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.

 

[Maxperson]

I thought NAS was a rapper.

Only the 10th one.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I was lambasted for liking Soth novels in tge Ravenloft stream. Here peopke are being lambasted for wanting the brand to be an honest one. Is that not one of the factor the MTGA are fighting over? Brand stability?

I don't think people were mad at you for liking Soth Novels. I think they were more annoyed about how puritan you were.

 

[Echohawk]

Again, no different than the old Dragon magazine that ran from 1976 - 2007 in print, and to 2013 digital when it was replaced by Dragon+.
How many subclasses, spells, items, monsters, rules, etc. were introduced during the lifetime of the publication? And it was a monthly drop at that. What WotC is doing now is certainly retreading the neddle, so to speak.

I know that was a rhetorical question, but I totally failed my save against answering. I haven't counted the other items, but there were 2506 new monsters introduced during the lifetime of Dragon magazine (including The Strategic Review and the digital releases). Perhaps more relevant to this thread is that a significant number of those monsters were reprinted in later game products; not quite a majority, but arguably the majority of the quality monsters. A much smaller number of (dare I say mostly forgettable) monsters only ever appeared in Dragon.

Given that history, it seems likely that popular content Drops will appear in print products. WotC can presumably measure the popularity of each content item, so if buzzing bees is being chosen by a lot of subscribers' spellcasters, adding that spell to an appropriate print product seems like an obvious move. When that happens there will be inevitably be complaints about subscriber-only perks being diluted because of course there will.

 

[Parmandur]

I know that was a rhetorical question, but I totally failed my save against answering. I haven't counted the other items, but there were 2506 new monsters introduced during the lifetime of Dragon magazine (including The Strategic Review and the digital releases). Perhaps more relevant to this thread is that a significant number of those monsters were reprinted in later game products; not quite a majority, but arguably the majority of the quality monsters. A much smaller number of (dare I say mostly forgettable) monsters only ever appeared in Dragon.

Given that history, it seems likely that popular content Drops will appear in print products. WotC can presumably measure the popularity of each content item, so if buzzing bees is being chosen by a lot of subscribers' spellcasters, adding that spell to an appropriate print product seems like an obvious move. When that happens there will be inevitably be complaints about subscriber-only perks being diluted because of course there will.

I really ckon you are quite right.

 

[AlViking]

You buy a NAS. It is a box that you can slide 2 or more hard drives into. You install software on your computer. You plug it in and run the the software.

You do not need to have any skill other than, perhaps, a google search.

I really don't get it, sorry. A quick search tells me that a NAS shell costs at least $200 before you get the hard drives - I bought a 1 TB drive a while back and it cost a little over $150, so over $500 for the whole setup for most people if you want to set up RAID. For 1 TB. If you want to share your files with multiple devices or set up a public folder to share with others you have to have another provider for that (something I've ever looked into).

For the same amount of money you can get an online backup for years. No maintenance, no hassle, far less risk. With an online backup service your data will be stored offsite in a hardened location, have geographically distributed copies, your data is encrypted and secured so you don't have to, I can get my data anywhere I have an internet connection and get it on multiple devices. I get services like an archive of my files and a clear record of what I recently deleted and a way to recover that deleted data. Most important to me is that if my house burns down*, someone breaks into my house and grabs whatever looks expensive, there's a tornado or flood my data in the backup server will still be safe, not to mention the inevitable hardware failures. About the only downside is that I am reliant on having an internet connection to access my files, but the things I need day to day are replicated to my local machine(s) so it's not an issue.

I'm not going to reject an online service for philosophical reasons, and I don't see much of any other reason to do so. I simply see no upside to having a NAS other than it might give me a warm fuzzy to see my data sitting on my desk. To bring it back on topic, I'm not going to reject DDB simply because it gives me a warm fuzzy to see my books sitting on a shelf.

*A couple years back while we were on vacation our water heater developed a small gas leak which we only discovered when we went into the basement. We were lucky our house didn't simply blow up.

 

[SothFan]

Stop Destroying Roleplaying Games

Make Adventuring Great Again?
(AP stands for Adventure Path, correct?)

 

[SothFan]

I don't think people were mad at you for liking Soth Novels. I think they were more annoyed about how puritan you were.

SothFan(atic)
Fanatic, the root word.

 

[VashVet]

I still don’t understand why people think using DDB is solving the same problem as determining how to store one’s digital data. I cannot store my pdfs on DDB. I cannot legally take DDB data and store it on a NAS. These are different things.

 

[AlViking]

I’m still don’t understand why people think using DDB is solving the same problem as determining how to store one’s digital data. I cannot store my pdfs on DDB. I cannot legally take DDB data and store it on a NAS. These are different things.

The NAS discussion was raised as an example of "I don't like any online services so here's what I do." Or maybe I'm just as confused as you are as to why people think they're relevant to the discussion.

 

[Belen]

I really don't get it, sorry. A quick search tells me that a NAS shell costs at least $200 before you get the hard drives - I bought a 1 TB drive a while back and it cost a little over $150, so over $500 for the whole setup for most people if you want to set up RAID. For 1 TB. If you want to share your files with multiple devices or set up a public folder to share with others you have to have another provider for that (something I've ever looked into).

For the same amount of money you can get an online backup for years. No maintenance, no hassle, far less risk. With an online backup service your data will be stored offsite in a hardened location, have geographically distributed copies, your data is encrypted and secured so you don't have to, I can get my data anywhere I have an internet connection and get it on multiple devices. I get services like an archive of my files and a clear record of what I recently deleted and a way to recover that deleted data. Most important to me is that if my house burns down*, someone breaks into my house and grabs whatever looks expensive, there's a tornado or flood my data in the backup server will still be safe, not to mention the inevitable hardware failures. About the only downside is that I am reliant on having an internet connection to access my files, but the things I need day to day are replicated to my local machine(s) so it's not an issue.

I'm not going to reject an online service for philosophical reasons, and I don't see much of any other reason to do so. I simply see no upside to having a NAS other than it might give me a warm fuzzy to see my data sitting on my desk. To bring it back on topic, I'm not going to reject DDB simply because it gives me a warm fuzzy to see my books sitting on a shelf.

*A couple years back while we were on vacation our water heater developed a small gas leak which we only discovered when we went into the basement. We were lucky our house didn't simply blow up.

You must not have a lot to store. It would cost me 30/month to store my data which will get data mined by the corporations. The NAS pays for itself in 18 months.

Also, was that 1tb plated in gold? A 4tb wd red costs 150 right now and those prices are elevated because of the AI BS. You can get those drives for lower.

Cloud is ok but subject to its own data security issues. Also, most no longer store data backups in secure geo-locations.