D&D 5E WTF Wizards of the Coast? *RANT* (video link)

[Shasarak]

I skimmed my way through the video rant.

It actually does a pretty good review of pointing out the prior failures of D&D's digital tools. But somehow the OP manages not to connect the fact that WotC has had several expensive and frustrating digital failures with their reluctance to do it themselves, repeatedly calling it "easy" and saying it is wasted revenue since the fans have "dollars in hands".

It's not easy. Good software is slow and expensive. And, as painfully shown by 4e, if you DO have digital tools that do it all, people might stop buying the books since the tools do it all.

I think it would be a stretch to blame people not buying 4e books with the character builder, which was a damn good tool showing that, at least once, WotC can produce something decent.

 

[Jester David]

I think it would be a stretch to blame people not buying 4e books with the character builder, which was a damn good tool showing that, at least once, WotC can produce something decent.

The downloadable one almost certainly cost sales. Because why buy any of the books when you could pay a $10 fee once every 6 months and get everything? That's why they went with the subscription based online one, which did the job but was never as good or feature complete as the downloadble one.

 

[Shasarak]

The downloadable one almost certainly cost sales. Because why buy any of the books when you could pay a $10 fee once every 6 months and get everything? That's why they went with the subscription based online one, which did the job but was never as good or feature complete as the downloadble one.

It almost certainly did not cost as many sales as the actual rule set itself.

I mean look at Paizo. They can give away their whole ruleset for free and yet still manage to sell their book. People are always willing to pay for quality.

 

[MrHotter]

I took a look at the Hero Forge update that includes the 5E SRD stuff. I did not buy it (it's $30), so maybe someone that has can tell us if it's helpful. http://www.wolflair.com/blog/2016/0...tion-srd-encounter-builder-and-more-monsters/

I like the idea behind it, but my next purchase will be the spell cards and I'm always saving up for more miniatures.

 

[CapnZapp]

The D&D department is tiny, tiny, tiny, so expecting any digital tools beyond 3rd party licensing is serious wishlisting.

Seriously?

You seriously want us to believe WotC's stone age approach is okay for the 21st century?

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to expect any game line to offer full digital support from day one.

In D&D's case, at the very least:
- fully indexed hyperlinked rulebooks
- digital character sheets to create, calculate and update player characters
- encounter calculator doing all the manual steps
- magic loot generator, including customized loot tables
- DM tools to pick monsters and spells; to customize and create monsters and spells

That's the baseline for anyone except the most hardcore apologist.

Then computers can do so much more. But that would be acceptable to have only now, years later.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to expect any game line to offer full digital support from day one.

Name a single game line that delivers on that expectation without 3rd-party assistance.

Heck, name one that delivers on that expectation with 3rd-party assistance.

 

[Morrus]

Name a single game line that delivers on that expectation without 3rd-party assistance.

Heck, name one that delivers on that expectation with 3rd-party assistance.

Yeah. No RPG company can do that. Not even WotC. The best of them license it out or use open licenses.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Roll20 now has 5e SRD stuff as well. For free. Their Tablet app is pretty decent. doesn't work on phones though :-(

 

[Mark CMG]

With handhelds being the future, I could see something for it in the not-so-distant future.

They are the now. They've been the now for a while. A lot of folks spend next to no time at all with a tower computer or even a laptop except maybe for work.

 

[Shasarak]

Seriously?

You seriously want us to believe WotC's stone age approach is okay for the 21st century?

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to expect any game line to offer full digital support from day one.

In D&D's case, at the very least:
- fully indexed hyperlinked rulebooks
- digital character sheets to create, calculate and update player characters
- encounter calculator doing all the manual steps
- magic loot generator, including customized loot tables
- DM tools to pick monsters and spells; to customize and create monsters and spells

That's the baseline for anyone except the most hardcore apologist.

The real reason is that TSR tried it and look what happened to them. QED