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

 

[TiQuinn]

That is a matter of technology, not rules compatibility.

If a substantial number of your players are using your digital tools to play that game, and you cannot enforce compatibility through your tools, the difference gets lost.

 

[mamba]

If a substantial number of your players are using your digital tools to play that game, and you cannot enforce compatibility through your tools, the difference gets lost.

it gets a bit blurry, yes. There are plenty people who do not use DDB however and the statement about compatibility was about the books, not some VTT implementation of them.

Ultimately they are still compatible even in DDB, even if you no longer have access to a pure 2014 5e that is still true

 

[SteveC]

Thanks, I think I'll check this out... I have the PF2e corebook but it just felt too rules heavy for my players... with a tool like this though I might give it a try.

I'll just mention that there is a one-time $5 payment to unlock the optional rules for Pathfinder. I sort of have to laugh at that, but it's there.

 

[SteveC]

no it doesn’t, we are talking about whether the old version or the new version of a spell is available in the char builder, and whether the user can decide which it is. That is a matter of technology, not rules compatibility.

This is one of those things we're going to have to agree to disagree on. Once you've made the decision to support both, you either rename the 2014 content or if you can't (and ugh, if that's the case) you create the new content by a slightly different name. It's a tech issue to implement it, but it needed to be a management decision as to what to do. And it was either a thing that no one thought of (which I find hard to believe) or a deliberate decision. But the tech issue is secondary to the management decision about whether or not to do it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Not having people to tell them that their design and management decisions are unwise was one of the sacred cows 5e resurrected.

 

[mamba]

This is one of those things we're going to have to agree to disagree on. Once you've made the decision to support both, you either rename the 2014 content or if you can't (and ugh, if that's the case) you create the new content by a slightly different name.

I am not disagreeing with this, it just is not an issue of rules compatibility to me, this is purely a VTT rules implementation issue.

They did not think preserving 2014 in its entirety was worth it and a mix with 2024 would be ok. That is about preserving 2014 unchanged / coexistence in the VTT, not compatibility at the rules level

 

[DEFCON 1]

Like you may be right in your conclusion, but your process was garbage and hasn't really improved.

Thankfully this isn't my 5th grade math class where I need to "show my work".

A person either agrees with my conclusion and gives me the check mark regardless of how I reached it... or they don't agree with my conclusion and thus the process doesn't matter how I came to it anyway cause they aren't accepting the results. If someone believes that the OGL debacle caused a substantive impact on the D&D:HAT box office, they weren't going to "be convinced" by what I said no matter how "correct" my starting numbers were.

I'd like to think I had that kind of power to change minds, but I don't, LOL. I just made the statements I made cause I felt like it, not that it was going to set off a lightbulb over someone else's head,

 

[mamba]

Not having people to tell them that their design and management decisions are unwise was one of the sacred cows 5e resurrected.

when was that not the case? I’d argue 4e already resurrected that, if it had ever gone away

 

[SteveC]

They did not think preserving 2014 in its entirety was worth it and a mix with 2024 would be ok. That is about preserving 2014 unchanged / coexistence, not compatibility

I think if someone brought this up a couple years ago (and I kind of did, saying that compatibility between editions was something that wouldn't be discussed once the new books launched) people would have aggressively disagreed with them. And people kind of did that with me at the time. Did I call out Beyond? No, but that's because I wasn't using it (and still don't).

If WotC had asked me, I would say you allow complete transparency between the two editions, and you revisit that in a couple of years. At that point you make it available but have the users have to opt-in. You do that under the guise of not being confusing to new players.

 

[mamba]

If WotC had asked me, I would say you allow complete transparency between the two editions, and you revisit that in a couple of years. At that point you make it available but have the users have to opt-in. You do that under the guise of not being confusing to new players.

I am with you on that, throwing 2014 under the bus was a bad idea, they reversed course at least