D&D 5E D&D Beyond: No More À La Carte Purchases But US Customers Can Buy Physical Books

WotC has announced some changes to D&D Beyond's marketplace. These include physical products (for US customers), the removal of à la carte purchases, and various navigational changes.

You can no longer buy individual feats, subclasses, etc. -- you'll need to buy the whole book. The full list of changes includes:

• US shoppers can now buy physical books
• More info on product listings, including previews
• UI improvements to makee finding your purchased content and redeeming keys easier
• No more à la carte purchases (though your previous ones still count)

 

[DarkCrisis]

For those who use DDB, how easy is it to use on a cellphone? To like run an adventure? Probably a bad idea, right? I suppose I would need some kind of tablet? ...something cheap

 

[mamba]

$70 for the bundle $90 separately ($60 book, $30 digital).

or $65 if you buy digital from DDB and book from Amazon It’s really only cheaper compared to the individual items on DDB

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You're not, but you are (apparently) making an argument that WotC is in the wrong for not providing a la carte material, and I am curious why only WotC is held to this standard?

And I'm curious why you're being so belligerent about this.

If anyone else offered this functionality and took it away, I'd be disappointed, too. iTunes is full of reviews from me back in the day, before most music labels figured this out, asking why so many of their songs were "album only" purchases. Today, such tracks are a rarity.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For those who use DDB, how easy is it to use on a cellphone? To like run an adventure? Probably a bad idea, right? I suppose I would need some kind of tablet? ...something cheap

It depends on how big your phone screen is. It'd be a lot of paging through the book for how most of their content is laid out.

It's certainly nowhere good of an experience as being able to get a title as a PDF and printing it out or using that on a tablet.

Nowadays, everyone I know just uses the DDB app to manage their characters or to look up rules. Doing lots of reading or running full content, no.

 

[J.Quondam]

Huh. My DDB account seems to have gone missing/unrecoverable. No big loss, as it was just a free account with no purchases. But it was nice to search basic rules for and access the occasional freebie adventure.
Oh well.

 

[Reynard]

And I'm curious why you're being so belligerent about this.

If anyone else offered this functionality and took it away, I'd be disappointed, too. iTunes is full of reviews from me back in the day, before most music labels figured this out, asking why so many of their songs were "album only" purchases. Today, such tracks are a rarity.

Wait, did they remove people's purchased a la carte content? Because that is something that people should be angry about.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

I love the optimism here. I think it’s also worth noting that Wotc runs MTG and online MTG which are both pay to win games. That doesn’t mean that model will carry over to d&d but it is something the company does with other products.

But D&D isn't a competitive game. It is a collaborative storytelling game and not every player even needs to buy things. I am having the hardest time with this fear of Pay to Win in D&D. Everything is optional. Even the revised Core books. People only ever have to buy what they want.

MTG decks require specific cards to be owned and used. It's not a good comparison. The random D&D Miniatures Game boosters are also not technically for the TTRPG.

The closest thing Wizards got to that for RPGs was when Wizards tried their hand at selling "boosters" of the Gamma World RPG game cards, where the only way to get certain powers was randomly from the boosters. I think they learned their lesson there. Some people don't even know that existed.

Now I also doubt they will randomize "loot boxes" of items in their future Digital efforts, but they are more likely to keep with Subscription models that could potentially grant cosmetics that would otherwise cost more if bought on their own. I can see how some people hate subscription models. I can also see how some people love them (look how many people buy seasonal battle passes and similar things because they find them valuable).

Any kind of sales model will have fans and detractors. People spend differently. That is the nature of the market, and companies are always trying to find the best way to get that money. My recommendation? Make it high quality and fun, but make it optional, not necessary. A mimic dice bag isn't necessary. But there are people who like them.

 

[TwoSix]

You're not, but you are (apparently) making an argument that WotC is in the wrong for not providing a la carte material, and I am curious why only WotC is held to this standard?

What other company owns their own digital marketplace, with a built-in electronic character builder as the main feature, for which a la carte purchases would actually be useful?

If any other company offered that, and then withdrew it, I think we would see complaints tendered about that also.

 

[Insanity403]

forgot to click reply, see below

 

[Insanity403]

It's a digital product add-on purchased with a small transaction rather than the full package. Like a single subclass from an expansion book as an add-on to your core book game, digitally delivered, for less than the entire book or game. That's what microtransactions mean.



Yes. The product was the D&D core game. The add-on is a sublcass from an expansion book, digitally delivered.

You're ignoring the core bit about how it is a part of another product that you are purchasing individually instead of the full product. I don't understand this take; nobody has this line of thinking when ordering a la carte anywhere else. Why is it so prevalent in this instance? Nobody says I'd like a side of a single chicken tender; they ask for a chicken tender a la carte. They even labeled it as a la carte purchases officially. It being called a microtransaction has always been a people thing; mostly from those that seem to think if you buy them it ends up being more than just paying for the full book or those that compare it to what microtransactions are today in gaming.

Like I said; I understand that at it's core it is a micro transaction, but I still feel its disingenuous to label it as a microtransaction. Context matters and an a la carte purchase does not come to mind when people discuss microtransactions or are ever mentioned. It has become a negative word socially to entail an additional product you pay for on top of a base that are generally predatory or cosmetic.

To use the video game analogy if the SRD is the base game and the books are DLCs/Expansions then buying part of the DLC wouldn't be a microtransaction; it'd just be called buying part of the DLC. The dice however would be labeled as a microtransactions for instance.

Calling it a microtransaction rather than a la carte has led to so much needless discourse online about people misunderstanding what it actually is and has led to people lumping it in to asking for it be removed because "microtransaction bad".