D&D General Interview with D&D VP Jess Lanzillo on Comicbook.com

[SlyFlourish]

I'm seeing a lot of people miss the

"I'm a big fan of being able to provide play experiences to people any way they want to play them," Lanzillo continued.

part.

What does being a big fan of that have anything to do with reality? I'm a big fan of being young and thin with a full bushy head of hair! Being a fan doesn't make it so!

 

[Oofta]

This is a really good question. What are the actual practical fears?

First, they could abandon it when it's no longer popular like they did with all the 4th edition material. You could spend a lot of money on it, both as purchases and subscriptions and they could take it away. This isn't hypothetical. They did so with all the 4e tools. They did so with Dragon+. They killed all the articles they had posted on dnd.wizards.com. Granted you didn't pay for that stuff but clearly WOTC doesn't care very much about preserving old material.

The whole system can degrade as more sources get added. I argue it's doing so now. You can't, for example, filter out sources in the character builder if you have access to those sources. Everything shows up. Yes, I know it has those checkboxes to allow certain content in a campaign but they don't prevent options from showing up in the builder. This got worse and worse over the years leading to the huge criticism of Silvery Barbs, a spell that otherwise should only matter if you're playing Strixhaven yet everyone seems to have it and it's the bane of many a GM just because its in Beyond and unfilterable.

The whole system can degrade in other ways too. Search becomes harder to use because you're searching everything – including things you don't have. There's no way to search on just a single source. The more you add new products, the worse it gets and yet adding products brings in revenue so its likely prioritized over fixing core features.

We have no idea how they're going to make 2024 and 2014 material work side by side in the character builder. Are they going to abandon 2014? Are all 2024 options going to be listed alongside 2014? Will there be two different character builders? Whatever they choose, you're stuck with it whether it's your preferred way or not.

They can change their business model – moving from purchases to subscriptions. If that's profitable enough, maybe they stop selling sourcebooks on DDB and only rent them to you.

They could remove ways to pay for content like they did for buying individual class features instead of a whole book.

They could downsize the staff which means the platform you've invested your time and money begins to degrade even further. Bugs keep popping up. New bugs show up. No new features get added. Old features break.

Right now we're in the honeymoon phase of D&D Beyond. Profits are up. Attention on the brand is great. Executives love to charge rent. What happens when things go down? How will they behave then? What will they do with the platform?

Whatever they decide to do, you're along for the ride.

Which are all reasons you may not want to use their digital tools and purchase books instead. None of them are a significant risk in my opinion, at least not enough to outweigh the benefits for me. I would also note that you can download all of the data to the app that they provide, assuming you back up your device(s) you will be able to continue using it. Just make sure you open the app now and then so it can update it's sources.

There are obviously concerns with using an online tool. It has nothing to do with the books.

 

[Lanefan]

Is it the VTT? Again, that's totally optional and nothing they can force on anyone.

Yet.

That changes if-when AL and other official organized play stops counting for rewards etc. unless played online through DDB.



If-when this happens, folks, remember - you heard it here first.

 

[KYRON45]

They will do what they think is most profitable. That doesn't mean they will be correct!

Profits are a red herring.
They will make products that people buy. That's what companies do.
When people stop buying the products they make, they will make other products.
The digital aspect of the company is an entirely different revenue stream. Some people like digital dice and portrait frames etc.
Of course the two are related but they are different target markets.
If you want a book, buy a book. If you want digital go digital. At this point in the life cycle of the game you do not need to to invest in both versions of the product unless you choose to.
Profits always throw every conversation of course.

 

[OB1]

Agreed. I think the fear of going digital only is vastly overblown. I think WoTC will continue to promote digital and hope to move some people over but just as the belief that ebooks would replace paper books was wholly unfounded I suspect this will be too.

Importantly, the push/ tofocus on digital is to help onboard new, young players who live in the digital world. If all you offer is physical you are giving up on brining new generations into the hobby. But like with vinyl, there will be a market for those who want a more analog experience, and companies will provide it.

I mean, look, I'm a huge movie buff that has 0 streaming platforms and buys content I want to watch at home on physical disc. Hollywood may one day get rid of physical discs all together, (I hope not) but there are more discs available for me to buy 2nd hand then I could ever watch in my lifetime. If a company doesn't want to sell me a physical disc, I'll spend my dollars elsewhere.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I don’t think that is true and I find these predictions to be unproductive. There is no indication they plan to abandon print. Furthermore doing so would open a large door for competitors and I am sure they are aware. Of course moving people online may be their preference but books will continue to be available in the printed format for the rest of my lifetime.

I hope you're right, but from what I've seen big companies always go where the money is.

 

[Oofta]

Yet.

That changes if-when AL and other official organized play stops counting for rewards etc. unless played online through DDB.



If-when this happens, folks, remember - you heard it here first.

Eh. My scenario is an alien AI nanobot zombie apocalypse, which I think is only slightly less likely. In my scenario an AI developed on some other planet (that of course destroyed it's creators) releases nanobots to animate the dead just to mess with us because they have a sarcastic sense of humor and watched too much late night TV zombie movies.

I wouldn't hold my breath for either.

 

[Oofta]

I hope you're right, but from what I've seen big companies always go where the money is.

Assuming that books still turn a profit, and I don't see why they won't, why would they leave that money on the table?

 

[Valetudo]

I loved the dig at gygax. Let's call a dead guy a gatekeeper.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Reads the opposite to me. Reads like they plan to continue to support both books and digital. Just like they've been saying all along.

Or, you know, she could have just said that:

"We're committed to continue to publish physical books".

I think she said something just like that at Gencon but not in the interview.

I too expect them to continue to publish physical books.

Which are all reasons you may not want to use their digital tools and purchase books instead. None of them are a significant risk in my opinion, at least not enough to outweigh the benefits for me. I would also note that you can download all of the data to the app that they provide, assuming you back up your device(s) you will be able to continue using it. Just make sure you open the app now and then so it can update it's sources.

There are obviously concerns with using an online tool. It has nothing to do with the books.

The app phones home and requires you connect back regularly. I found this out the hard way at a convention with terrible WiFi and cell signal.

If you consider it a temporary tool that can go away later and still use it, I think that’s a reasonable decision to make.

But it is different than the resilience we have owning physical books and knowing we or others can build digital tools based on the open licenses for 5e.