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

MNblockhead · 2026-04-25T21:04:57+0100

Imaro said:
Youre assuming they offer a pdf format... that isnt always the case.

Case in point... sometimes its access to their discord and the content are posts there.

Yuck. I hate that so many TTRPG and software companies have moved their customer engagement and support to discord. While is can be useful to get quick responses if you go when a lot of people are online, it find it difficult to find and follow discussions. I find it a horrible medium for customer support. I've completely disengaged with a number of companies because I can't be bothered to fire up discord.

MNblockhead · 2026-04-25T21:11:15+0100

Lanefan said:
All fair enough, but if you own those things outright in physical form you can resell them, or keep them as collectibles (maybe to resell later at significant profit, if you're lucky ), or gift them forward to other gamers, or whatever.

Can't really do that with something you rent.

With D&D Beyond I can share any of my books with all of my players who can access it simultaneously and conveniently in and between games. The overall money saved by my group because of this dwarf whatever pittance I can get later selling the books to Half Priced Books or a FLGS (many of which no longer buy used games and books).

True about collectables, which is why I still buy a small number of books in physical format. PDFs don't scratch the collectable itch for me though.

dbolack · 2026-04-25T21:14:08+0100

Remathilis said:
You know, that's a good point. During 3e"s era WotC put out a bunch of web supplements and adventures on their website, for free, in PDF. How many people still have all of those? How many people still USE them? How many people even remember them? You can find a lot of it on the wayback machine or stuffed in PDF troves, but I wager most people simply forgot they even existed.

Pour one out for Dragonfist

MNblockhead · 2026-04-25T21:16:34+0100

Imaro said:
So Im curious... are you aware of any ttrpg publishers that offer a pdf and a suite of tools like DDB? Not a gotcha just genuinely curious, because I can't think of a single one.

Plenty, if you include VTT systems. Cubicle7 sells physical books, a very well-developed Game System and formatted-for-VTT versions of their books for Foundry VTT, and they sell PDFs.
Same with Paizo (and they have good support for multiple VTTs).
Drawsteel offers printed books, PDFs, and has developed its own bespoke VTT.

Alzrius · 2026-04-25T21:18:43+0100

MNblockhead said:
What concerns me more is the ability to quietly revise or remove purchased content after the fact. Routine errata is one thing (fixing typos, clarifying wording, correcting mechanics). That doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is substantive editorial revision: changing or removing lore because it becomes controversial or draws enough backlash.

The Hadozee and Vistani revisions didn’t bother me much on their own, but the precedent did. The issue isn’t whether any one specific change was justified; it’s that customers are paying for access to a text that can be materially altered after purchase.

I trust you're aware about Teos Abadia's blog post about some of the other changes that were made to various texts a few years back?

MNblockhead · 2026-04-25T21:25:25+0100

Imaro said:
Uhm because one is a suite of integrated, automated tools and the other is a single tool?

Are you serious?! Warhammer Fantasy or Pathfinder in Foundry are not only integrated but have far more automation and DM QoL features than DnD Beyond.

In Foundry I have replaced all other digital and physical game aids. My Battlemat, character sheets, game management, campaign management, calendar, combat tracking, AOE automation, lingering effects and condition management, damage tracking, chat, loot management, and much more are ALL integrated an managed in a single Foundry game system.

And I can download and run on my own system offline if the internet goes down, if I'm playing an in person game.

And I can run multiple game systems in the same tool.

I really like DDB, but it is nowhere near the level of providing a full and integrated suit as the top VTTs.

SteveC · 2026-04-25T21:28:59+0100

MNblockhead said:
Yuck. I hate that so many TTRPG and software companies have moved their customer engagement and support to discord. While is can be useful to get quick responses if you go when a lot of people are online, it find it difficult to find and follow discussions. I find it a horrible medium for customer support. I've completely disengaged with a number of companies because I can't be bothered to fire up discord.

Agree 100%. DIscord is a fine way to have a discussion right now, but as something to look at even a week later? Almost impossible. And to find a discussion from six months ago? Might as well not even have happened.

And if I'm doing a search for an answer using a search engine? Miss all of it.

MNblockhead · 2026-04-25T21:37:46+0100

Alzrius said:
I trust you're aware about Teos Abadia's blog post about some of the other changes that were made to various texts a few years back?

Vaguely. This is one argument in favor of PDFs for sure. But I'm mainly playing Warhammer Fantasy these days. When you DO want errata and correction, PDFs are a pain. Having to regularly go back to DTRPG to download the new version of the PDF is annoying. But for those who care, they can then have the old and new versions of the book. I much prefer updating via Foundry and at least with Foundry you choose if and when you apply updates. The problem with Foundry, however, is that functional and content updates are in the same package. So you can't apply bug fixes to automations without also having any text changes applied. But, for those who care, you have the PDFs.

John Lloyd1 · 2026-04-25T23:21:25+0100

I feel we might be entering the realm of personality types. The horder vs the thrower.

...m... · 2026-04-25T23:56:47+0100

TheSword said:
A few folks have mentioned it but I just can’t see that WotC are going down the enshitification path, not even tiny baby steps.

...digital preorder exclusives are a baby step: want to buy one of those nice retailer-exclusive covers at your friendly local brick-and-mortar shop?..fine, but all the supplemental content is excluded unless wizards of the coast decides to sell it individually afterward, at a substantial premium, and in some cases (fated flight of the recluse, for example) it's not available for sale at any price unless you preordered the print book directly from DnDbeyond...