Matt Colville weighs in.

[Parmandur]

I never said anything about price gouging.

Anyway DnDBeyond was ok to me because I trusted them. I no longer do.

I was speaking to the general outrage over the $30 rumor (which is frankly still baseless at this point and hasn'tbeen forwarded by anybody reputable, we don't even know what it would supposedly be for).

I don't like D&D Beyond, personally, because I like analog pen & paper. So any digital service ain't for me. But I wouldn't "trust" any company beyond the terms of service at the time of purchase.

 

[Parmandur]

Would one lose access to all the purchases (books & PDFs) one made if they cancelled their Paizo subscription?

No, but nothing lasts forever. And again, we have no supposed idea what the reported price is even supposed to cover, let alone confirmation that it is anything beyond a rumor.

 

[darjr]

Does anyone think that Chris Cao maybe suffering from not invented here syndrome?

No idea.

My point was more about the interuption of any plans his dev team would have to face. Surprise!

It's a bad idea to modify the basic plans while the dev team is at work building that thing, this would be a whole other level of disruption.

Even if he was thrilled by it.

 

[mamba]

Don't forget integrating two code bases that were developed in isolation. That internal one and DNDBeyond. Oh and their teams.

From what is being said here they stay separate, i.e. the speculation is the $30 per month is for the VTT, and independent of DDB.

Sure, they will access your chars on DDB and know what modules you own, but they probably do not take the module content from there anyway since they need 3d maps / tokens / …

So I am not expecting a very tight integration here, but at this point this is all just speculation one way or the other

 

[ValamirCleaver]

No, but nothing lasts forever.

Which one is a lot more likely to last a lot longer if one cancels a subscription, microtransactions purchased from a VTT or printed books & downloaded PDFs?

 

[mamba]

Oh I get the difference. Fair enough.

But they are both still subscription systems.

sure, and so is leasing a car

 

[Parmandur]

Which one is a lot more likely to last a lot longer if one cancels a subscription, microtransactions purchased from a VTT or printed books & downloaded PDFs?

Well, that's why I buy printed books: that and being stodgy. However, my feelings don't have any bearing on market value.

 

[Orius]

As long as we teach those younger kids the way of the real theater of the mind, any TTRPG will win. Really there is not a thing they can do to make us stop, we bought the product and rules we can do whatever we want.

Pessimism is not going to help.

This.

No matter what happens with WotC's VTT scheme, nothing is stopping traditional tabletop play. It's up to us to keep it going and teach the skills to the next generation. No matter how good this VTT turns out, it's likely to have program limitations that tabletop play won't.

 

[Parmandur]

This.

No matter what happens with WotC's VTT scheme, nothing is stopping traditional tabletop play. It's up to us to keep it going and teach the skills to the next generation. No matter how good this VTT turns out, it's likely to have program limitations that tabletop play won't.

For sure, and it's not an either/or sort of thing. People will probsvly use both.

 

[darjr]

From what is being said here they stay separate, i.e. the speculation is the $30 per month is for the VTT, and independent of DDB.

Sure, they will access your chars on DDB and know what modules you own, but they probably do not take the module content from there anyway since they need 3d maps / tokens / …

So I am not expecting a very tight integration here, but at this point this is all just speculation one way or the other

My bet is they'll want to integrated the databases so you can go from ddb into the vtt and not "switch" systems. Monster stats and encounter handling with initiative etc. Unless they silo them as completely separate web sites and/or apps some integration will be needed. And even some by surprise can be a nightmare. Or at least a ton of extra work.

But who knows. WotC certainly had a lot of control over DNDBeyond before they bought them, dictating lots of things, maybe they new the internals ahead of time?