D&D 5E D&D Beyond Announcement?

[lkj]

Those would be nice features... but, are they "game changing?"

Well. It would be game changing in a literal sense. But I see you point

AD

 

[lkj]

My first thought was VTT. My second thought was a deal with DMSGuild. Pretty sure it isn’t the latter.

I’d be happy with either of those things.

Maybe they’ll be creating and selling some original adventures.

Not if you want to look at your character, or Homebrew items, etc. You only have the books, and navigation is sorely lacking in user friendliness.

So, on these topics, it's worth pointing to their public roadmap:

Trello

Organize anything, together. Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, know what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.

trello.com

There is a player app that is approaching beta. It will be separate from the ereader app that is currently available. To start with, it will have the ability to display character sheets and work offline.

Some sort of 'virtual tabletop' is definitely in their plans. But, at least right now, it's listed as a longer term goal. I will say that Adam keeps mentioning that when they do it, they won't call it a vtt because they expect their implementation to be 'next generation' and offer more than what's currently available.

You can kind of see the outlines of their long term vision. They've built a rules interface, with a character builder and such. They've added encounters. They are working on a combat tracker and virtual dice rolling. They will soon be developing a 'DM Screen' and 'Interactive Adventure Maps'.

It's pretty obvious (to me) that they are building out their platform from a 'reference and character building site' into a suite of tools for running games digitally. But they are doing it methodically and being cautious in making any promises.

AD

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Hopefully it’s that they finished work on the optional variant rules, and as a result we will be able to make homebrew optional variant rules.

or....we will be able to print things like monsters in a more manageable way, perhaps with print layout customization.

 

[Demetrios1453]

My first thought was VTT. My second thought was a deal with DMSGuild. Pretty sure it isn’t the latter.

I’d be happy with either of those things.

Maybe they’ll be creating and selling some original adventures.

Allowing for DMs Guild stuff would be pretty great. I would be very happy if content like the Monster Manuals Expanded would be available there.

 

[Umbran]

Those would be nice features... but, are they "game changing?"

I think it would change how you play the game, yes. If they have combat tracking up to, but not quite including, battlemap, such that the GM can say, "this monster effect impacts these targets" and have the damage and conditions and such show on the player-side sheets, and vice versa, yes, that'd be game changing.

I think they would have a screen real estate issue with doing that cleanly on tablets, but mayb ethey have something clever...

 

[ArwensDaughter]

I have yet to see the email, but others have said it specifically mentions "for subscribers." That piece leads me to believe it is likely to be an announcement of the release of the alpha for either the character sheet app or the Encounter Tracker. Both projects were close to alpha status (the sheet app already on internal alpha) and subscribers get access to the alphas of new features. (Once they go to beta, they are available to everyone)

 

[Oofta]

I think they're going to have a next generation virtual reality application where you put on a specially designed cap that actually does a mind link and sends you into the D&D world. It will be fantastic until you realize that if your PC dies in the game, you really die and no PC ever leaves their room.

Or integrated DM tools with better campaign design and monster tracking options. I think it's pretty much a tossup.

 

[OB1]

Crossing fingers for an encounter tracker. My next campaign starts up in two months and I'm dreading having to use a separate program for this like I did in the last campaign. That would certainly be a game changer for me.

 

[darjr]

Combat Tracker!!!

 

[darjr]

If your a subscriber you can get the combat tracker alpha