WotC D&D Beyond Reveals 'Partnered Content' Schedule

Morrus said:

Well, these are pre-existing products and WotC does all the work to bring them over to DDB. There's no freelancers involved.

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Sorry, maybe "freelancer" is the wrong word. But, I imagine that there would need to be some degree of conversation about how to integrate material from a 3pp into DDB. Are these 3pp not subject to any errata for example? Nothing has ever changed in these books since first publication?

My point was that "it's creative" is probably not the only criteria for being included on DDB.

Hussar said:

My point was that "it's creative" is probably not the only criteria for being included on DDB.

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I assume that is pretty far down the list. The main considerations probably are popularity and ease of integration into DDB.

Maybe also that it is only of limited competition to WotC material, so additional monsters, subclasses, etc. but not the Level Up or ToV equivalent to the PHB or MM

Reynard said:

It would seem that if you can do one. You can do all of them.

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I won't say I know the details, but my guess is that classes are far more complex to put in the system and requires far more work to implement. More work = higher cost and maybe some publishers aren't willing to pay for it.

The homebrew tools are the same ones they use to put in official content (though obviously some things are hidden from the public facing tools). Porting over 3PP content that includes subclasses, species, feats, spells, monsters, magic items, what have you, is pretty straightforward so long as the mechanics play nicely with what already exist within the official rules framework. When it does something wonky like "hey every time you roll a 12 on an attack roll, change the damage die to a d12," then it's not so straightforward anymore.

Classes are a wholly different thing. There's no homebrew tools not just because of the difficulty in supporting that, but also because there are no tools that they can just hide some bits and bobs before making it user-facing. It's not that they can't do it, it's that the work is significantly greater and comes with the big risks of breaking the system beyond just the new class.

Hussar said:

Having watched the level of kludging that needs to be done just to make bog standard PHB classes work in Fantasy Grounds (it takes fan made add ons just to get things like Blade Ward to function, for example) I think it's fair to say that it's a LOT more complicated than people realize to add in new classes.

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I have never used FG but own it and most of the 2e content. Do you know how it handles the old stuff?

Remathilis said:

I won't say I know the details, but my guess is that classes are far more complex to put in the system and requires far more work to implement. More work = higher cost and maybe some publishers aren't willing to pay for it.

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I may be grossly misremembering, but isn't DDB's backend supposed to be retooled? If so (and it really needs it), perhaps we'll see more classes added to it once that's done.

Azzy said:

I may be grossly misremembering, but isn't DDB's backend supposed to be retooled? If so (and it really needs it), perhaps we'll see more classes added to it once that's done.

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Yes. They announced it a few months ago.

Reynard said:

What's wrong with the tech that it can't handle new classes? Does that mean you can't create an Artificer on Beyond? Or is WotC just gatong 3pp classes?

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I believe that new classes need custom coding of the system to work. It is my impression that data addition to Beyond is a manual or semi manual process and time consuming which is why they are reworking it.

FINALLY we officially (somewhat) have playable Gnolls now.

mamba said:

looks like the 3pp content does not find its way into the character builder.

If that is generally true and not just for a new class, that might severely hamper the usefulness of some 3pp content on DDB

Does anyone know if this is a general rule or how widespread it is?

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...heck, wizards of the coast can't even finish implementing their own content on DnDbeyond; third parties are overwhelmingly searchable hypertext only...

...if wizards of the coast were offering a mechanically-integrated platform for third-party publishers, the risks of DnDbeyond dominating the market would be much more tangible, but as-is, where PDFs offer DMs + players both equivalent-or-better usability, i think the preponderance of third-party DnDbeyond sales are based upon aspirational value and don't present a sustainable risk to the independent marketplace...