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 be included. From the update:

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...

www.enworld.org

Last week we released a Changelog detailing how players would experience the 2024 Core Rulebooks on D&D Beyond. We heard your feedback loud and clear and thank you for speaking up.

Our excitement around the 2024 Core Rulebooks led us to view these planned updates as welcome improvements and free upgrades to existing content. We misjudged the impact of this change, and we agree that you should be free to choose your own way to play. Taking your feedback to heart, here’s what we’re going to do:

Players who only have access to the 2014 Player’s Handbook will maintain their character options, spells, and magical items in their character sheets. Players with access to the 2024 and 2014 digital Player’s Handbooks can select from both sources when creating new characters. Players will not need to rely on Homebrew to use their 2014 player options, including spells and magic items, as recommended in previous changelogs.

Please Note:

Players will continue to have access to their free, shared, and purchased items on D&D Beyond, with the ability to use previously acquired player options when creating characters and using character sheets.

We are not changing players’ current character sheets, except for relabeling and renaming. Examples include Races to Species, Inspiration to Heroic Inspiration, and Cast Spell to Magic.

We’re dedicated to making D&D Beyond the ultimate digital toolset for Dungeons & Dragons, continuously enhancing the platform to ensure you can create, customize, and play your game just as you envision it. From your first one-shot to multi-year campaigns and everything in between, we're grateful to be on this journey with you.

- The D&D Studio

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As expected.

I certainly didn't expect it!

Beyond have maintained for several years that this kind of simple data-entry-type stuff (and we know it is just that, because we can do it) is an unjustifiable waste of resources, and we have to waste hours repeating work they could have done once for us (for books we paid for!).

Given they suggested this insane approach one more, I honestly believed they were fully committed to it.

But it's very good to see that with sufficient push-back and incipient bad press (Twitter was beginning to get spicy about it), the "unjustifiable" becomes very justifiable and doable!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This black background to white text, "YOU CAN KEEP THINGS AS YOU LIKED, WE LISTENED TO YOUR FEEDBACK." message from D&D is starting to become too much of a regular thing. I'm starting to have the same Pavlovian "oh what did they mess up again?" reaction to it as CDPR's yellow background "whoopsie daisy, Cyberpunk 2077 got delayed again" messages.

OH GOD that's what this reminded me!

I was having difficulty placing it! But that is exactly it - that "UHOH" feeling.

I genuinely don't get why this is such a problem for WotC, like what is so hard about this? Just get someone who like, actually plays D&D, actually use the products in question to do a sense check on this stuff before it gets booted out as "fine", surely? Or do they have those people, but they're just yes-men that they're ineffectual?

 

[Minigiant]

OH GOD that's what this reminded me!

I was having difficulty placing it! But that is exactly it - that "UHOH" feeling.

I genuinely don't get why this is such a problem for WotC, like what is so hard about this? Just get someone who like, actually plays D&D, actually use the products in question to do a sense check on this stuff before it gets booted out as "fine", surely? Or do they have those people, but they're just yes-men that they're ineffectual?

I don't think the people who play and design D&D are high enough up to manage policy and change.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think the people who play and design D&D are high enough up to manage policy and change.

That's the problem. These sort of issues could be dealt with just by having some kind of slightly critically-minded consultant, frankly, so long as they advised a senior enough group and were listened to. They probably wouldn't even need to be full-time.

I think part of the problem, ironically, is that a lot of the management have played D&D at some point in their lives (often decades ago), so think they know what's going to piss off people currently playing/running it, but that's been repeatedly shown not to be the case.

 

[Minigiant]

That's the problem. These sort of issues could be dealt with just by having some kind of slightly critically-minded consultant, frankly, so long as they advised a senior enough group and were listened to. They probably wouldn't even need to be full-time.

I think part of the problem, ironically, is that a lot of the management have played D&D at some point in their lives (often decades ago), so think they know what's going to piss off people currently playing/running it, but that's been repeatedly shown not to be the case.

But according to their statements, management plays D&D weird.

Hell even Crawford and Perkins play very differently than common table.

Remember WOTC didn't get that people would even want to play suboptimal race/class combos but want to be mechanically strong.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Sorry, I thought there was no new edition and everything was 100% backwards compatible - why should any content be considered redundant?

 

[TiQuinn]

So they can just do that? All the functionality for this exists and they just chose to not use it?

Well, there goes the ‘DDB is a pile of crap and poor WotC cannot add this feature to it’ defense…

Given two choices, WotC way too often chooses the wrong one, a coin would make better decisions… be better than a coinflip guys…

Yeah, that smacks of “oh that’s just not worth the time or effort” versus “we can’t do this”.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But according to their statements, management plays D&D weird.

Hell even Crawford and Perkins play very differently than common table.

Do they? It wouldn't surprise me, but I haven't heard detailed statements re: how those two run their own games. Do you have any specific examples?

That said, I think the issue is higher up than either of them.

Yeah, that smacks of “oh that’s just not worth the time or effort” versus “we can’t do this”.

That "not worth the time/effort" is literally been the excuse Beyond have been using for years, so absolutely it was that, yes.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Wizards management do things to start with that they think will produce their most beneficial results (in this case, more people buying the 5E24 books in DDB). Oftentimes those things go by without incident (other than a small handful of people griping, which happens withe everything and are easily ignorable). But on the few times where the complaints are loud enough and large enough (OGL, this DDB thing)... they will backtrack. Because why not? What skin is it off WotC's nose? If it's that big a deal for a lot of players, there's nothing wrong with just throwing them a bone.

But here's the thing... as is always the case, a huge percentage of players just don't care about any of this stuff. They buy what they want, they use what they want, and the inner working and policies of the company just goes right on by. So there's no real reason why WotC feels like they can't make these changes under the assumption that they probably will work out fine and they'll earn more money out of it. And if it doesn't work occasionally? They'll just revert back and it won't actually matter. Because most people never cared, and the ones that did either just continue to go along with the game anyway because they want to play it... or they "leave" the game, play some other game instead, but at the same time just can't seem to stop talking about the game and thus generating advertising for the roleplaying game business (and Dungeons & Dragons as the major part of it). And when it comes to fandom and the advertising of it to the outside "normal" world, there's no bad press. Because any "bad press" is usually seen (rightly, in many cases) as a select group of nerds getting way too bent out of shape over some inane perceived slight. Something like the OGL or this DDB thing will just roll right on past and not cause any major issues for anyone at WotC down the road more often than not.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wizards management do things to start with that they think will produce their most beneficial results (in this case, more people buying the 5E24 books in DDB). Oftentimes those things go by without incident (other than a small handful of people griping, which happens withe everything and are easily ignorable). But on the few times where the complaints are loud enough and large enough (OGL, this DDB thing)... they will backtrack. Because why not? What skin is it off WotC's nose? If it's that big a deal for a lot of players, there's nothing wrong with just throwing them a bone.

But here's the thing... as is always the case, a huge percentage of players just don't care about any of this stuff. They buy what they want, they use what they want, and the inner working and policies of the company just goes right on by. So there's no real reason why WotC feels like they can't make these changes under the assumption that they probably will work out fine and they'll earn more money out of it. And if it doesn't work occasionally? They'll just revert back and it won't actually matter. Because most people never cared, and the ones that did either just continue to go along with the game anyway because they want to play it... or they "leave" the game, play some other game instead, but at the same time just can't seem to stop talking about the game and thus generating advertising for the roleplaying game business (and Dungeons & Dragons as the major part of it). And when it comes to fandom and the advertising of it to the outside "normal" world, there's no bad press. Because any "bad press" is usually seen (rightly, in many cases) as a select group of nerds getting way too bent out of shape over some inane perceived slight. Something like the OGL or this DDB thing will just roll right on past and not cause any major issues for anyone at WotC down the road.

This is a very funny thing to say, because you say with such assurance, and WotC 100% does NOT remotely agree with you, we can see that very easily from their actions.

WotC absolutely were grinding their teeth over the OGL 2.0 fiasco. It was absolutely skin off their nose, and they acted like it.