WotC WotC Adds 'Partnered Content' to DnDBeyond--Starting With Critical Role's Tal’dorei Campaign Setting

One of the promises Wizards of the Coast made in the aftermath of the Open Gaming License 'crisis' back in January was that D&D Beyond would eventually have some kind of third party marketplace. Up until now, only official D&D books from WotC have been available there.

Now, however, there is a section of 'partnered content' -- six titles, including three Critical Role sourcebooks, as well as some older licensed items like the Rick & Morty boxed set and the Minecraft monster tie-in. The latter were already on DDB, but the 'Partnered Content' home for them is new, as is the Tal-'dorei Campaign Setting.

As of now you can pick up Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, Call of the Netherdeep, and the Tal'dorei Campaign Setting Reborn.

Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn

The definitive sourcebook for bringing the locations, people, creatures, and character options of Critical Role’s Tal’Dorei continent to ...

www.dndbeyond.com

​

While this 'partnered content' is a long way yet from the third-party marketplace mentioned earlier this year (which is likely a a couple of years away), it is notable that third party content is now appearing on the site.

 

[Remathilis]

Not that into Crit Role campaign; here's hoping some of the awesome supplements from Kobold Press get added at some point

It's going to be a question I think of how much 3pp want to still play ball with WotC after the ogl debacle and how many are going to stick with their homebrew systems in the aftermath. KP might give some old stuff to them, but I can't imagine TotV era stuff will be.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Bit misleading for them to characterize those all as "partnered content", when all but one of the products are official WotC releases. Smacks of PR exercise to make D&D look more open than it actually is.

Taldorei is definitely a very safe place to start adding actual 3PP content, and it's fascinating that the Beyond team found the time to add a full sourcebook of 3PP content but still haven't made good on actual promises they made re: official WotC products released in 2020 and 2021. Maybe they gave access to people working for CR? They're probably a lot faster and more motivated than Beyond's own people.

A good start, let's not hope it's one of Beyond's very many promising one-offs.

 

[Clint_L]

Is the content well inegrated? I.e. does it all work with the character builder, and does it mix'n'match with options from other sources?

Yes, it is integrated with the character builder - you can use the TR sub-classes at level 3, for example. However, when choosing a race it uses the standard D&D names rather than the non-WotC ones that TR sometimes uses for copyright reasons. For example, you won't find "half-giant" listed under races, which is what TR calls goliaths. They are functionally identical, though. Because TR was published under the OGL, there are no WotC exclusive terms in it.

As I posted above, it seems to be integrated exactly like a WotC sourcebook, including the character builder.

Note about the term "partnered content": WotC seems to be using this term in different contexts, leading to some confusion. For example, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is "partnered content" in a very specific sense: WotC actively partnered with Critical Role to produce it, so it was published by WotC and fully integrated into DDB upon release. Tal'Dorei Reborn is "partnered content" that was written and published by Critical Role through their Darrington Press, based on an early publication with Green Ronin Press, completely independently of WotC and just using the OGL. It had been in print for more than a year before being added to DDB.

Both are called "partnered content" and sold as such on DDB, but when you list sourcebooks only TR is flagged as having a different publisher. So this is definitely confusing.

I think the key takeaway is that TR has been given the "royal treatment" on DDB in the sense that it is fully integrated and, once purchased and toggled on, appears just like any other book that you own, aside from a small subtitle indicating "Darrington Press." This treatment would be crucial to the viability of future 3PP texts being added to DDB, and I expect that a lot of 3PP have to be actively exploring that possibility.

Edit: I love being able to toggle features on and off while using DDB. It occurs to me that this makes it much easier for WotC to allow 3PP onto DDB, since WotC doesn't have to worry that much about balance: users can make that decision for themselves by using the toggle.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wonder about the cost structures here. Did Critical Role pay for the development costs of implementing the materials into the builder? If so, what if DNDBeyond struggles to implement a feature of a subclass into the character builder, like the infamous delays in some of th warlock and cleric features that have never manifested?

My guess is that they may have opened up the internal building software to CR, and then CR had their people do it. The only stuff you can't do with the publicly available stuff is "make it official" as it were - I could put in subclasses, feats, backgrounds, magic items and creatures right now - and share them - they just wouldn't be "official" or linked to a sourcebook - so that's probably literally all Beyond did. Stamp "Official" on it and link it back to the actual sourcebook.

Beyond's own people have been bizarrely slow and incompetent since 2019 (before that they were pretty good, or at least on a steady curve of improvement - after then the opposite has been true), so I am disinclined to believe CR just gave them the book and said "Please implement this".

EDIT - I see Jay is claiming the Beyond team did do this, but excuse my cynicism, I am quite skeptical about that, given how poor the Beyond team has been in the last few years. Maybe they decided this was actually worth their precious time for once (and oh my god have the moaned and moaned and whinged and moaned about how they don't have "time" to fix stuff they promised to fix years ago).

 

[Nikosandros]

Bit misleading for them to characterize those all as "partnered content", when all but one of the products are official WotC releases. Smacks of PR exercise to make D&D look more open than it actually is.

Taldorei is definitely a very safe place to start adding actual 3PP content, and it's fascinating that the Beyond team found the time to add a full sourcebook of 3PP content but still haven't made good on actual promises they made re: official WotC products released in 2020 and 2021. Maybe they gave access to people working for CR? They're probably a lot faster and more motivated than Beyond's own people.

A good start, let's not hope it's one of Beyond's very many promising one-offs.

Heh... since the acquisition by WotC, it seems that all development on new features has stopped, at least visibly. Also, I think that most, if not all, of the technical people who were in charge have left.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, now this is interesting. Let's see if Kobold Press can get in there. Let's see the Goodman Games' Original Adventures Reincarnated books made available this way (they're produced under license anyway). Let's see the DMs Guild stuff in here.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

it's fascinating that the Beyond team found the time to add a full sourcebook of 3PP content but still haven't made good on actual promises they made re: official WotC products released in 2020 and 2021.

"Sidekick classes are meant to be player class choices! (wink, wink)"

 

[darjr]

Well remember they had a vtt that got scrapped. They were working in third party inclusion that seemed to have been interrupted. And they did have some institutional knowledge leave the company during several transitions.

And then they are probably working hard in integrating with wotcs internal vtt now.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This is awesome. I'd like to see some of the top-rated DMs Guild stuff. @Nixlord's Monster books would make my day! (Even if I had to buy them again).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Heh... since the acquisition by WotC, it seems that all development on new features has stopped, at least visibly. Also, I think that most, if not all, of the technical people who were in charge have left.

They seem to have lost a bunch of people a couple of times, when they were acquired by the people who sold it to WotC (Fandom? I forget) and then again when WotC acquired them. Given that in 2019 they were incredibly specific that the new approach to the data they were using would let them add, and I quote "any system" to D&D (their words not mine), I guess maybe at some point in-between those two (2018 and 2022) they lost more expertise, maybe they just don't know how to add new systems anymore? But it's pretty outrageous because they explicitly said in 2020 that Theros' piety and divine gifts would be possible to add when the new approach went in, then confirmed the new approach was in before Tasha's.