Idea for D&DBeyond

[LordEntrails]

How about you send them your book with a money order for$25 to cover processing and shipping and they give you a $10 discount on the matching D&D Beyond product?

 

[Smarmot]

I wouldn't mind if wotc paid Curse to give every purchaser of a d&d book the appropriate d&d Beyond content. Curse would be under contract and wouldn't have to pay the licensing but would get a small share of each book sold as their revenue source rather than subscription and content purchase revenue direct from the consumer.

This would help drive book sales and give legitimate purchasers something more than some guy who just downloads a pirated pdf. Because of the sheer volume of book sales, the cost of each unit wouldn't have to increase very much at all- maybe a dollar?

I thought Wizards had a similar model before. D&D beyond seems to be a nice tool but I'm afraid it's going to wither from lack of revenue.

Maybe this isn't realistic? But it's a nice thought.

 

[Morrus]

It's both completely lame and perfectly understandable why you have to pay for D&DBeyond even if you already own the books.

What if Wizards let you mail them your books in order to unlock appropriate paywall content. Would you?

They could even stamp the title page and mail it back, so you can't use the same book twice.

Bit mailing books costs money. Why would they go from a system where you pay them money to a system where they pay the postal service money?

 

[Magistus71]

I'm a little upset, that the Critical Role people are now using D&D Beyond, we can pretty much be sure that none of them are paying for a subscription and are probably getting everything free, since they are getting sponsored by it, and do an add placement for it at the beginning of every show now.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I'm actually OK with having to purchase each book on Beyond. What I don't like is having to pay a subscription on the top of that to have more than 6 characters.

I get this.

You should just get an additional character slot for every book you buy. Or maybe every $20 of content you buy if you don't buy whole books. Or something like that.

 

[lkj]

Highly unlikely they'd go for it unless enough people stop subscribing. Most folks that I know that are ok with subs simply don't worry about them - they have the cash, it's not even the price of a beer/month.

Personally I don't like subscriptions, even tho I can spare the change. I have paid them but I simply don't like things tick tick ticking away. I'd much rather single payments, even if they're higher.

Still, subs can work great for the folks you're paying, especially when you account for the spending and discipline of the paying public en masse. And as a revenue model, especially with a niche audience like D&D, its more attractive to repeatedly tap a number of folks rather than have to try and attract new folks.

You're probably right that they wont' go for it, due to the income stability that subscriptions offer. But I suppose it also depends on how many 'hero level' subscriptions they are getting (those have the primary benefit of allowing unlimited characters). The primary benefit of the Master subscription is the ability to content share so that your whole group doesn't have to buy the books.

Just depends on a sort of 'price point' really. Will offering one time purchase character slots bring in enough new purchases to offset the loss in those that were willing to subscribe? I mean they've clearly done a calculation like that elsewhere. Allowing content sharing presumably costs them book purchases. And the subscription rate is low enough that it takes a year on a subscription to even recoup the costs on a couple of players handbook purchases. They must be figuring that allowing the content sharing brings in enough additional users to offset the per customer losses.

Anyway, it depends on how the math works out on their end. I have no clue.

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[cbwjm]

Subscriptions can bring other things such as joining campaigns. I'm not sure what campaign tools DnD beyond has other than being able to share the DMs content but if they have decent campaign tools then it could provide an incentive for people to sub beyond the unlimited character creation the subs currently provide.

I also know that you need a sub to add custom content created by others to your homebrew collection. They could probably have both subscription and paid for character slots as part of their model.

 

[lkj]

Subscriptions can bring other things such as joining campaigns. I'm not sure what campaign tools DnD beyond has other than being able to share the DMs content but if they have decent campaign tools then it could provide an incentive for people to sub beyond the unlimited character creation the subs currently provide.

I also know that you need a sub to add custom content created by others to your homebrew collection. They could probably have both subscription and paid for character slots as part of their model.

This makes a good point. The value of a subscription could increase through time. There really aren't campaign tools yet. They focused first on the rules reference functionality and are now working on character sheet/builder refinements. I think after that they start on the campaign stuff. So I'll be interested to see what a subscription offers in a year's time.

So perhaps as the suite of tools increases the suite of options might as well?

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[Dire Bare]

I'm a little upset, that the Critical Role people are now using D&D Beyond, we can pretty much be sure that none of them are paying for a subscription and are probably getting everything free, since they are getting sponsored by it, and do an add placement for it at the beginning of every show now.

Why would this upset you? What's wrong with the situation?

 

[BookBarbarian]

I'm a little upset, that the Critical Role people are now using D&D Beyond, we can pretty much be sure that none of them are paying for a subscription and are probably getting everything free, since they are getting sponsored by it, and do an add placement for it at the beginning of every show now.

The other day on a televised sporting event I saw players drinking Gatorade. We can pretty much be sure that none of them are paying for it and are probably getting it free, since they are getting sponsored by it, and do an add placement for it at the beginning of every game.