Chris Cocks says it makes sense to move D&D to a "live service" model, but Hasbro will always make physical books

Chris Cocks isn't shy about plans to move Dungeons & Dragons to a more live service model of gaming. In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Cocks explicitly said that "it makes sense" for players to shift their mindset towards a live service due to the high amount of players using digital services, but assured the interviewer that books will still be produced by Hasbro. When asked if Wizards was moving away from books in favor of a more piecemeal release schedule, following the announcement of D&D Beyond's new Drops service. "Books will always be an important part of D&D," Cocks said. "It will always be kind of like a special totem that you can collect. I have a big bookshelf of D&D books myself."

"But we see what's happening – almost everyone who plays D&D uses D&D Beyond, like a super high percentage uses it," Cocks continued. "A very high percentage use Foundry VTT or Roll20, and so it just makes sense that you should start to migrate your thinking about the way you play to more of a live service where you don't have to wait 18 months for us to build a book. We can start to release components or aspects of that book over time, and you don't have to buy everything all at once. You can buy chapters or segments of it over time. That makes a ton of sense to me. That said we will still have big moments. We will still have like, 'hey, ta da, here's a huge campaign.' You can expect there'll be more around that, both from us and from all the creators in the world that can leverage a platform like D&D Beyond to share their content as well."

Broadly speaking, Dungeons & Dragons has always been a "live service" game, as the game's core business model involves continuously releasing new content in the form of new rulebooks or campaigns. However, it seems that Cocks is principally interested in shifting this model around more frequent releases. We'll note that the business model suggested by Cocks was already rolled out in a manner of speaking. The Dhampir species rules were released as a "digital DLC" for D&D Beyond subscribers who digitally ordered a Forgotten Realms book bundle, but a physical version of the rules are being released via the upcoming Ravenloft: The Horrors Within book. However, a la carte purchases were removed from D&D Beyond several years ago in order to force users to purchase entire books instead.

 

[Clint_L]

I firmly believe the gains of first-sale doctrine outcomes --- lending, libraries, secondary/second hand markets --- are practical good (and legal) beyond ideology, and that's what I dislike of subscription services (or, at least, digital subscription services, in that they don't produce a physical copy for you to lend/etc.). I can let my friends' kid borrow a bunch of D&D books (did it just 6-ish months ago) without jumping through any hoops or doing anything other than saying "sure, take the books", and I can pick up Super New Hotness Turbo from a used game store when it hits the price I want to pay for it after it's gone through a couple sets of hands. These are absolutely good things, I feel, and until the law catches up or the rights holders acquiesce and allow those activities across the board, digital subscriptions are a step down in consumer rights.

I agree with you on the "just because a corporation ..." part, though, absolutely --- I will just keep advocating for what I think is better, even if personally I'm thumbing my nose at the corp.

What you can't do is borrow a bunch of books from the library and then hand them away to your friend's kid, which seems like a more relevant analogy.

Though in the case of DDB, your friend's kid could just make a free account, join a campaign of yours even if not actually playing, and access any books you choose to share at any time. This is exactly what I do for the kids in D&D Club who aren't in my beginners campaign: I create a campaign for each of their groups, and then make al the books available to them. They are on summer vacation playing D&D through my DDB account even as we speak, all exactly as intended according to the DDB ToS.

It's an incredible value for 7 bucks a month. I'm sure some live service models suck. DDB ain't one of them.

 

[jayoungr]

since subscribing does not get you content in DDB format (other than Drops), I assume most people either subscribe for the char builder (probably a few) or so they can share their separately purchased DDB content with others (probably most of the subscribers)

Right, I know subscribing does not get you DDB content, but you do have to own content in DDB format in order to use it for the character builder, and you need a paid account to make more than a few characters.

 

[mamba]

Right, I know subscribing does not get you DDB content, but you do have to own content in DDB format in order to use it for the character builder, and you need a paid account to make more than a few characters.

In that case subscriptions are not relevant however. Should the question then be how many people buy DDB content because they want a digital format and that is the only one there is vs those that actually want that format?

 

[MichaelSomething]

Why argue subscription vs owning when EnPublishing gives you the best of both words?!? You can always sign up on their Patreon to get weekly doses of TTRPG goodness sent straight to your inbox! If you prefer physical, you can order their books to get shipped right to your door to keep forever! Everyones' a winner with EnPublishing!!

 

[abazaba]

Is speeding not illegal if I don't agree with the posted limits? Excellent!

This is great news ! And since I never agreed to the concept (or even acknowledged the existence) of taxes, I do not have to pay any of those !

 

[jayoungr]

In that case subscriptions are not relevant however.

Don't you have to have a subscription to have continued access to all your characters? Or at least to keep creating more of them beyond the limit of a free account?

The way I picture it (and I have never had a DDB subscription, so tell me if I've got this wrong) is this: You like experimenting with characters and character builds. So you subscribe to DDB so that you can build as many characters as you like and play around with different options. You also buy the books on DDB so that you have easy access to all the character creation material. Isn't that how it works?

 

[AlViking]

Don't you have to have a subscription to have continued access to all your characters? Or at least to keep creating more of them beyond the limit of a free account?

The way I picture it (and I have never had a DDB subscription, so tell me if I've got this wrong) is this: You like playing with characters and character builds. So you subscribe to DDB so that you can build as many characters as you like and play around with different options. You also buy the books so that you have easy access to all the character creation material. Is that correct?

You do have a limited number of characters but they do not delete existing ones, however they do "lock" them. You can unlock up to 6 (and of course lock ones you've unlocked) and you won't be able to create any more. You still have access to all your books you purchased of course, you just can't share them any more. Any custom content is not removed, but you can no longer add.

 

[jayoungr]

That's what I thought. So, for the sort of person who likes building characters, I can easily imagine them paying for the subscription and the books just because it makes it easy for them to do that.

 

[Umbran]

That's what I thought. So, for the sort of person who likes building characters, I can easily imagine them paying for the subscription and the books just because it makes it easy for them to do that.

I am mot the sort who incessantly builds characters, but as a practical matter, how many do you really need active at a given time?

D&DB allows you to export characters to pdf. So, you build it, fiddle with it for a while, then export it to free up the space without losing the information.

 

[mamba]

Don't you have to have a subscription to have continued access to all your characters? Or at least to keep creating more of them beyond the limit of a free account?

yes, if you want more than a handful of characters, you need to subscribe to keep them all around. Your initial statement however was

We also have no way of knowing how many people are subscribing primarily for DDB's character builder options rather than because they want all their content in DDB's format.

You do not need a subscription to own content in DDB format, in fact having a subscription is completely separate from owning content on DDB (apart from Drops). So the answer to how many people have a subscription so they can have DDB content is that zero do, as the two have nothing to do with each other.

The way I picture it (and I have never had a DDB subscription, so tell me if I've got this wrong) is this: You like experimenting with characters and character builds. So you subscribe to DDB so that you can build as many characters as you like and play around with different options. You also buy the books on DDB so that you have easy access to all the character creation material. Isn't that how it works?

Yes, if you want to build a ton of characters, you need a subscription. If you want to use the races / subclasses from certain books, you in addition need to own those books on DDB.

As the subscription only helps with the character limit and does nothing whatsoever for owning content in DDB format, I expect subscribers to essentially exclusively do so for the increased character limit.