D&D General Is D&D Beyond Exclusivity Bad for D&D?

[mamba]

They're releasing more small tidbits that otherwise would never have been available.

that was my point

They're also releasing a lot more third party stuff, maybe they've simply decided that selling things other than their published books is a good opportunity or there's been some technical changes in the background to enable it.

whichever, that is not really relevant, I can get those things in PDF or print as well, DDB is just another distribution channel (with the notable exception of Cthulhu by Torchlight). It is only the WotC stuff that is not available any other way

 

[mamba]

Unless I've grossly misread the announcements, those encounters don't count as digital only exclusives.

why not, where else are they available?

 

[MichaelSomething]

The concern - and IMO it's a highly valid one - is that the 1% you refer to merely represents the thin end of the wedge and-or a trial balloon to test acceptance; and that their end game is to eventually have more of the game (if not the whole thing) be a) digital only and b) behind a subscription paywall.

That;s a future I'd like to oppose.

I think it'd be hilarious if WOTC created some new AD&D adventures and put them on Beyond.

 

[saviirkad]

why not, where else are they available?

YouTube and the physical book, yeah?

 

[mamba]

YouTube and the physical book, yeah?

not from my understanding… the text says

‘Pre-order Ravenloft: The Horrors Within on D&D Beyond to unlock early access to monsters featured in the book and seen on Dungeon Masters. Plus, get weekly ready-to-run encounters and quickplay maps inspired by the episode!’

So the book will contain the monsters but not the encounters, at least that is how I read it. And ‘inspired by’ is pretty vague, I would not expect them to be identical to the setup in the live play (not that I consider YT an alternative form of distribution either way)

 

[MNblockhead]

3. If I own a paid upfront VTT like Foundry that can never be taken off my computer, I can still lose access to product if it isn’t kept up to date and I wish to continue using the latest version of Foundry. Sure I can not upgrade but then I’m missing out on other product I want.

It is much easier to bulk export your content from Foundry. Sure you can print or copy-paste page by page from D&D Beyond, but it would be a quite the job. If you use Foundry installed on your own computer, you have the content downloaded and available even if both WotC and Foundry were to go out of business and disappear online. With the Foundry hosting service I use, they have functionality that allows me to sync my content with an instance of Foundry running on my computer, which I do occasionally to have a local, offline backup.

Admittedly, to turn the JSON files of the content into a printable format would require some technical expertise. I don't know if anyone has created an application to do so yet. There are community mods that will allow you to print journals and other items to PDF, but that would be a chore for a large amount of content. Still, I have my Foundry content in perpetuity in Foundry's format.

 

[MNblockhead]

If I want to watch a TV show, at one point I had to tune into a specific broadcaster, subscribe to a specific cable channel. Now of course I subscribe to a specific streaming service. For some shows I could also get a hard copy on DVD.

Are TV shows also nefarious walled gardens?

The atomization of content among an increasing number of walled streaming service gardens make this more annoying to me than anything in the TTRPG world. But I don't get too worked up over these things. I'm not owed access to a show and if some company wants to make it more difficult and expensive to access their content, I have plenty of other options to spend my money and free time.

 

[MNblockhead]

I thought Fantasy Grounds could be downloaded and backed up and all of that. Is that not true? There are the practical aspects of getting it up and running from a backup on new hardware or software if the company no longer provides it. That's a problem with Foundry too. Big complicated software doesn't necessarily last forever even with the best of intentions.

An important consideration that anyone with enough years on them has likely come across. When Lone Wolf Development stopped active development of RealmWorks, I created a Win 11 VM with the last version of RealmWorks installed on it and all my home-brew campaign and world data loaded. Luckily, someone came along and developed a community mod for Foundry that would load a RealmWorks file into Foundry, so I now have a version of my work in a living system. At least with foundry you are just dealing with JSON files and standard graphic files. It is much more future proof and much easier to script something that will allow you to import into another system or generate HTML, PDF, etc. files from. But for less technically inclined people, I realize it is about the same thing as being locked in until someone releases and end-user friendly way to do the conversions.

 

[Lanefan]

The only things that are online only are things too short to justify publication. It's a new feature to add little things here and there similar to the old Dungeon and Dragon magazines except you only pay for what you want and not a subscription. It's a nice feature that wasn't possible in the past.

With hardcopy Dungeon and Dragon magazines I got to choose which issues I bought and which issues I didn't; meaning I did in fact only pay for what I wanted.

 

[Imaro]

Eh, WotC is a company and they offer a product(DDB)... they, like any other well run business, offer perks to those who choose to patronize their product. I think DDB is a game changing tool that offers immense value (especially in allowing the sharing of sourcebooks) to me and my group...if offering those exclusives allows my favorite edition... 5e... and its tools to continue and even grow, I have no problem with it.

Here's a parallel example, there are certain ttrpg creators who only offer certain products via their patreon....is that bad for their game?