In a realm between worlds lies the Temple of Beyond, an arena where adventurers from across the multiverse compete against one another for their chance at glory. Ravenous monsters, terrors, and the mysterious Master of Ceremonies stand in their way. But in the end, only one victor can claim the ultimate prize: the power to change one event from their tortured pasts.
Battle for Beyond is a six-part Dungeons & Dragons adventure played by a cast of tabletop RPG all-stars! You can catch all of the action exclusively on YouTube and represent your favorite characters with the Battle for Beyond Dice Set! Read below for more information!
How to watch Battle for Beyond
Battle for Beyond premiered on Friday, November 12, 2021, on our YouTube channel. The mini-series aired every Friday at 4 p.m. PST for six consecutive weeks. You can catch each episode below!
Battle for Beyond cast and characters
Jasmine Bhullar
Joining as your Dungeon Master is Jasmine Bhullar (@ThatBronzeGirl). You might recognize her from shows like Into the Mother Lands, Relics & Rarities, and Shikar.
Aabria Iyengar
The Summer of Aabria extends into the fall! You might know Aabria Iyengar (@quiddie) as the Dungeon Master for Critical Role: Exandria Unlimited or from her appearances on Dimension 20 and Into the Mother Lands. She plays Sestia in Battle for Beyond.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) is the creator and Dungeon Master for Dimension 20 and a cast member for CollegeHumor. He has taught and performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, co-created the webcomic Strong Female Protagonist, and written dozens of LARPs for the Wayfinder Experience summer camp in upstate New York. He recently started putting a little bit of cinnamon in his morning coffee, which he has described as a real game-changer. In Battle for Beyond, he plays Nikhil.
Josephine McAdam
Josephine McAdam (@JCVIM) is a Los Angeles-based actor that has appeared in over 20 independent films, including Emmy award-winning "Tower." They have also appeared in the HBO series “The Leftovers” and is a longtime D&D player! They appear in Battle for Beyond as Murdina.
Emma Fyffe
Emma Fyffe (@EmmaFyffe) is a gaming content producer at Fandom. She previously hosted The Download, a gaming news variety show on VENN TV, and served as a digital content producer for VENN's YouTube and TikTok. You might also recognize her as a former producer at Hyper RPG or from the liveplay series she appeared in, including Pencils and Parsecs and He Left it Dead.
Emma appears in Battle for Beyond as Lenore.
Erika Ishii
Erika Ishii (@erikaishii) is known for their voiceover work in games and animation. You might recognize them as Valkyrie in Apex Legends, Ana Bray and Kridis in Destiny 2, and as Lumu in the upcoming Halo Infinite. They have also performed with and produced for media outlets, including Critical Role, Geek & Sundry, Nerdist, and CollegeHumor. Erika plays Leila in Battle for Beyond.
Ify Nwadiwe
Comedian, actor, writer, and professional nerd Ify Nwadiwe (@IfyNwadiwe) joins us in the Battle for Beyond as Ekon! He has appeared on shows like Um, Actually, Dimension 20, and other RPG shows. He's written for TV, video games, and RPGs like Black Birds and Into The Mother Lands.
Collect the Battle for Beyond Dice Set
Celebrate our six storied heroes with the Battle for Beyond Dice Pack! Each set is inspired by a Battle for Beyond character and adds just the kind of flair your tenacious characters need to take down dragons and survive perilous dungeons! Check out the trailer below and pop into the marketplace to preview the dice.
Stay tuned!
Keep up with Battle for Beyond by following our social media channels and using #BattleForBeyond:
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Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.
An interesting premise. After it's live playthrough, which I hope to have time to enjoy, it would be great to see this released as an adventure available on here. Thank you everyone for continuing to keep the torch lit, and venturing out into the unknown!
For all the people saying: "it is just the marketing team not the Devs". Yes I know that. But as a customer I'm just stating how I'd like the money I pay this company to be used. I see a lot more news about new sales, celebrity campaigns or "helpful" articles and not very big steps in the tool department. Things like the campaign window for dice rolls or the containers are for sure neat, but seeing that there are still bugs around and many features not out of alpha or beta: use my money for the tools and not to invite some celebs that I really do not care about.
Other customers are now free to say what they want and the company can make a decision what they want to cater to. But as a consumer I have to voice my needs, if I want them to be adressed. If DnDB wants to sponsor more of these events and does not deliver on the tool side, it is just not the service I want to pay in the longer term.
Edit: Also consider this. While only paying customers get tools (which are staggering in developement) they produce content like this. But this content does not seem to be for paying customers, but instead for everybody. I joined around 2 years ago and since then (other than offical content being added to the tools already existing) there were not that many huge improvements for paying people.
If I could upvote this, I definitely would. 100$ how I feel.
Please focus on ensuring all products are fully integrated in the website and app.
The thing is: people are subbed here for tools and features, as the other stuff is basically free for all. And those complaints would also probably not be voiced if the state of the features were overall great. But there are still things in alpha/beta, there is a huge wishlist and rules that are not yet implemented.
The idea that people voicing these concerns are not letting others enjoy the things like this is pretty weird also. This show will go on for sure. I doubt that our comments will stop it. But maybe it leads to the DnDB team reevaluating their priorities. If not some paying customers could be tempted to look elsewhere for the needed features. The competition is certainly not sleeping. But I *like* DnDB and also have invested interest that it stays a great service. And this means using my voice and if needed wallet to indicate how I think this will be accomplished.
Folks, a company like D&D Beyond is most certainly not one dimensional: they have every ability to address multiple aspects of their business operations at the same time because they have teams lead by team leaders/managers/directors (call them whatever you want) who all have their particular areas of focus. We have no idea what the revenue sharing arrangement looks like between WotC (the real content creators and rights' holders of all trademarks and copyrighted materials of everything D&D) and DDB. One would imagine that the creative forces behind the decision making at DDB are actively working on selling features that can increase their revenues in areas where their creativity can bring in a higher share of profits (e.g. selling virtual dice, increasing sales of subscriptions to their services, not just sales of electronic format books), as these items will likely bring in a greater share of revenue.
Remember that Wizard's of the Coast is constantly working on creating new content. DDB's has taken the role of implementing the content into their digital tools after WotC publishes their content. It is far easier to creatively design new ideas using your imaginations that it is to take the fruit of those vivid imaginations (the actual books) and turn it into a working toolset in the form of an integrated software tool which is constantly being tweaked and expanded.
Now, IMO this does not excuse the poor job that DDB does in communicating to their active base of subscribers - this certainly needs to be improved significantly. DDB has no control over the content and rule changes that WotC plan to release, but they have all of the responsibility to somehow implement every change, many of which have cascading effects on how the game mechanics work, which seriously impacts their development timeframes. DDB created something that the folks at WotC never bothered to spend serious time or money in creating: a set of digital tools which makes playing D&D much easier for players and DMs. The creative minds at DDB are the pioneers of this service! Could it be better? Certainly, but let's not forget that developments such as interactive, digital character sheets and the ability for DMs to create and share homebrew creations throughout the entire userbase has transformed the way that many people play TTRPGs. Designing characters of any level takes mere minutes! How much damage does that spell do? Click on it and find out.
Really, DDB (IMO) needs to do a better job of bring more transparent to their paying customers, while acknowledging the more popular trends showing up on discussion boards and being more communicative to their paying customer base. (Not that they can ignore the "free" users, because the next set of DDB paying customers are going to be those kids and young adults who presently can't afford the subscription now, but they will be able to do so later on down the road.
Oh man, I'm glad I'm not the only one that has mixed feelings about watching DnD. On one hand I love watching the beautiful passion and acting that professional actors put into their characters and their gameplay, and I learn a lot from it. On the other, hand it's so weird from having DnD be this nerd-thing my friends did secretly in someone's basement to the hugely popular thing it is today, and it can turn what used to be relaxing fun into some kind of a stressful performance complex. I don't think that's the professional player's fault, of course-- it's more like the way the game is transformed when it shifts from being a niche thing into large-scale capitalism. It makes me think of Debord's work on spectacle, and it's like in 2020s our lives are spectacles on steroids due to social media commodification, and it kind of dehumanizes our own experiences as we become alienated from our own humanity as we become commodity-obsessed objects shaped by a singular spectacle. (I say this as I'm literally watching and fully enjoying DnD streamers at this exact moment--it's like I enjoy it and it hurts at the same time-- I enjoy and support the media but there's something dehumanizing about becoming a "fan"). So hearing some of the anti-spectacle sentiment here makes me feel a little less alone, even tho NGL I'm a full on consumer of this particular spectacle.
Anyway, I think DnDBeyond has a really solid product, which I really love and I'm grateful for, and honestly I think they're doing a great job, for my needs anyway. I tried to do everything on paper again about a month ago and... well, I can't tell you how glad I am to have DnDbeyond. I'm gonna watch and enjoy the show too, in part b/c Erika Ishii is just so crazy impressive at whatever role she plays :)
I like that they produce content even if I don't watch most of it. But I also spent a lot of money on this platform, and I too wonder how can development be this slow.
But that's the problem. They currently are not doing this. As a customer I measure a company by their output of useful things I get for my money. The output on the "fluff" side of things, like guides, trivia and promotions is overwhelming on this site. The output on the toolset not so much. And while I see that many people will have fun watching a show like that, I and others value the toolset more. And the last news I found that has anything to do with tools or features for the paying customer (that has utility and is not just the next iteration of dice or portrait frames) is the new App. And that news is from April. (I may have overlooked something, tbf)
It is clear that DnDB is focussing on minimal customization options like dice, and portrait frames and a metric tonne of promotion for every new book and the features are pretty much left behind. It may be that DnDB is now in the cashcow phase of its lifecycle, which would be sad. I will keep advocating for a positive change for the people who like the tools more than the spectacle. I just want to play DnD with my friends, I don't need to watch others doing it. And I certainly would prefer that my money is used in a way that has value to me.
The tools are there, why shouldn't they be able to continue maintaining them AND add some advertising through streamed games ?
100% agree. This isn't anything new for the site, if all the money went into tools but they never increased the number of people using those tools, they'd be in pretty bad shape. This looks fun and doesn't detract from anything this site has to offer.
I very much want to do this
When do the All Stars show up?
The marketing department has a budget. They use that budget to get more people to use the tools on the site, buy books, and make sure people are generally aware of what this site is and what they do. More people using the tools means more money which means more features and faster dev times.
This series comes from their budget. The Dev team didn't have any money taken away from them to continue the road map that they're currently working on.
Think about it for 2 seconds. Do you think DDB is using this miniseries to just...what, be entertaining? 10,000 bucks says every player and the dm will be using DDB apps and features. This is a showcase of the suite of tools they have developed, so that more people come and subscribe for 2022 so they can increase the dev budget by an exponential amount more than what marketing spent on this series (and other efforts).
That's how marketing and sales work.
They literally do a show on YouTube every single week discussing the road map and doing an audience qna with the dev team on what's next, how its being implemented, how complex the implementation is, and any hurdles they're currently working on. I don't know how you get more transparency than that.
Free websites do a better job of producing everything needed for a game. I come here for the articles only these days. I don't believe it's that hard to make the tools used here, and DDB should (being affiliated with WotC) be able to have all new content readily searchable or usable when a new book comes out. There's a huge userbase that spends hundreds and hundreds of dollars and can't even use some of their content effectively from what I've heard. A change of staff did nothing to fix the overall site but I'll still come to read the random articles because the writers are competent.
It takes funds to keep a site going for very long.
You get what you pay for.
Sometimes, other people paying for different offered services, help supply the funds to let the site offer some free services.
If the site shuts down for lack of funds, nobody gets "any" services.
It’s been over a year the combat tracker has been in beta. At some point it feels like resources are being misused. I get that they pivoted and are develop different stuff now but Jesus, they’re a business, not a charity.
And hell, life Celric bonus healing was a recent addition. Just an example of something that took YEARS to implement.
The show referred to above will also keep you in the loop for the tracker coming out of beta- that said, if we need to be doing more to keep folks on the same page, I want to hear it! What would work better for you?
I'm willing to bet that WotC takes the lion's share of the revenues from sales of all of the sourcebooks, and probably at least a modest slice out of the subscriptions sold. When you look at the cost for subscriptions (< $60/year or about $5/month for the highest subscription tier), that's pretty inexpensive entertainment for making access to playing a very popular game considerably easier for players and DMs. Also remember that WotC keeps pushing out new books at the rate of somewhere around 4 -5 books each year. That means that DDB is continuously adding new content to their tools without passing that continuously ongoing expense in the form of rate hikes for subscriptions.
If DDB were to invest in a larger developer team, that would surely have to come at the cost of increased subscription and sourcebook fees. How much more are you willing to pay? That is the balance that they have to work out for everyone.