With D&D Beyond has D&D Leap Frogged the Competition?

[Jacob Lewis]

Recently lapsed player here. No, this will not bring me back to 5e. But digital tools are great when they are available for any edition, and done right. I remember when this came out:

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The AD&D CD-ROM Core Rules contains several rulebooks, both in Rich Text Format and as Windows Help files, including the Dungeon Master's Guide, the Player's Handbook, the Monstrous Manual, Tome of Magic, and Arms and Equipment Guide. It also includes a Key Topics book which summarizes the main AD&D rules and an Instructions booklet, which explains how to use all of the rest. Hypertext links have been created for all of the main entries and rulings. There are a number of extra features, including the character generator, and tools to enable a user to update characters created with the disc and enter the details of a character which has been created using the traditional method. For the DM there's a tool which enables a user to quickly create non-player characters, a handout generator, a treasure generator based on the standard random treasure tables, a monster generator, an encounter generator and a map builder.

2.0 version additionally includes Dungeon Master Option: High-Level Campaigns, Player's Option: Combat & Tactics, Player's Option: Skills & Powers, and Player's Option: Spells & Magic.

 

[Nylanfs]

Character builders, well I've already mentioned Hero Labs. Heck, it's been around for D&D since 3.x with PCGen. Just that the fan-made attempts to bring 5e into the modern era by fans were met with C&D letters or is limited to the SRD rules.

PCGen has supported the 5e as of 18 hrs after the SRD dropped. And should one do a search for PCGen 5E Datasets you can probably find expanded source material.

 

[Blue]

PCGen has supported the 5e as of 18 hrs after the SRD dropped. And should one do a search for PCGen 5E Datasets you can probably find expanded source material.

Completely agree - when I mentioned character builders starting with 3.x and PCGen I wasn't implying PCGen stopped there.

Man, one player put together a data file for the gods of my campaign, and then I coded up a prestige class we had created for my homebrew setting. Very extensible. Good times.

 

[Rygar]

We will never know for sure but it is interesting that Hasbro's CEO has recently stated that D&D sales are up 50% over 2016. Could the news of DDB and the launch of it's beta be helping those sales? Who knows.

I think we can make some fairly educated guesses. Ebook penetration plateaued and was then eclipsed by hardbound sales in the book market when I last looked a couple of years ago. From what I read upthread the pricing scheme is crazy and likely highly detrimental, and the tools are rather trivial to make/acquire. I also highly doubt that it's going to cause a huge upswing in the market when most people balk at a couple dollars for an app based on studies.

If WOTC wanted to leapfrog the competition they needed to deliver a combination VTT/Boardgame platform in touchpad form, this is not a tool that will increase penetration. At best it might be used by some of 5th edition's most ardent fans, but their killer app is still the one they've chose not to produce.

They could crush the market and drive enourmous growth if they created the VTT/Boardgame platform with support for 3rd party content. That would be leapfrogging everyone.

 

[Nylanfs]

WotC has attempted several times to get into the digital market and has failed every time. They are not good with digital.

And if you think it's trivial to make software for a niche market at the scale that Hasbro would require then I seriously doubt you have any experience in that field.

 

[fjw70]

WotC has attempted several times to get into the digital market and has failed every time. They are not good with digital.

And if you think it's trivial to make software for a niche market at the scale that Hasbro would require then I seriously doubt you have any experience in that field.

What do you mean by digital market? Digital tools to use to play the game? I think they have done pretty good over the last 10 years (though not perfect). DDI got off to a rough start but it did become a pretty nice digital toolset. I used it for many years and other are still using it.

With 5e it sounds like the FG and R20 partnerships are doing well, and the new DDB partnership looks very promising too (and will launch in 7 days).

What recent failures have they had around digital tools for the RPG?

If you are talking about video games then that is outside my realm as I don't play them.

 

[LordEntrails]

What do you mean by digital market? Digital tools to use to play the game? I think they have done pretty good over the last 10 years (though not perfect)....

I think the reference was to the digital tools (like the much hyped VTT DDI was going to include) that WotC themselves tries to build or have built for them. There have been numerous games (I remember one touted at GenCon a few years ago for Facebook) that never made it anywhere.

You can Google or search the forums here for numerous examples and discussions.

As for DDI, I would not call it an overwhelming success, and personally it never met my expectations or the hype they advertised it with. That said, I gave it several years before finally giving up on it.

As for FG and R20, those were/are both successful applications that WotC has just recently allowed to license their content. WotC has nothing to do with the development of either platform and 5E was being happily played on both before the licensing.

All that said, I agree that DDB won't be much a dent in the historical waves of D&D. What if anything will revolutionize D&D with a true breakthrough? Don't know, but it certainly won't be some VTT/boardgame platform as there is little new and nothing revolutionary there.

 

[Rygar]

WotC has attempted several times to get into the digital market and has failed every time. They are not good with digital.

And if you think it's trivial to make software for a niche market at the scale that Hasbro would require then I seriously doubt you have any experience in that field.

I will guarantee you that a high school student can write a java app to store/display text in less than a week. This is not even entry level work.

 

[Nylanfs]

Then I have a question, what do you "think" a character generator does?

 

[Argyle King]

Is it weird that I find using a pencil and a piece of paper faster than using the programs?

I think having the tools available is great. I also imagine that someone who grew up with digital books being the norm likely leans toward using digital products more than I do. So, with that in mind, maybe the tools will help generate some sales. I can't say.

For me personally? I'm barely aware that the tools exist outside of the occasional discussion here.