Ruin Explorer
Legend
Very late to the party here but, I don't think this is what is really to be termed a "leak", even if it's true, because it's just this:D&D Shorts has been accurate throughout this saga AFAIK so this is pretty concerning to me.
$30 subs? AI Dungeon Masters? If I heard this a year ago I'd dismiss it as ridiculous. Now? It's about par for the course.
Or rather the corporate equivalent.
For anyone who can't see it, it's the country-folk hobo song "Big Rock Candy Mountain", wherein hobos dream of a place which was literally made of candy, which they could visit. Just replace the hobos with people in suits, sitting around a boardroom, and this is Big Rock Candy Mountain all over.
None of these things will necessarily happen. The businesshobos at WotC wish they would though.
- AI DMing? I've been predicting they'll try for that since WotC announced the 3D VTT, whether it comes in in 2024 or 2028 or whenever and whether it's remotely a good experience for people who actually like RPGs is the question.
(My guess would be sooner rather than later, but no to good experience, but for people who can't get a DM, or are too antisocial for a normal group, or wanna play D&D more like a videogame - they exist btw - it'll be a boon.)
- Changing the game to make it easier to DM, and thus easier for an AI DM because more stuff is written down (like in 3.XE and 4E)? That's already started happening in the 1D&D playtest, I expect it'll continue but it might not. It's hard because they want 5E compatibility, and 5E is explicitly designed not to work that way.
- $30/per person per month is obviously a wild fantasy of the Big Rock Candy Mountain kind. There's virtually nothing digital apart that has fees like that, certainly nothing game-related excepts cheats/hacks. I do expect we'll see attempts to do price-rises on DDB though. Probably unjustifiable ones too because I don't think they'll really increase they value, they'll just hand out free junk and say they are.
- Getting rid of homebrew at lower tiers seems extremely unlikely. It's the sort of idea someone might kick around in a meeting, but it'd silly because you'd just lose subscribers - D&D literally doesn't work without homebrew in Beyond's terms, because homebrew include stuff very slight equipment/magic item variants, slight monster variants, and other stuff you routinely encounter.