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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[Shasarak]

"Hey Jake, a bunch of people who have never seen our product and aren't sure what it does are preemptively raging against us, because reasons."

"Thank goodness they care, Fred. Without them, what would we do?"

If Jake can not manage the fake news then maybe he should hire a Russian firm that can.

 

[darjr]

You can. My daughter does it every day, with an old phone that has no connectivity. She still uses the old apps I downloaded on it years ago. I also moved those apps to a new android device a couple times as well. I see no reason to think an app is more or less ephemeral than a PDF. It seems very much like a "angels dancing on the head of a pin" type theoretical argument. For practical purposes, I am not seeing this great divide you're talking about between the longevity of an app and a PDF for the purposes we're talking about.



So why passionately argue about something you don't care about?

This has been explained to you over and over. The pdf format is well known, well documented, and there are several open source implementations from trivial toy programs designed to teach folks how to use pdf to the gnu pdf processing suite. Compared to a proprietary app with code locked up behind a corporate firewall it’s obvious why pdf has staying power where any apps or websites might not.

 

[darjr]

"Hey Jake, a bunch of people who have never seen our product and aren't sure what it does are preemptively raging against us, because reasons."

"Thank goodness they care, Fred. Without them, what would we do?"

Hey look it’s somebody on the net waisting thier time showing us how much better they are than us time waisters. How diabolical!

 

[CapnZapp]

Digital is ephemeral. I don't even understand this idea that PDFs are "forever". I've lost countless PDFs and expect to lose countless more before I die. And for sure my kid won't inherent my PDF "collection". Whatever is left of them at the end of my life will die with me. Only my physical books are likely to last a long time. So what is this "PDFs will last FOREVER!" stuff about? PDFs are only roughly 20 years old as a technology anyway. If I really care about having stuff long term, I buy a hard copy.

By the way I still have some apps I bought using my Palm Treo from 2002. Including reader apps with content. The device continues to fire up and be usable for those apps just fine. I am not even sure the premise that apps are more subject to loss than PDFs is a valid one. You call it a "service" but I am guessing this is as much downloaded content that stays in your app and device indefinitely as much as a PDF would.

No, now you're just rambling on. This is wrong. (Not the parts where you lose your stuff, maybe, but that's highly irrelevant as an argument)

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[kenmarable]

"Hey Jake, a bunch of people who have never seen our product and aren't sure what it does are preemptively raging against us, because reasons."

"Thank goodness they care, Fred. Without them, what would we do?"

Umm... multiple news reports released simultaneously with direct hands-on experience.... you do realize that “Fred and Jake”* are the ones who actually made this into a story, right? They choose this time and this method to let the public know about their product, so it’d be kinda weird if right after going to the press, they wound up not wanting anyone to actually talk about it. I mean that’s sort of the entire point of press releases, isn’t it?


* As an aside, considering how unclear and subdued the press coverage was, my money is that it was Dialect rather than WotC. WotC has been pretty clear in managing their announcements and media coverage, whereas Dialect looks like a small shop still learning the ropes.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Mistwell]

This has been explained to you over and over.

Smug doesn't sell well.

The pdf format is well known, well documented, and there are several open source implementations from trivial toy programs designed to teach folks how to use pdf to the gnu pdf processing suite. Compared to a proprietary app with code locked up behind a corporate firewall it’s obvious why pdf has staying power where any apps or websites might not.

Apps have staying power as well. You seem to have confused the concept of an app with the concept of a website. A website, and a database controlled in the cloud, can be shut down at whim. An app however is as "hard a copy" as a PDF most of the time, and there is no reason to believe it will mysteriously be remotely removed from your devise or locked along with all of it's content some day without your permission. You keep asserting that apps are somehow routinely removed remotely or locked or otherwise disabled, but reality doesn't support this view. It's supported with websites, but not with apps you buy. As I just mentioned, my daughter routinely uses apps I paid for years ago on a device that has no connectivity. It's much more akin to software you purchase on a disc than it is to a website.

Now if you know of some study or review or well thought of analysis from a reputable source that shows that apps over the long term are very ephemeral and are routinely disabled over time, I'd like to see it. Beyond that, you simply continuing to assert that PDFs are forever but apps are not isn't compelling. Apps are almost as old as PDFs, and apps have a long history of remaining and functioning even after the company that made them has long gone out of business most of the time - particularly the content type apps like this one. But I am open to persuasion - let's see your source on how content-viewing apps are nefariously or otherwise disabled by their publishers on a routine basis over time.

My guess is this reaction you represent is a combination of "change is unknown and therefore bad" and "I can do unintended and disallowed things with PDFs that I might not be able to do with an app". But I could be wrong, because as I said that's purely a guess on my part and I don't want to attribute false motives. But, using a content reading app instead of a PDF is surely a change from the "industry standard" which I suspect in itself is considered a bad purely because it is unfamiliar, and I also suspect the familiarity of PDFs has led to a number of PDF-manipulating applications which allow one to do things with the content in a PDF which is otherwise not allowed by the license connected to the sale of that PDF, and those things might not be as possible with an app. So, that's the reason for my suspicions.

 

[darjr]

PDF apps have all the strengths you mention PLUS PDFs are an understood format with available source code. And yes many apps are backed by online websites. This very app is being written by a company that did dragon+ that is basically a front end app to a web site. And yes apps are pulled all the time. Some even out from the very place they are installed. I’m not the one who needs a reality check.

 

[darjr]

Smug..... My guess is this reaction you represent is a combination of "change is unknown and therefore bad" and "I can do unintended and disallowed things with PDFs that I might not be able to do with an app". But I could be wrong, because as I said that's purely a guess on my part and I don't want to attribute false motives. But, using a content reading app instead of a PDF is surely a change from the "industry standard" which I suspect in itself is considered a bad purely because it is unfamiliar, and I also suspect the familiarity of PDFs has led to a number of PDF-manipulating applications which allow one to do things with the content in a PDF which is otherwise not allowed by the license connected to the sale of that PDF, and those things might not be as possible with an app. So, that's the reason for my suspicions.

I wish you would stop trying to malign folks with nefarious and illegal intent just to win an argument. What’s wrong with you man?

 

[Mistwell]

No, now you're just rambling on. This is wrong. (Not the parts where you lose your stuff, maybe, but that's highly irrelevant as an argument)

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

What is wrong about it? Or are we all just supposed to take your word for it, that you have some insider knowledge we are not all privy to, or have some deep level of expertise in this field which us plebs are too inexperienced to appreciate? Please do regale us with your wisdom, oh Captain Zapp posting drive-by quips from his C6603.