D&D 5E dndcombat.com retired, will stay down

[Greggy C]

I appreciate the thoughts, I actually tried to do a kickstarter 2 years ago, but kickstarter rejected it as lacking something or other, they are kind of vague like that.

If Wizards wanted to write a check, then I would be happy to throw it up. But to start it up as a project again, I've lots of non D&D projects going on in my life, I just don't have that kind of time and money anymore to invest.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Why not WotC to pay for that software for their own playtesting?

it doesn't feel like Wotc cares about this level of balance

 

[phuong]

I don't think Wotc has any spare cash now that their share price is crashing.

 

[NotAYakk]

I'm just curious; why would it require significant server CPU -- with Java wouldn't the app that did the simulation be downloaded to the client system and run the sim there?

 

[Greggy C]

I'm just curious; why would it require significant server CPU -- with Java wouldn't the app that did the simulation be downloaded to the client system and run the sim there?

It was a regular web app, the java ran server side against a database to do all the calculations like measuring AOE, calculating optimal combos etc.

 

[Baron Opal II]

It's always sad to see a useful resource fade that I had no idea existed until the doors were closed.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It's always sad to see a useful resource fade that I had no idea existed until the doors were closed.

I used it once and liked it but forgot about it... seeing this thread made me a little sad I didn't use it more

 

[Greggy C]

It's always sad to see a useful resource fade that I had no idea existed until the doors were closed.

It was always #1 if you had googled "dnd combat simulator" over the last 2 years

Advertising is such a tricky thing, while tens of thousands of people came from reddit, the dnd mods over there later just take down links to any website that is not Wizards of the Coast. Same issue on Facebook D&D groups. Promotion is a tricky thing, despite being under Wizards "https://company.wizards.com/en/legal/fancontentpolicy".

What I found was people would use it for all sorts of things,

• there was one guy that logged in and did a battle each day between a god and hundreds of soldiers for some campaign thing, every day for like 500 days in a row.
• Other people just like to see how many goblins it takes to take down a red dragon.
• We had 50,000+ characters one click imported directly from dndbeyond.
• Some people wrote javascript rules to simulate their custom monsters special attacks
• We had knockout competitions that use ELO to determine who was the best party lineup.
• Using the same competitive format all the monsters were rated in order.

Meh the list goes on, but all good things come to an end. I tried to run it on cheaper hardware, didn't work, too many users.
I do think it would have been 10 times bigger if I wrote it in 2015-18 rather than later during the pandemic.

I believe 5e and one D&D will eventually fade out and WOTC will come up with a new set of exciting core mechanics, and then come out with 6th edition. Sure it might be 10 years from now.

When that happens I will return with a 6e version.

 

[DnDCombatEnjoyer]

• there was one guy that logged in and did a battle each day between a god and hundreds of soldiers for some campaign thing, every day for like 500 days in a row.
• Other people just like to see how many goblins it takes to take down a red dragon.
• We had 50,000+ characters one click imported directly from dndbeyond.
• Some people wrote javascript rules to simulate their custom monsters special attacks
• We had knockout competitions that use ELO to determine who was the best party lineup.
• Using the same competitive format all the monsters were rated in order.

Fascinating stuff.
I got some questions if you don't mind answering.

1. Did you try any of the other subreddits? i.e. /r/DndBehindTheScreen, /r/DMacademy, /r/DMtoolkit etc.? While certainly not as popular as /r/DnD, I have found in the past that they are far more "lenient" with such rules etc.
2. Was limiting the parameters of a fight out of the question? e.g. if terrain/grid was not incorporated, number of actors on the screen, custom monsters disabled or even a hard cap on the total number of battles for each user per day. Would none of that have helped reduce the costs?
3. Is there a chance for the 5e version to ever come back, even in a self-contained version for offline use with the state of the compendium being as it was when the site was taken down?

In any case thanks again for the wonderful tool, it really helped me in setting up my game. I wish you best of luck in your future endeavors.

 

[Baron Opal II]

It was always #1 if you had googled "dnd combat simulator" over the last 2 years

Ha! I'm sure.

Well, these things happen, and I'm certainly not salty about it with you. There are a lot of really cool tools out there for gaming, but you only find them when you have need and then look for it. You have a lot of great testing data, I'm sure, and a dozen improvements in mind. I look forward to the next version next decade!