D&D General Hey, are we all cool with having to buy the same book twice, or what?

[Jester David]

If I were placing a bet i'd agree with you...but there is nothing preventing some investment firm buying them out, shutting down the site, and porting the talent over to some other project. Or a bankruptcy due to various reasons. Or some sort of worldwide pandemic making the service illegal to run.

What if D&D splits with OneBookShelf and all our current PDFs vanish?

What if the Earth gets hit by the solar storm we're overdue for and we lose all our hard drives and current electronic libraries?

What if we have a Red Dawn situation, China conquers the USA, and declares all RPG products immoral and illegal?

What if... and this is a big one... what if DnDBeyond makes WotC a forktonne of money, so they keep the partnership going for all of 5e and then 6e, and we end up keeping our digital libaries long after we stopped playing and they just end up sitting on our hard drives like those Pathfinder PDFs I picked-up for $10 in 2015 but haven't opened in five years but have still moved to three different hard drives like some kind of digital hoarder?

 

[Bravesteel25]

I know that.

This was in regard to a hypothetical I was asked about Netflix.

If your reply wasn't somehow related to DDB and their model then your response doesn't make much sense, eh?

I suppose you can shift around all day. Tons of people can't accept that their position is incorrect or at the very least based on inaccurate information.

 

[Jester David]

Should I? Did they start charging for shows and movies on top of the subscription fee?

So you'd be okay with DnDBeyond if instead of paying $30 for a book every four months, you instead paid $10 each month for a year but lost access to everything the second you stopped paying?

 

[Mistwell]

But it's not, though?

You losing your books to actual act of god is unlikely. Losing access to your purchases on DDB at some future point is very likely.

And I am saying during the lifetime of your likely actual use of the content, it is not very likely.

I pay for Prime but don't buy any media on it since it can be taken from me at any time. Does that make sense?

To me? No. I think it's you putting a principle with no practical use or ethical foundation above your own utilitarian enjoyment of those products. If it makes you feel good, then sure do that. But, no it does not make sense to me.

I do wonder what you think about VHS tapes you bought?

 

[Parmandur]

But it's not, though?

You losing your books to actual act of god is unlikely. Losing access to your purchases on DDB at some future point is very likely.



I pay for Prime but don't buy any media on it since it can be taken from me at any time. Does that make sense?



I know that.

This was in regard to a hypothetical I was asked about Netflix.

You don't have to get it of you don't want it. I don't do Beyond myself. But it is cool that it is available, their pricing model is cool, and it is cool that they don't want to put out PDF format products.

 

[eyeheartawk]

So you'd be okay with DnDBeyond if instead of paying $30 for a book every four months, you instead paid $10 each month for a year but lost access to everything the second you stopped paying?

I mean, it feels more honest?

Nobody expects to be able to keep receiving magazines in the mail when their magazine subscription ends.

You tell people they're buying something they expect certain rights and privileges real ownership entails.

And again, I really wouldn't care about DDB at all if they would just let us have PDFs. Then I can download them, back them up locally and in the cloud and take my chances that I might lose access.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Full control is a bit of an illusion though. I live in California for example. Tomorrow there could be an earthquake that would prevent me from accessing my books forever. Much like the same earthquake could drive businesses to bankruptcy shutting down their electronic service. Both are simply Acts of God which result in an end to access to the content, but one you're characterizing as "not full control" and the other you are characterizing as "full control" even though you lose access for the same type of reason (Act of God) to the same content.

Again, I think most of this is a theoretical principle of the thing. And I am asking - is it really a principle if it isn't likely to be a practical issue during your own lifetime expected use of the content?

Full Control has nothing to do with protection of the item in the context that I am talking about. You know this, you are just arguing for the sake of argument at this point.

 

[Guest 6801328]

 

[JiffyPopTart]

What if D&D splits with OneBookShelf and all our current PDFs vanish?

I have a bunch of PDFs that I own from DriveThruRPG.

I have one set of copies on a thumb drive, a second set of copies on my home PC, a third set of copies in my GDrive, a fourth set of copies on my home PC backup external HDD, and have unlimited access to the originals as long as DTRPG stays around.

I do not rely on DTRPG to store my PDFs at all, its simply a service that allows me to purchase them. The reason I have multiple copies is that its the best practice to avoid losing the items that I have purchased.

If some incident happens in the world that wipes out DTRPG, my thumb drive, my home PC, my external HDD at home, and my GDRIVE files SIMULTANEOUSLY then I am probably dead, so electronic copiers of RPG books is fairly moot.

Are you seriously arguing against people wanting to own electronic files because they won't stand up to some sort of armageddon scenario?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

So you'd be okay with DnDBeyond if instead of paying $30 for a book every four months, you instead paid $10 each month for a year but lost access to everything the second you stopped paying?

Totally, I kept a monthly subscription to the Character Builder in the 4e era for as long as it was kept up to date with all the new materials. If it branched out to a total suite of tools like DnDB is, i'd probably pay $15/month for the service.