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.

 

[mamba]

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.

So the question then becomes 'how many people buy the books on DDB just so they can use them in the character builder' rather than 'how many people subscribe to DDB in order to get access to the books in DDB format' (since subscribing does not actually get you access in the first place, as I pointed out)...

 

[abazaba]

I must admit I am a little confused: as far as I understand, the situation for a free account and no subscription seems to be that you can have 6 characters active at a time (and can get new ones if you delete previous characters, as long as the total does not exceed 6) but you cannot add content from books you do not own ? Does this extend to the PHB ? Do you need to buy the PHB on DNDBeyond before you can create free characters from that book (or otherwise perhaps are restricted to options from the SRD) ? Or are the character options from the PHB for the purpose of character building included in the free account without the subscription, but you cannot get any content from any other books unless you buy those on DNDBeyond ?

 

[Umbran]

I must admit I am a little confused: as far as I understand, the situation for a free account and no subscription seems to be that you can have 6 characters active at a time (and can get new ones if you delete previous characters, as long as the total does not exceed 6) but you cannot add content from books you do not own ?

Correct. Owning content and having a subscrption are separate. And getting a subscrption does not add significant content.

If you don't own the content, someone who does have the proper level of subscription and the content can share it to you.

This is the primary driver of subscriptions - DMs get a subscription to share content they own with players, who don't need to have a subscription.

Does this extend to the PHB ? Do you need to buy the PHB on DNDBeyond before you can create free characters from that book (or otherwise perhaps are restricted to options from the SRD) ?

If you don't own the PHB, you have access to the Basic Rules content without a subscription.

 

[Echohawk]

the situation for a free account and no subscription seems to be that you can have 6 characters active at a time (and can get new ones if you delete previous characters, as long as the total does not exceed 6) but you cannot add content from books you do not own ?

Yes, that matches my understanding.

Does this extend to the PHB ?

Yes, it does. The Player's Handbook content is not free.

Do you need to buy the PHB on DNDBeyond before you can create free characters from that book (or otherwise perhaps are restricted to options from the SRD) ?

That's correct, only the options from the Basic Rules are available by default. You gain access to other content if you buy it (or unlock it for the handful of free titles) or if one of your characters joins a campaign of someone who shares their purchased content with you (that is how content sharing is implemented practically).

Or are the character options from the PHB for the purpose of character building included in the free account without the subscription, but you cannot get any content from any other books unless you buy those on DNDBeyond ?

The Player's Handbook content is not automatically unlocked just because you are a subscriber. Subscribing only gives you access to the content in the weekly/monthly Drops.

 

[abazaba]

@Umbran @Echohawk : Thanks, that makes sense. Not so confused anymore now.

 

[mamba]

I must admit I am a little confused: as far as I understand, the situation for a free account and no subscription seems to be that you can have 6 characters active at a time (and can get new ones if you delete previous characters, as long as the total does not exceed 6) but you cannot add content from books you do not own ? Does this extend to the PHB ? Do you need to buy the PHB on DNDBeyond before you can create free characters from that book (or otherwise perhaps are restricted to options from the SRD) ? Or are the character options from the PHB for the purpose of character building included in the free account without the subscription, but you cannot get any content from any other books unless you buy those on DNDBeyond ?

either you own them or someone with a higher tier subscription shares their content with you. Even without the PHB you still have the Basic Rules and therefore some character options, but clearly you should have access to the PHB one way (bought) or another (shared)

 

[jayoungr]

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.

I get that it's not a direct cause-and-effect situation, and I may not have stated my point particularly clearly. But I do think there might be correlation between getting a subscription for character building purposes and buying DDB books to help with the character building. So I do think there is potentially a link between those numbers, although, of course, we have no way of knowing how many people fall into this category.

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?

We'd have to ask someone who really enjoys the character building minigame whether they feel the subscription would be worthwhile in order to facilitate it. Much has been made in this thread about how cheap a subscription is, so I would not be shocked if adults with disposable income would be willing to pay it in order to get the increased active character limit.

I suppose someone might also want a large number of active characters in order to provide pregens for online con games and the like?

 

[saviirkad]

We'd have to ask someone who really enjoys the character building minigame whether they feel the subscription would be worthwhile in order to facilitate it. Much has been made in this thread about how cheap a subscription is, so I would not be shocked if adults with disposable income would be willing to pay it in order to get the increased active character limit.

I suppose someone might also want a large number of active characters in order to provide pregens for online con games and the like?

I have two players who love creating a substantial list of potential characters, like theory crafts, experimental builds, just for fun, you name it, they've got a dozen or more characters to fit it. And then every new game is a brand new character lol

One player subscribes and one player doesn't, and it really just comes down to one player having no issue juggling active characters and the other would rather just pay to not bother with that. The player who doesn't subscribe has an equally large library of characters, and just deactivates/reactivates as needed.

 

[Clint_L]

This is the primary driver of subscriptions - DMs get a subscription to share content they own with players, who don't need to have a subscription.

Yes. It's interesting, though because it doubles down on the traditional model of "DMs purchase 90% of the content." WotC has pointedly, repeatedly declared that they need to do a better job of incentivizing non-DMs to buy stuff, but they continue to struggle with that.

I'm not complaining, because I would buy the stuff anyway, and I am happy to share. But it's illustrative of why D&D is kind of a lousy business model that makes a tenth the money of Magic the Gathering, and I doubt that DDB is how the money is spread around, live service model or not. It's basically just adding another revenue stream on the back of DMs.

 

[Alzrius]

Yes. It's interesting, though because it doubles down on the traditional model of "DMs purchase 90% of the content." WotC has pointedly, repeatedly declared that they need to do a better job of incentivizing non-DMs to buy stuff, but they continue to struggle with that.

I agree, but in this case I think that their strategy is "get them in the door," i.e. to get players using D&D Beyond in the first place (by making it free to sign up and let the DMs share purchased content), with the idea that once they're part of the system it's easier to start enticing them to subscribe/purchase things than if they hadn't signed up in the first place.