Seriously thinking of just moving to Pathfinder 2e. There are things I'd miss, but this "buy it on dndbeyond, buy it on roll20, and (because each platform is sort of mini-monopoly), there is no buying used or at huge discounts" is just wearing me out.

I don't mind paying once at full price, but once is it. The dndbeyond license needs to be designed so that other systems can use that content.

I don't expect Wizards to do this. Wizards showed earlier this year how rapacious they are. I'm expecting I'll need to just abandon the platform, even though I like the ddbeyond character sheet implementation. (Mostly. It has some bugs, but they are comparatively small.) And I'm definitely not interested in getting trapping in a WotC walled garden...

This is no different from videogames, books, or movies. Getting a physical copy does not mean you get a digital copy for free, and vice vice versa, unless it was explicitly advertised as such.

Does Pathfinder offer free content on one of those platforms (or equivalent) if you buy it on another? Or at least at a a discount?

I'm hardly one to defend WotC, but it seems rather standard fare. To my understanding, buying something in Roll20 and therefore getting it for free on another platform is akin to buying Civ 6 on Epic and expecting it on Steam for free. Perhaps I'm wrong, and maybe I'm missing a trick here.

Beyond20 extension for chrome helps with character sheets rolling etc on Roll20. I’ve used it for running my character as well as rolling from monster stat blocks on DDB. Not sure if it do everything you need but I haven’t bought anything on Roll20, though I’m on the player side. Not sure if DMs have issues

I don't want to dm splain but they are separate businesses.

It is like buying a car from the Ford dealer in town and expecting the Chevy dealer to give you free oil changes for buying a car

If you want to use Roll20 they need to make money as well for their product

Or as per the quote in my signature, it's like buying a Playstation disk and expecting Microsoft to give you a free digital Xbox version.

That comparison stopped being quite so accurate last year after WotC bought DDB.

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

That comparison stopped being quite so accurate last year after WotC bought DDB.

 But it *is* still accurate, because it's *still* a different store front and different formats.

Quote from XXXGammaRay >>

This is no different from videogames, books, or movies. Getting a physical copy does not mean you get a digital copy for free, and vice vice versa, unless it was explicitly advertised as such.

 Yeah but they can’t take back my physical copy.  They can and will cease the digital license.

I bought records on vinyl.  If I wanted to listen on my Sony Walk Man, I bought a cassette tape.  I then got rid of my vinyl and bought the same records on CD.  Then cars stopped adding CD players, so I bought the same song on iTunes.  At no point did I feel cheated.  I paid for the convenience, just like when I bought the DDB PHB after buying the physical copy.  Hobbies aren’t cheap!

Not free content, but pathfinder does discount if you buy on more than one platform.  I know the closest analogy I can give is the demiplane pathfinder nexus.  If you buy a book from them, you get the paizo pdf for free and a discount off of buying the content on another vtt (at the very least I know you do for foundry, because that's what I use).  They seem to go down the route of you pay for the content everywhere, but you only pay the licensing once.  

I hope there are enough mature people to demand real customer service from WotC… I was just considering doing some D&D again after many years of absence, I bought a physical 5e Players Handbook and then I discover all this ballyhoo about the digital game. It used to be a pretty accessible hobby, just buy the books and find people to play with, but it looks like playing online isn’t as simple as I had hoped. 

Quote from Bodhitre >>

I hope there are enough mature people to demand real customer service from WotC… I was just considering doing some D&D again after many years of absence, I bought a physical 5e Players Handbook and then I discover all this ballyhoo about the digital game. It used to be a pretty accessible hobby, just buy the books and find people to play with, but it looks like playing online isn’t as simple as I had hoped. 

D&D is a free hobby. People do not need to buy anything to get into D&D, and they need to stop acting like they need to spend money to get into any hobby for that matter. BR/SRD and EEPC are free. UA is literally the free version of the published stuff; balance is not great because it is playtest material, but people cannot be choosy if they want free (and honestly, half the fun of UA is because it is unbalanced and wacky). If people are tight on money and are complaining about the price of convenience of having both physical and digital books, they probably should not spend that money in the first place.

And people should really do their research before spending money. If having digital content available for free is really that important, Pathfinder provides that for free.

I hope people realize what they pay for is what they get. I know Beyond's customer service is not what it used to be after the founders left, but just demanding better customer service and not willing to pay for it does not help. Expecting businesses and employees to provide stellar customer service due to their passion and enthusiasm without paying a premium is not realistic: this is the equivalent of your boss expecting you to smile while you work unpaid overtime. There are people who love their business and job, and they definitely go above and beyond in customer service or work overtime with a smile, but most people are not like that.

Quote from GodwinXZ >>

Quote from XXXGammaRay >>

This is no different from videogames, books, or movies. Getting a physical copy does not mean you get a digital copy for free, and vice vice versa, unless it was explicitly advertised as such.

 Yeah but they can’t take back my physical copy.  They can and will cease the digital license.

Just save the webpage for offline use. It is going to take a while, but it certainly is faster, cheaper, and beats copying and printing the physical books for your own private use.

As for the digital tools, yeah, there is nothing we can do about that part. The best we can do is to try to recreate the character sheets and databases using Google Sheets. 

Our group gives the DM a percentage of the new materials cost.

That way we all get the digital copy in his campaigns and our individual cost is small.

In 5 years I have only bought the 5E 3 core books. PH,DMG and MM. And that was only because I wanted too. I have also been updating my ADD1E collection at the same time.

Anyone want a few 2nd edition books? Cheap.

Pathfinder basically has all the rules, etc. online. It's not as elegant as the DND Beyond character creator, but it makes it fairly easy to upgrade my character level by level. There is also an app, but IIRC, it only runs on phones... you can get it to run on windows by providing a VM, but it's a hassle. I used it for a bit, but then decided I didn't really need it.

If WotC had all their rules online and accessible (which, of course, they don't -- it would destroy the value of some of their products), it would be more similar.

Quote from XXXGammaRay >>

This is no different from videogames, books, or movies. Getting a physical copy does not mean you get a digital copy for free, and vice vice versa, unless it was explicitly advertised as such.

 I didn't say it was fraud, I said I was done with it. It's just too expensive for the real value of most of that stuff. (To me.)

There are ways I think D&D 5 is better than Pathfinder 2, but they're fairly minor. And there are other, newer systems competing as well.

No kidding, who'd have guessed? <eyeroll> My point, which I made in the initial post, is that they need to license their products in a way that others can "plug in" (use an API), rather than relicensing the same content over and over.

They won't, they like selling the same products over and over. Whatever. Done.

I’d honestly recommend just skipping on Roll20.  It’s fine as a free VTT but it works best when you spend NO money, including paying for their books.  If you’re still cordial with D&D Beyond, there are plenty of VTT’s with plugins that allow you to better incorporate DDB with them.  Full admission you’ll get the most out of some of these other options by paying but at least you aren’t getting the same crap multiple times.  Ask anyone here and most should be able to assist with I’m finding the right VTT and map maker that is best for you.

I'll be frank here. Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop pencil-and-paper roleplaying game. That's what you bought when you bought the book.

If you want more, you have to buy more. Expecting it because you bought the proper way to play it is textbook entitled behaviour.