Got D&D Insider; Don't need books

[Doc_Klueless]

Out of curiosity, if WotC decides to pull the plug when 5e comes out in a couple of years or so and you only purchased DDI access to 4e (not actual books), are you SOL, or do you have some sort of "backup" like a PDF?

eBay, Half-Price Book Stores, Trading forums like here on EN World, Amazon booksellers, the list goes on and on where to get OOP books. It's where and how I rebuilt my AD&D 1e collection.

Plus there's a chance that I'd like 5e and just move on to it.

I don't see 5e and the possible demise of 4e/DDI as a threat because of those two things. Well, that and I seldom get to play RPGs much and then it's spread between two or three games in those rare events.

I was just curious about how others felt and thought about this.

 

[Echohawk]

That last bit is a big one... that's all the monsters. There is no offline database of monsters currently, right?

The Monster Builder has all of the monsters, so you wouldn't lose access to those.

 

[jaerdaph]

eBay, Half-Price Book Stores, Trading forums like here on EN World, Amazon booksellers, the list goes on and on where to get OOP books. It's where and how I rebuilt my AD&D 1e collection.

Well, yeah, but I meant SOL in the sense of money spent, analogous to paying monthly rent on a house as opposed to paying a monthly mortgage.

 

[unan oranis]

I felt that the ddi scheme wasn't really worth a subscription...

until I tried it.

indispensable.

Now I buy books for fun, were it not for being a little cash strapped at the moment I'd have just as many as if I never used ddi.

But if I had to pick yeah I'd ditch the books. Still think you ought to have a couple of phb's handy and maybe a mm or dmg... but they're almost optional at this point.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I always had my PHB lying beside my computer during sessions... because i would need to reference it, now and then, would i? Since DDI, i think i never opened one of the books during a sessions, and i only open a book between sessions in order to inspire myself. That´s why books who talk about new ways to do gaming (DMG2) or location books are the only books i really need nowadays.

I thought DDI would be useful. It´s not. This is "how the hell did i manage to cope before????"

Don´t listen, Wotc, but... i would pay 55+ € a year just for compendium access. Yes, it is that awesome.

And DDI opens new vistas for gaming. In the 3 e era, i always thought about running an online game, and i always wondered how i would manage charsheets. The best solution seemed to create fillable .pdfs and upload them somewhere, like forex Google docs.

And now we have stuff like iplay4e, where you cannot only upload charbuilder files, you can sort them as a group and ROLL TESTS INSIDE THE BROWSER.

The future is now.

 

[outsider]

Yeah, at this point I only buy a couple books per year. Buying the books doesn't really feel necessary anymore, but A) having actual books is fun, and B) buying books gives consumers more influence over the content WotC puts out. Obviously if a book sells well, they'll consider making more like it. I wonder if they've got any kind of system in place to figure out what content is popular on DDI...

So, I'll keep buying Martial Power every year, because I like having them and want to encourage WotC to keep making them. Will probably keep buying the PHBs too, and maybe the AVs. For my Avenger though, I'll just pillage the compendium for his goodies rather than buying Divine Power X.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I spend significantly less money on D&D books than I did two years into 3e.

Apart from having the need for crunch being satisfied with DDI, books are so much more expensive here in Germany. The PHB, e.g., goes for 32$ if you order it at a low-price mail order shop. So for the same amount of info I'm saving big time.

I don't buy a lot of the other, less crunch-intensive books, because the time I enjoyed reading RPG books seem to be over.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Because DDI allows new players to get in to the game very easily. Because of the online content and specifically the Character Builder, people who are hesitant about getting in to D&D can learn a ton about it with very little effort.

I just do not see that as true. I remember a thread a ways back that said there were over 5,000 options on DDI at that time and it was a long time ago. The number is probably above 10,000 now.

Taht is a huge amount of information to absorb, even if you try to cut it down. And of course, if you try to cut down the initial stuff, then why do you need DDI over a paper book.

It also keeps people interested in the new content! By giving people monthly access to all of the new information in the previous month's books, people can easily keep up with what is new, which keeps them interested in the game.
.

You can do that by buying books too. Granted you will not get Dungeon and Dragon stuff, but there is a very slippery slope from keeping up and getting overloaded. People here tend to be more serious about D&D, so fewer of us would likely get overloaded, but a new players, or a more casual player? I think they would be overloaded quickly.

 

[avin]

This is why I think Monster Manuals should focus on fluff from now on: I got all my crunch from DDI.

I'll probably pass PHB3, MM3 is on preorder.

 

[Thanee]

They're probably making more out of the subscription model than they are on books per individual.

I would be extremely surprised, if that was the case.

Three books a year isn't a whole lot... that doesn't even cover the absolute basics (the standard rulebooks that pretty much everyone uses).

Also, I would be rather surprised if the number of DDI subscribers is higher than maybe 5~10% of the D&D players worldwide.

Bye
Thanee