MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
I don't find it to be too hard to help players out. You can take 95% of the rules players need and summarize them on a few sheets of paper. You can also develop character sheets for new players that provide short tips on how things work. I played in a demo game of Pathfinder 2e run by the Pathfinder Society at a convention a few years ago and the pregens had tips for various mechanics. They were very well-designed and extremely helpful for new players.
As others have pointed out, it is very different for the DM. The books need to be better designed for (1) picking up the essential rules quickly and (2) making cross-referencing easier (and using callouts to avoid page flipping where practical).
I think that this is where DnD Beyond is much better than the print books. There is only so much you can do with the print books. With digital, you can cross reference much easier with hover-over popups meaning you don't even have to navigate to the other page. You can also make a variety of reference articles and provide multiple ways of presenting the rules. DDB is already a great tool for a DM, but there are three things I would like to see that would make it even more useful as a DM:
1. Quickstarts and walkthroughs. Since you are not limited by page restrictions, throughout the rules section it would be great to have sidebars with "more information" links that give written and video examples and walktroughs and incorporate sage advice, FAQs, etc.
2. Make the search more friendly for simple rule look ups. They now allow you to set filters, to avoid results from adventures, etc. That's great, but still more fiddly than it needs to be. Organizing and displaying search results better, putting results from core books at top would be a lot more convenient. The search algorithm has gotten much better, but I'm still finding myself having to scroll through results to look up basic rules.
3. Digital DM screens. Preferably customizable. I would love to be able to bookmark/favorite certain sections (or even highlight and save snippits) and have them saved to a "DMs screen". There is a community-developed module I use for foundry vtt that allows me to do this with basically any content in the VTT. Would be nice if DDB had similar functionality.
As others have pointed out, it is very different for the DM. The books need to be better designed for (1) picking up the essential rules quickly and (2) making cross-referencing easier (and using callouts to avoid page flipping where practical).
I think that this is where DnD Beyond is much better than the print books. There is only so much you can do with the print books. With digital, you can cross reference much easier with hover-over popups meaning you don't even have to navigate to the other page. You can also make a variety of reference articles and provide multiple ways of presenting the rules. DDB is already a great tool for a DM, but there are three things I would like to see that would make it even more useful as a DM:
1. Quickstarts and walkthroughs. Since you are not limited by page restrictions, throughout the rules section it would be great to have sidebars with "more information" links that give written and video examples and walktroughs and incorporate sage advice, FAQs, etc.
2. Make the search more friendly for simple rule look ups. They now allow you to set filters, to avoid results from adventures, etc. That's great, but still more fiddly than it needs to be. Organizing and displaying search results better, putting results from core books at top would be a lot more convenient. The search algorithm has gotten much better, but I'm still finding myself having to scroll through results to look up basic rules.
3. Digital DM screens. Preferably customizable. I would love to be able to bookmark/favorite certain sections (or even highlight and save snippits) and have them saved to a "DMs screen". There is a community-developed module I use for foundry vtt that allows me to do this with basically any content in the VTT. Would be nice if DDB had similar functionality.