D&D (2024) How D&D Beyond Will Handle Access To 2014 Rules

D&D Beyond has announced how the transition to the new 2024 edition will work on the platform, and how legacy access to the 2014 version of D&D will be implemented.

• You will still be able to access the 2014 Basic Rules and core rulebooks.
• You will still be able to make characters using the 2014 Player's Handbook.
• Existing home-brew content will not be impacted.
• These 2014 rules will be accessible and will be marked with a 'legacy' badge: classes, subclasses, species, backgrounds, feats, monsters.
• Tooltips will reflect the 2024 rules.
• Monster stat blocks will be updated to 2024.
• There will be terminology changes (Heroic Inspiration, Species, etc.)

D&D (2024) - Wizards of the Coast Backtracks on D&D Beyond and 2014 Content

Wizards of the Coast posted an overnight update stating that they are not going forward with previously released plans to require those wishing to use some 2014 content on D&D Beyond to use the Homebrew function to manually enter it. Instead, all the content including spells and magic items will...

www.enworld.org

 

[Mistwell]

Not really. You can put a charge of the spell in there, but it doesn't properly hyperlink. It's a lot of effort that amounts to renaming a piece of equipement "Scroll of Acid Arrow"

Compared to Foundry, which is simply dragging a spell from the compendium to your inventory and the scroll is created with spell hyperlink, DC's, etc.

You create the item and create the link in the description. The description allows you to insert a hyperlink.

 

[Vincent55]

We need someone to make a free app for the older games to help with character creation and such, there were some great ones for DMs like "5e.tools" and donjon.bin.sh both have much free stuff to help both players and dms

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why not build your own VTT? Others have done so and have even gotten a D&D5e license. let's see how fast, how well and how profitable you can make this...

A one man team is extremely agile/fast.
A small team is already slower and less agile.
A multinational is a slow cumbersome beast.

When you've worked in all three places for many years, you see that there are very few exceptions to this rule. Especially not in the multinational sized businesses.

In the VTT space, how many have failed? How many are truly successful? And expecting anything else from WotC with it's 25 year track record regarding these this is naive imho.

And also the question is, why 'fix' something when people just give you money anyway? Throwing money at the problem generally doesn't solve the issue. You're already at a scale where using 9 pregnant women won't get you a kid in a month.

WotC has all the incentive to get you asap to the new rules set. That they are even showing token support for the old version is more then I expected. I'm wondering how long that token support will last? Will they phase it out when they start redoing existing books?

Could things be 'fixed'? Absolutely! But smarter, richer and more experienced people have tried in big organizations and they fail more often then not. I could point to all the previously failed WotC attempts. I could point at organizations like Microsoft where actual change/improvement also goes very slowly, sometimes taking many years to fix a broken product.

This is once more a bunch of irrelevant nonsense, attempting to obfuscate the actual problem, because you don't seem to have anything to say about the real issues.

Describing Beyond as "multinational" is hilariously off-the-mark. As is the trite and ancient canard about pregnant women, which indicates a further lack of understanding of modern software development. There's a huge difference between underinvesting and/or refusing to invest and mindlessly throwing money at the problem, and by pretending there isn't, you destroy your own argument.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I have some issues with it that I recognize are "me" problems, but literally forcing a 6 month period where to use DNDBeyond you essentially must use the 2024 player rules in combination with the 2014 monster rules is objectively pretty stupid.

What's the problem with that? I mean, I'm looking forward to the new MM too, but I doubt that it will be drastically different. (Depending on your idea of different).

 

[Zaukrie]

What's the problem with that? I mean, I'm looking forward to the new MM too, but I doubt that it will be drastically different. (Depending on your idea of different).

so far the skeletons and kuo toa are nearly identical....only the dragon was different. And 90+ percent of tables won't ever see a dragon that powerful.

 

[Cergorach]

… what is your basis for this?

Extensive experience in IT at many different (big) companies over the last 25+ years as an outside contractor. At small(er) companies you can often do everything yourself, so very agile. At bigger companies everything has been segmented, what you did yourself at a smaller company, now requires multiple different people, often in different departments. Just getting everyone lined up to do something together is already a task that will take time. If it's something that's blocking what you're doing it can easily take a week+ to get things done. While previously you did it yourself in an hour or two.

That's one aspect, the other is while cash is more readily available at big companies, actually getting permission to use it takes a lot of layers and often TONS of meetings. Many people who came from a small company that got bought by a large company don't have the fortitude for that. And one hand might not know what the other is doing or what is possible or required.

And the only thing that more money does, is hire more people to do stuff, more people takes more overhead, more time to get things done and often doesn't fix the underlying problem. If 10 people can't fix something adding another 40 using the same criteria probably won't fix it either. It's often more of an organizational and/or procedural issue.

And what's even worse is couch generals thinking project X is simple because they did their own tiny project Y. We have only basic insights into the frontend, zero insights into the backend and a total lack of knowledge of the internal marching orders for the development team. Just adding more people to the pile doesn't fix things. More people is only useful if they can do things the rest can't or if there's a general lack of (wo)manpower, there is zero indication that this is the case.

Change doesn't happen with more people, the people already there need to change. And even if they change, their marching orders might just stay the same. Minimum effort development.

 

[Daztur]

So much hyperbole, as usual for this forum, I suppose. I've been using the UA rules for ages, while playing on DDB. It's been super easy, barely an inconvenience. This is the same. The updated tooltips mostly just do things like mention the new mastery ability. Which you can ignore if you want to stick with the 2014 rules.

Or...you know...the sky is falling and all that.

What hyperbole? I always expected them to start mothballing 5e content but I didn't expect them to do it so FAST.

Forcing people to manually go in and "homebrew" a whole slew of spells just to keep the naughty word they already paid for is incredibly dickish. But what do you expect from Hasbro at this point?

 

[pukunui]

I've been using it since launch.

I've had an account since launch, but my groups and I didn't really come to use it much till COVID, when we were all playing online.

The reason I am upset is because literally just the other day I had a discussion with one of my groups about this. Our Mad Mage campaign has one session left, and we're going to play Witchlight next. We all agreed that we would stick with the 2014 rules because Witchlight is fairly short, and by the time we've finished, all three 2024 core rulebooks will be out.

But we rely heavily on DDB now, so if we stick with it, then WotC is essentially forcing me to run Witchlight with an evolving hybrid of 2014 and 2024 rules over the next six months. If I don't want to do that, then we'll be better off switching back to pen-and-paper for this campaign.

Even if it comes as no surprise to anyone that they aren't, it would have been nice if they'd set up DDB so you could toggle between 2014 and 2024 and not be forced into hybridizing the two.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I've had an account since launch, but my groups and I didn't really come to use it much till COVID, when we were all playing online.

The reason I am upset is because literally just the other day I had a discussion with one of my groups about this. Our Mad Mage campaign has one session left, and we're going to play Witchlight next. We all agreed that we would stick with the 2014 rules because Witchlight is fairly short, and by the time we've finished, all three 2024 core rulebooks will be out.

But we rely heavily on DDB now, so if we stick with it, then WotC is essentially forcing me to run Witchlight with an evolving hybrid of 2014 and 2024 rules over the next six months. If I don't want to do that, then we'll be better off switching back to pen-and-paper for this campaign.

Even if it comes as no surprise to anyone that they aren't, it would have been nice if they'd set up DDB so you could toggle between 2014 and 2024 and not be forced into hybridizing the two.

Again, while I don't feel that it's much of a defense, I suspect it would turn out that it was a logistical problem (unfathomable programming-wise) over a conscious decision. Not so much because they're trying to gouge us for money, but because it would cost more than they are willing to pay to make things work. Which is pathetic, in a lot of ways, but not sinister.

You'd think that it wouldn't be hard to make a toggle to keep things 2024, but I bet that it's harder than we imagine.

 

[Blue]

One of the differences I can respect about the cost differences between a PDF and something like DnDBeyond is that a PDF doesn't have a lot of additional costs - layout is the same, no new editing or art - while for character creation or encounter runner you need to code in all of the bits as well, so that they can be referenced, work together, and give you a functional character or encounter.

If I had any 2014 books purchased on DnDBeyond, where I could no longer have a 2014 character (including spells, equipment, items) nor encounters, not even the tooltips, that is taking away the functionality that I paid extra for.

I would absolutely ask for a refund of my 2014 books until they implement a 2014 mode where that functionality is returned.

Doesn't the UK even has a law about Not Fit For Purpose? I remember some game console years ago that would run Linux, and years later they took that away in an update and were forced to allow anyone who wanted to return it, years later.