D&D Reader App Coming This Fall? [UPDATED]

Many people have been asking for official D&D PDFs, and WotC has been addressing the need for electronic reference materials at the table in various ways. According to Mashable, WotC is releasing a D&D Reader App this fall. It's not a PDF, but it's basically a D&D-specific Kindle-esque app for iOS and Android. Mashable reports that "Each book is broken up into different sections. So with, say, the Player's Handbook, you can tap on little thumbnails in your library to check out the introduction, a step-by-step guide to character creation, a rundown of races, individual sections for each character class, equipment, and all the other pieces that, together, form the D&D Player's Handbook."

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It's possible they are just referring to D&D Beyond (some of the details below correspond very closely with that), but it may be that a separate D&D Reader is in the pipeline.

UPDATE -- EN World member TDarien asked Adam Rosenburg (the author of the article) whether this was different to D&D Beyond, who replied "Yup. Beyond is more activity-oriented, so it can handle stuff like dice rolls. Reader is basically Kindle, with good, clear chapter divides."

UPDATE 2 -- EN World member kenmarable has spotted that Polygon also has an article about this. It is a separate app called D&D Reader - not D&D Beyond - being made by Dialect, the company which does Dragon+ for WotC. They tried a beta version, although it wasn't complete at the time.

Other items from the report include:

• You can favourite specific pages.
• Some of it is free, and the rparts of books are paywalled. "If, for example, you'll only ever care about rolling a bard, you can just buy that. Prices for individual sections are $3 or $5 (depending on what you buy) and the three full rulebooks — Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide — are $30 apiece for everything."
• If you buy parts of a book then buy the full thing, the cost is pro-rated.The free sections include "character creation, basic classes, gear, ability scores, combat, spellcasting, and all the other sort of ground-level features that everyone needs to understand in order to play."

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[Remathilis]

I think it is probably the continued fear (on the part of WotC/Hasbro) that pdfs will result in piracy and less sales of the current game. I don't give much credence to that view, but that is probably the reason (based on what happened with both 3e and 4e's pdf sales).

Don't use PDFs. Kindles don't. Google play books don't. PDF wasn't the only alternative to building a from scratch app.

It's a moot point, but I was just wondering what was wrong with using established ebook vendors, that's all.

 

[dave2008]

I did see that. I expect it will get batter over time.

Yum! I love batter!

 

[Rygar]

Does every product have to do something new? When you buy a car, does it have to fly? Does every paperback you buy have to do something new?

The book is offered in a variety of formats. You choose the one which suits you. They don’t all have to innovate!

Offering a choice of formats is a good thing. You get to choose the format.

I'm going to have to disagree with you again.

Offering a choice of formats when there's a reasonably significant market or a reasonably significant probability of growth is a good thing. Spending money to create products in a very stagnant market format, and then trying to load them up with micro-transactions (Which for a book isn't trivial or cheap), instead of spending money on actually growing your product is not a good thing. In fact, it's probably one of the biggest signals that you're watching a product line where the leaders have absolutely no idea what they're doing and product meetings consist of "Hey! My kids like watching things on their tablet and buying chests in video games, if we do that to D&D we'll make a mint!". While ignoring the fact that their pricing strategy is so ridiculous that even the small market this might have appealed to is sure to go out and pirate their books.

If there was any doubt that Dungeons and Dragons wasn't going to be led to irrelevance by incompetent leadership this *really* should've cleared that up. They literally just spent a ton of money making a product that has no market, never will, and 5 minutes on Reddit would've told them that.

 

[kenmarable]

I'm going to have to disagree with you again.

Offering a choice of formats when there's a reasonably significant market or a reasonably significant probability of growth is a good thing. Spending money to create products in a very stagnant market format, and then trying to load them up with micro-transactions (Which for a book isn't trivial or cheap), instead of spending money on actually growing your product is not a good thing. In fact, it's probably one of the biggest signals that you're watching a product line where the leaders have absolutely no idea what they're doing and product meetings consist of "Hey! My kids like watching things on their tablet and buying chests in video games, if we do that to D&D we'll make a mint!". While ignoring the fact that their pricing strategy is so ridiculous that even the small market this might have appealed to is sure to go out and pirate their books.

If there was any doubt that Dungeons and Dragons wasn't going to be led to irrelevance by incompetent leadership this *really* should've cleared that up. They literally just spent a ton of money making a product that has no market, never will, and 5 minutes on Reddit would've told them that.

You are relying on two premises which I’m pretty sure are false. One, from all descriptions of the Reader, I can’t see this costing “a ton of money” to build - and I say that from decades of experience building these sorts of things. D&D Beyond, Fantasy Grounds, Roll20 - those all took massive effort. A reader app even with a storefront, no not really. Two, you are assuming WitC is both funding this and is the driving force behind it. There has been zero evidence of that, and considering all of their various partnerships recently, I think that’s unlikely. Possible, but all evidence points towards not.

Without either one of those premises, your argument falls apart. Especially if you going to try to prove the conclusion that D&D is being “led to irrelevance by incompetent leadership“ when what data we have shows that the game is doing PHENOMENALLY well sales-wise, you can understand why we might need more convincing before we agree with you.

(And not to mention that Reddit is such a massively small portion of their market, I sure hope they don’t take that as the defining factor!!)

 

[Morrus]

The better question is "is such a hypothetical feature worth creating a whole new app and storefront for, vs the options already available?"

Again, I'm just curious why the need for a proprietary format when established ebook retailers are already a thing.

Because a stand-alone app somebody might find while browsing the Apple App Store is a gateway.

Not everybody is you. I don’t have the faintest clue about DDB, but I do use the iOS App Store. If I didn’t run a major D&D website, I imagine I’d be even *less* informed. I suspect there are many potential customers for this.

Apps are things. They’re not unusual. There is no possible reason I can think of to *not* offer the D&D books as an app. It’s a no-brained. Why on earth *wouldn’t* they?

 

[darjr]

Makes me wonder why there isn’t a drivethru books app?

 

[Remathilis]

Because a stand-alone app somebody might find while browsing the Apple App Store is a gateway.

Not everybody is you. I don’t have the faintest clue about DDB, but I do use the iOS App Store. If I didn’t run a major D&D website, I imagine I’d be even *less* informed. I suspect there are many potential customers for this.

Apps are things. They’re not unusual. There is no possible reason I can think of to *not* offer the D&D books as an app. It’s a no-brained. Why on earth *wouldn’t* they?

My issue is, based on what we know, its a bad deal to get your D&D content. I'm having a hard time understanding why people are adamant about spending $30 per book for the functionality $20 per book elsewhere can give you. People are defending their right to be charged more for the same content.

I just think that this app vs. the eventual D&D Beyond app (both slated for "this fall"), when they are compared side-by-side, one side is going to come up lacking. And its a shame. At $20 per book, I'd have invested in it as a "budget-friendly" choice to the more feature rich D&D Beyond or VTT versions. At $30 per book, the value simply isn't there to justify it.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm going to have to disagree with you again.

Offering a choice of formats when there's a reasonably significant market or a reasonably significant probability of growth is a good thing. Spending money to create products in a very stagnant market format, and then trying to load them up with micro-transactions (Which for a book isn't trivial or cheap), instead of spending money on actually growing your product is not a good thing.

Prove it's a "very stagnant market format". That seems to be you replacing objectivity with subjectivity.

If there was any doubt that Dungeons and Dragons wasn't going to be led to irrelevance by incompetent leadership this *really* should've cleared that up. They literally just spent a ton of money making a product that has no market, never will, and 5 minutes on Reddit would've told them that.

They spent zero. They spent no money at all. In fact, they ONLY make money on this . Someone else completely not part of their company is spending money on it.

One might even say, "If there was any doubt that discussion of this topic wasn't going to be led to irrelevance by incompetent posters, this *really* should've cleared that up." I kid. Seriously, I don't actually mean that sentence about you, I just thought it was funny. But really, this app is not being made by WOTC, and you should probably know that going into a discussion about it. It's just another licensed product, like many other licensed products out there.

 

[Satyrn]

My issue is, based on what we know, its a bad deal to get your D&D content. I'm having a hard time understanding why people are adamant about spending $30 per book for the functionality $20 per book elsewhere can give you. People are defending their right to be charged more for the same content.

I just think that this app vs. the eventual D&D Beyond app (both slated for "this fall"), when they are compared side-by-side, one side is going to come up lacking. And its a shame. At $20 per book, I'd have invested in it as a "budget-friendly" choice to the more feature rich D&D Beyond or VTT versions. At $30 per book, the value simply isn't there to justify it.

For my part, I rather doubt the accuracy of the prices mentioned. DDB, for example, waited almost right until release to give pricing details. And on top of that, Fantasy Grounds has adjusted their prices recently, haven't they?

I expect that what we've heard about the prices for this reader aren't going to be the final price.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*