D&D 5E D&D Beyond - Adventures

Baumi

Adventurer
Since D&D Beyond already has the Tomb of Annihilation, I would be interested to see how Adventures look in this Service. But I could find no Video (only found useless Marketing or Character Builder ones) or free Adventure to get a good look.

So could anyone describe the posibilities and differences compared to the books or even make (or link to) a video to showcase this?

One specific Question: Can you make your own Notes in the Chapters, like you could in a PDF or with StickyNotes in a Book?
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Baumi

Adventurer
Just curios if anyone now had the chance to read the new Tomb of Annihilation on D&D Beyond and tell us about their Experience with it..
 


dropbear8mybaby

Banned
Banned
My biggest complaint is navigation. Not having the contents of the entire book available within the chapter pages (each chapter is on a single page that you scroll down and has a floating index on the left but only for things within the chapter) linked is very annoying. Having to either have the contents page open as its own tab or having to go back to it to get to another chapter is frustrating.

The worst thing, though, by far, is not being able to limit a search to within a particular book. The only search option is Ctrl + F within each chapter or the global search. Neither of which are satisfactory when you don't know exactly which chapter something is or you just want to search to see if something is in it or not.

The next complaint I have is that there isn't enough linking within documents to things that need to be referenced. There is a lot of linking, just not as much as their should be.

With those issues in mind, I still think it's excellent value. For $24.99 USD, I honestly don't understand how people can complain about it. If you're interested in digital versions at all then I think getting it is a no-brainer. The maps alone are worth the price.
 

Baumi

Adventurer
Thanks!

Not having a PDF is a big disadvantage, so it's understandable why people complain, but it's great to see that it works fine. 8D

Anyway one important question is still open .. can you make Notes in the individual Chapters (like annotating a PDF-Page)?
 

Charles Rampant

Adventurer
Supporter
I picked up the DDB version of Storm King's Thunder this week, in large part because its chapter on the North is a very useful resource to have on my computer when doing game prep (I also got Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide for the same reason). I had a look at the adventure itself, and also had it open during play. They don't have a lot of promo material for this, as you note, but then it's not really all that 'sexy'; what you get is a series of pages on the site, accessed via Compendium -> Adventures, and those pages have the full text and images from the book, presented like any other webpage with navigation tools, hyperlinks, and lots of scrolling. As it's a website, you can copy/paste the text freely, adjust the font size in your settings, and access it from any device with internet access. The images can also be downloaded, but they are undeniably more attractive in the book than when inserted into a webpage. That's kind of the extent of the adventure; the other stuff - monsters, magic items, whatever - also get unlocked if you go for the full book price, but you'll already have opinions on those parts of the website, I reckon.

Would I recommend buying adventures on the site? That's tough to answer. For reference, I own every 5e book, including adventures, and run my games at home with them all on a bookshelf next to my chair. I also like books. Thus I find it hard to justify buying them all again in an electronic format. That said, the DDB versions are well done, easy to use, and - unlike a PDF or whatever - don't require special apps to open and restrict your ability to interact with the text and art. You can link to them in your notes files, and, if like me you run your games from an iPad, that's damn handy (e.g. "The players might decide to go to Amphail; if they do, they'll meet..."). You should also consider that the adventures are much cheaper on DDB - about twenty quid rather than forty, for me.

Overall, I'd suggest that it will depend a lot on how you do your game prep and how you like to access information. I think that it's a solid alternative to the book, not least because it's cheaper, but I personally bought Tomb of Annihilation in physical form regardless. I would also say that it's a nice tool to have alongside the physical book, but that it's harder to justify on those grounds, especially without an encounter builder pre-loaded or anything similar.

I hope that this helps, and sorry that I don't have a video to show you!
 


HawaiiSteveO

Blistering Barnacles!
As I mentioned in another post, with Adobe Acrobat Standard DC I can edit, comment, highlight, delete whole pages, print PDF etc.

I really like the DDB version, although I'm starting wonder how many tabs I can have open at the same time :confused:

At this point, think I'll review online and only print sections I'll be using each session rather than whole thing. Will be nice to write in it, highlight, make notes etc which I wouldn't do in book usually.

One drawback is I don't get poster map, got rough quote to have printed at office supply place just under $25 yikes!
 


Charles Rampant

Adventurer
Supporter
One drawback is I don't get poster map, got rough quote to have printed at office supply place just under $25 yikes!

Yeah, that's what I found about D&D maps - you can get them printed out professionally, but it'll cost you. At $25, you start to wonder how much the rest of the book is worth to you!

It's worth noting that you can print out poster maps at home - what you need to do is use Adobe Acrobat (Schley's maps come in PDF which helps a lot with this), then select 'Poster' as the printing type in the dialog box. I recently used this method to print out Death House from Curse of Strahd, and the quality was perfect; you just need to trim the edges. Of course, you'll need to pay for printer ink, which is a non-zero cost by itself...
 

Voidrunner's Codex

Remove ads

Top