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

bsss · Thursday at 12:35 PM

AlViking said:
The PDF is only for personal use, not a general public archive.

I never claimed the PDF is free to distribute. The point is the PDF cannot be revoked. It's your authorized copy, and the terms of service are irrelevant to the status of that copy. The same is not true of the data in DDB.

AlViking · Thursday at 12:50 PM

Maxperson said:
No. I have no idea where that came from as it has nothing to do with what I said.

What is your point? They are under no obligation to provide a PDF. While a PDF for personal use would be preferred by some people. WOTC has decided not to provide them. There is no "they should" there is only "I would like". If you want something more permanent than DDB, buy a book.

bsss · Thursday at 1:21 PM

AlViking said:
If you want something more permanent than DDB, buy a book.

What a roundabout way of agreeing with the premise that for some people, not having the option to just "buy the book" is bad.

payn · Thursday at 1:27 PM

Professor Murder said:
English Prof here.
Yes.
All of it is.
All of it speaks about who we are, what we care about, what we value.
You learn about past cultures by studying their art. What they cared about so much that they had to birth something into the world.

If all that we create in this time and place doesn't make it into the future because its digital and therefore fragile, will anyone ever know us? There are massive dead spots in our understanding of what came before us because the art is just gone.

When the historians find us, we will be in our homes...
Plugged into our hubs....
skin and bones...
A frozen smile on every face....
Man, this must have been a wonderful place...

AlViking · Thursday at 1:32 PM

bsss said:
What a roundabout way of agreeing with the premise that for some people, not having the option to just "buy the book" is bad.

I don't agree. The 1% they only release online is not particularly important and when it's the option of online only or not at all, online only is better.

Misanthrope Prime · Thursday at 1:38 PM

Maxperson said:
On a macro level, yes. It's all important. On a micro level, not so much. I doubt you'll find many people in Somalia who care about roleplaying games.

My dude, the people in Somalia are literally roleplaying Somalians. It's RPGs all the way down.

TheSword · Thursday at 1:46 PM

AlViking said:
I don't agree. The 1% they only release online is not particularly important and when it's the option of online only or not at all, online only is better.

Precisely, the point is that this wouldn’t get published as a book.

Not only that, WotC are allowed to make Beyond attractive by giving benefits to people who join it. That’s their right. As far as I can tell it happens with pretty much every Computer game released there will be some more expensive version with minor stuff in it.

They just have to make a decision about the scale of what they put on there exclusively and the pushback that might ensue. We know that every decision will get some pushback because it’s this community but how much weill depend.

And the most crazy thing is, those that don’t buy it on Beyond still know what all the rules are… there are a hundred streamers on YouTube explicitly detailing every rule and in most cases showing the text. So it’s not like anyone is actually suffering from not having bought the Beyond version of Astarions Book of Hungers.

Maxperson · Thursday at 2:44 PM

Misanthrope Prime said:
My dude, the people in Somalia are literally roleplaying Somalians. It's RPGs all the way down.

To the people of Somalia, RPG generally means something completely different from how we use it on this site.

Maxperson · Thursday at 2:50 PM

AlViking said:
What is your point? They are under no obligation to provide a PDF. While a PDF for personal use would be preferred by some people. WOTC has decided not to provide them. There is no "they should" there is only "I would like". If you want something more permanent than DDB, buy a book.

The bolded is 100% wrong. "They should" is advice or what I think would be the right thing for them to do. That's what it means. It can also be an obligation, but I'm not using that definition of should.

Ruin Explorer · Thursday at 8:17 PM

Professor Murder said:
But this isn't my first crawl. I have been around for many edition changes for many games. The hobby endures. Dungeons and Dragons will endure.

For sure. Worst case scenario, there isn't any game actually called Dungeons and Dragons actively publishing official first-party material for a while, but 3PPs will no doubt continue to support it because the various licencing structures or lack thereof have made it possible.