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

 

[mamba]

3e, 4e and 5e have been more the exception than the rule over the whole 50 years of D&D.

half the ‘editions’ in half of the 50 years, at that point calling it the exception rather than the rule is a tad optimistic

 

[DarkCrisis]

Oh man, as a Comic and Game store owner, I'm sooooo used to having to deal with companies that don't understand their audience. You think WotC's bad? You should deal with MARVEL.

I like to say that it feel like Marvel is actively trying to kill their own industry. OTOH, DC has its heart in the right place, but is dumb as a bag of rocks.

(I was going to write some details to explain those two accusations, but I'm not sure that anyone is interested enough for it to matter).

Please explain further. DC I get. What is the Marvel issue?

 

[Daztur]

So "only" three fifths of the rules changes were big?

(I'm mostly teasing you - there's been more like seventeen rules changes, and you're right - three of them were full overhauls and the rest were a variety of relatively smaller revisions).

half the ‘editions’ in half of the 50 years, at that point calling it the exception rather than the rule is a tad optimistic

What Fitz said mamba...

There have been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than 5 editions of D&D rules, especially due to the split between (0e/Basic) D&D and AD&D in the TSR era and then 3.5e and 5.5e not getting full numbers even though they're clearly new editions.

 

[Minigiant]

3.5e and 5.5e aren't new editions in the D&D sense.

For example, I believe (I could be wrong) every edition changed the formula for attack bonuses and spell progression. A cleric has a different attack bonus and spell slots in every edition. These are most major rule changes.

3.5e and 5.5e kept the same attack and spell progression as their predecessors.

5e and 5.5e clerics calculate spells and attack modifiers the same. These are the major part of the game. Holy Spark or whatever it is called is not major.

Again this all seems to be a technical issue. WOTC bought DNDB. They didn't design it. The original owners and 2nd owner didn't design it for a half edition.

My guess would have been that Curse or whoever the original owner would have not had a legacy switch for 2014/2024 PC builder as well. And fans would have been mad at them as well.

 

[mamba]

Again this all seems to be a technical issue. WOTC bought DNDB. They didn't design it. The original owners and 2nd owner didn't design it for a half edition.

there is no difference between a half edition and an edition, in both cases it is a new set of books and you either use the old or the new ones.

They just decided for whatever non-technical reason to not fully separate them and have them share spells instead.

They can distinguish between spells by source and have you be able to either enable or disable them, because they already do so eg for the Kobold Press spells

 

[Minigiant]

there is no difference between a half edition and an edition, in both cases it is a new set of books and you either use the old or the new ones.

They just decided for whatever non-technical reason to not fully separate them and have them share spells instead

A half edition uses the same math and game assumption.

A new edition doesn't

 

[Oofta]

I'm mostly riding the same train as you are @Oofta, but . . .

The MtG Pinkerton issue was pretty lousy on WotC's part. Different division of the company from the D&D guys, but relevant still. A MtG YouTuber got some product from a retailer early, a product WotC wasn't ready to have spoiled on the intertubes. A reasonable mistake on the retailer's part, and the YouTuber felt that since he was sold the product, there would not be a problem showcasing it in a video. Plus, the product the YouTuber actually ordered vs the one he got had very similar, confusing names. WotC's solution? Send the Pinkertons to pressure the guy into giving up the product he paid for legally, which in a matter of a month or so, everybody else would have as well. The Pinkertons are a security agency with a long, sordid history of strong-arming folks for corporations.

WotC eventually did make it right with the YouTuber in question, without really apologizing for the issue. And it was a while ago.

But the rest of that long laundry list of WotC complaints? Yeah, overblown. Many are true mistakes or at least concerning, but overall very minor, in the past, and often corrected by WotC. Some aren't mistakes, but simply choices made that some folks don't like. But hey, if you are a gamer with an axe to grind, keep stoking the forge with all of that!

It's beginning to make me rethink my own frustrations with WotC. When their "crimes" get listed out like that, and I realize that most of them don't bother me in the slightest, I realize that the cranky gamers have infected my thoughts! It's a lot like my reaction to "The Phantom Menace" back in the day. When I first saw the film in theaters, I cheered out loud and whooped! I never do that! But then the loud and cranky fan faction started complaining about the film, and I drank the kool-aid and "hated" the prequels. I've since come back to normalcy. They're good, if not great movies! Not that they hold a candle to the original trilogy, of course!

I've heard different things about the Pinkerton incident, I'm not sure we know exactly what happened. But it's also the MtG side of things, which is also where the AI complaints are primarily from.

I just don't see nefarious intent behind every mistake they make (the proposed OGL change was not good, but the OGL is also very ... unusual). They aren't playing 4D chess, they're making typical corporate mistakes.

 

[mamba]

A half edition uses the same math and game assumption.

A new edition doesn't

and? Why would that be harder for DDB. You have the ‘math and game assumptions’ in the system per core book.

Heck, if they internally do that by some edition number field rather than by book ID (very doubtful), then just call it 6e internally, no one will know - if you even called 5e that internally and not simply ‘1’.

For that matter Tasha’s already changed some stuff around (floating ASIs), so if we had an edition field it would already not sync up with WotC’s idea of an edition

You are just trying to find a technical limitation as an excuse for a decision that most likely was a business one, which is why they could reverse it a week before release

 

[Oofta]

I feel like the community should get up in arms and shame them into making DDB better, but unfortunately, it's just "good enough" that no one is likely to be strongly motivated toward picketing. And WotC makes many many millions of dollars a year off of it with their "barely lifting a finger"-management style, so they're not motivated to do it.

Who knows? Maybe we'll be surprised and they'll do some big updates soon, like I expected them to for the 50th Anniversary.

One of the things that I read was that the back end of DDB is a poorly written mess with a lot of barely maintainable code. They spent all their money putting lipstick on the pig so to speak, the front end is decent at the cost of backend infrastructure. This is really typical, management sees a cool looking nonfunctional page mockup and thinks the application is basically done. Thing is, websites that are not on the static page side of the spectrum are like icebergs, the bit you don't see is what really matters. I worked at a startup that had this issue, the logic behind the site was in many ways much simpler than DDB's (people underestimate how weird exceptions make D&D rules complex to code without "shortcuts" even if it's not rocket science) and it took a lot of effort to untangle it all. I basically had to rewrite everything, something I hate doing.

With all the changes they have to make I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of effort was spent on things we don't see. Or not, they could be starving the beast and not allocating enough resources to fix the back end as long as the front end is pretty. Management regularly dismisses how much it takes to really takes to fix things.

But I digress. We don't know why DDB hasn't made some of the changes, why the encounter builder is still in beta or any number of things haven't been fixed. My guess? Hopefully they're working on a backend rewrite that was needed to allow for the new rules. Worst case? They just don't have the budget to fix what they consider minor issues. Neither is great of course.

 

[DEFCON 1]

where do you get that number from, that is maybe half…

That's the number that was given to me by the posters who linked to that article about the number of D&D players. If you think the amount is different, take it up with them (one of who looks to have blocked me for some reason.)