work, they can't even keep up with Wizards' regular releases.
As for being Steam but for TTRPGs, that's what DM's Guild is. Anybody can release their thing on DMGuild and get whatever traction they get, and Wizzie takes its cut. Spoilers: it's not a significant revenue generator.
Software has limits. Unfortunately.
Please do not contact or message me.
Have you been on the Homebrew pages recently? DnDB doesn't need to use their manpower, the third party publisher would be responsible for their own uploads, ie just like Steam. At most they would need a small editorial review staff, to make sure 3rd party content doesn't violate internal publishing policies.
Too much of the homebrew is entirely or mostly the text description, doesn't mechanically do what the text says it should, and looks like a 3rd grader wrote it.
Plus, the DDB engine simply isn't up to making a good chunk of WotC materials (even years later), much less what a 3PP comes up with. Asmodeus take us all if the DDB staff had to turn whatever janky ideas the homebrew crowd comes up with into viable code. Remember the Mardi Gras party that was having Light Clerics finally work as advertised?
That's where WotC should be hiring staff to do such a thing. They could allow publishers to "badge" their products and allow easy access to filtering to professionally done stuff when a user wants to. They have the money. The could literally have the Steam of TTRPG's but they are too busy trying to prop up whatever aborted monstrosity they are concocting in their rot-infested HQ.
/lesigh, this is why sometimes it's better to just ignore people.
Rant: Seriously, I could go on for an hour on what has been happening since WotC took over at DnDB, and now all the bugs and layoffs make sense. Yes DnDB is understaffed, and they have been for almost a year now, the site is buggy as all heck, and it's been the same damned bugs for over a year now. The Encounter Beta has been in Beta for over a year with no updates. None of the inhouse books digital books for D&D have been posted here on DnDB, and are still locked to GMs Guild, no attempt at integration to GMs Guild has happened. You would think WotC is doing the bare minimum to keep subs at DnDB until their VTT launches, and then they'll switch the DnDB subs over to the VTT and kill DnDB as a Tool for Table Top games. They have already closed the ability to link it to Roll20, the free simple VTT website. I wonder why?
We're here showing a way for DnD to be saved, and you are like naaa doesn't need to be saved, no need to upgrade DnDB, no need for 3rd Party conent sold here, no need for the short one offs written by WotC to be sold here, no need to fix and repair the website before it becomes unusable. No need for easy integration with Roll 20, Foundry, and talespire. No need to save the Table Top RPG Community, and the games we love.
Your right, D&D is going to burn, it's not worth the effort to help motivate saving it. Not worth the stress. Not worth the Time. Esp when there are other systems willing to work with the community, willing to grow our hobby, willing to improve and make life better. Bye...
Meanwhile, all the people they laid off from DnDBeyond took all of their experience and know how, and founded Demiplane, which is basically DnDBeyond for Pathfinder, Vampire, Avatar Legends, Alien RPG, Mutant Year Zero, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Hunter the Reckoning, and a bunch more as yet unnanounced games, and according to the devs, once they've finished the Toolset, will be able to role out new a game system in a matter of weeks.
I don't know, but it might have something to do with their matchmaking system? Maybe an option to exclude minors when you open up a game.
In a best case scenario they plan to bake you a homemade cake.
Also maybe it's to be ready for the possibility of content that isn't for minors.
Which game though? Demiplane currently hosts Avatar Legends, Pathfinder 2e, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Vampire the Masquerade, Hunter the Reckoning, Alien the RPG, and Mutant: Year Zero. Of those, Vampire, Hunter and Alien are games which lean into very adult themes (I would expect the same of Mutant: Year Zero, but I've never played it, so IDK). I know if I were running any of those games, I would not want to run a campaign with any minors in it. If I were playing any of those games, I would not want to be in a group with minors. It's also possible, given that they are adding more games this year, that we'll see even more games that ring the 'mature content' bell. Restricting Mature content isn't censorship.
Demiplane was first and foremost a place to gather people for tables. Facts being facts, age is a thing people consider when looking for TTRPG friends. I'm a 37 year old white dude, and I doubt an 18 year old girl wants to play with me. That's fine, and I don't even find it exclusionary that she doesn't. It's a choice she makes, a choice anyone is allowed to make.
D&D Beyond also doesn't care how old you are. its terms of service let it ban people who openly admit they are underage, but if someone underage buys content? Oh well, they made money. Also it isn't a huge issue because D&D Beyond isn't trying to facilitate actual game groups. Hell, even on its discord its basically closing down voice channels because they can't moderate it other than the big ones.
WotC has several openings for Digital Game Development and Digital Publishing, if anyone is interested. Several are work from home.
https://company.wizards.com/en/careers
It has to do with them working with Vampire the Masquerade. The publisher has an over 18 rule for their content.
From my point of view, the main issue isnt that it is poorly written. The "meat" of the issue really feels like the part I bolded from Jaeken's comment. Even if the 3rd party creators worked in their content themselves, there a strict limitations to what can be mechanically integrated using the tools coded into D&D Beyond.
Say for example I designed a construct race that had a Damage Threshold as a racial feature. The mechanical concept of a Damage Threshold in 5e only applies to objects thus far, and as far as I am aware, there are no tools in the kit for making a homebrew race option that would allow me to add a Damage Threshold to the character sheet. So while I could work in all the descriptive text for how my feature works, and players could read that, there is no means to make it function within the automatic bonuses of the D&DBeyond character sheet.
Coding in new mechanical tools and kits to keep up with 3PPs ideas would require significant manpower on D&DBeyond's end. Thats not to say that its a bad idea, but there would need to be a massive expansion of the D&DBeyond team that regularly works with 3PP content creators.
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As an aside, if we assume 3PP was sponsored on D&D beyond in the way suggested would the D&D Beyond team be responsible for policing the actual homebrew creations if a 3PP creator found that a user had made a copy of a subclass/spell/etc they are trying to sell?
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Could have been a gold mine.
Imagine a Steam that you open up, and there's a D&D Tavern that's like a constant twitch stream where various D&D groups could submit content to be aired, fake advertisements, real advertisements, fun little snippets and jokes made by the community, TTRPG sessions that are like Dimension 20 but are a low budget way to get your foot in the door streaming to the community at large, a way to show off various games or new books or minis or anything else.
Then you click over to your library, and you see all the various digital books and games you've bought resources for. You click Call of Cthulu and open the book, peruse the rules, see that there's 'new content available!' and click the link, and it shows you all the fanmade and professionally made new icons, tokens, digital music files, maps, everything that COULD be used for a Cthulu game all sorted into this digital marketplace where you can easily buy and integrate new things to your games.
You go over to your Archive and write some notes for your next game, so that when you open it all up again they'll be right there with that specific game. Shoot one of your players a note in the game so that the next time they open the game, it reminds pops up for them and lets them know what their DM wanted to tell them. The links for foundry or other VTT's you use could all be there, or even integrated if they got that far, because that'd be pretty amazing, all of it just in one place.
There's even a little calendar / scheduling feature that allows you to run reminders so you can have a 30 minute warning before games on game day, and it sends you a digital text or something too.
Could have been so sweet.
incorrect, the 3p creators want to self publish without WotC breathing down their necks, stealing their content, or telling them they can't publish. By offering up a platform which takes a large cut, has rules of content, and filled with everything in the "OGL 1.1" people would still do it, because they would still have their own outlets and physical book sales. The option to publish on DnDB is just a method of distribution, not the full industry.
Basically no different than the app stores for iphone and android. You can make the "app" and self publish, and people could go and get your app without itunes or Google Play, but it's easier and a larger market to let apple and google take 20% and have them distribute. It becomes WotC/Hasbro offering a service and platform for a big fee, or self publish with no oversite or royalties. Eventually everyone would publish on the large monetized service if it reached a large enough customer base.
In economics it's referred to the "invisible hand". What WotC is trying to do is kill the coemption, prior to releasing their VTT to minimize the impact of the hand, instead of using their power in the market to make a distribution platform. By trying to establish a monopoly they have killed their advantage. I would say it's almost too late for them to recover, but I am hopeful they will.
I doubt it, they would have to fire the leadership behind this situation before any community goodwill could be reestablished.
what i don't get, Hasbro, a toy company, doesn't make D&D DICE ... you know the one thing every and i mean EVERY D&D player has like 20 sets of just because each week they want new dice.
There you go Hasbro, you monetized players
Hasbro, which owns the largest RPG company in the world, also doesn't make the Officially Licensed RPG for 4 of their most Popular Brands. The Power Rangers, GI Joe, Transformers and My Little Pony RPG's are all licensed out to a 3rd Party. No one is sure what the heck is going on inside that corporate hive, but most people agree it's not a lot of deep, long term thinking.