D&D Beyond executives explain why subscribers can't share Drops content

D&D Beyond executives claim that content sharing isn't enabled for their new Drops material because they want to make sure designers get paid. On Friday, D&D Beyond's executive producer Brian Perry and new head of Drops content Jay Jani answered questions on Reddit about D&D Beyond Drops, a new compendium of maps, images, and rules exclusive to D&D Beyond subscribers. Unsurprisingly, the biggest question on many users' minds were why Drops content wasn't sharable via the Master tier subscription like other material. In several posts, Perry stated that the reason was monetary in nature.

"We need to pay the great designers, artists, and developers working on D&D Beyond Drops," Perry said in a comment. "We also really think it's important to make the entire subscriber content library accessible to Hero Tier subscribers (as well as Master Tier). Not making Drops content eligible for content sharing was a necessary tradeoff to hit these goals."

However, given the amount of feedback among fans about making Drops content sharable among players, Perry said they were actively looking at alternative solutions. "With that said, I hear and really appreciate the feedback on being able to share Drops content with players in your group that don't have the disposable income for a Hero Tier subscription," Perry said. "The team is taking another look at the tradeoffs and considering other solutions."

 

[FrogReaver]

Exactly! They answer to shareholders in the end, and will make choices based on what brings them the most profit. Which is why I don‘t complain about those things. I simply take my money elsewhere.

I find enough complaining can give them a good answer to their shareholders about why they didn’t do something anti consumer… but what do I know.

 

[FrogReaver]

To me what this points toward a fractured d&d. I can’t think of any time that’s really ended well.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

“For June (subject to change) we plan to release:

• 4 Monsters
• 5 Maps
• 25 Reveals
• 6 Player Options”

any idea what ‘reveals’ are?

Reveals are Maps VTT thing. Basically art generally from the books that you can press a button to show to players.

 

[Nikosandros]

any idea what ‘reveals’ are?

Reveals are images that you can show to the players while running "Maps". A bit like the illustration booklets in some old AD&D adventures.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yes it is and no you can't. Capitalism necessarily exploits and commodifies everything for the sake of capital accumulation only. That is the bottom line and the only thing shareholders care about.

Mod Note:

Everyone, this is a site about playing RPGs. It’s not a proper venue for political discussions like the nature of capitalism.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Not marked yet. Drops is a very specific word, after all.

Roll20, FG and Foundry aren't using video game specific terms that have a loaded and incredibly negative history. WotC is. Its completely natural why

(also the way Foundry works and being on your PC does mean that, if it goes down, you've at least got something for all of that. Less so with Beyond)


No, I'm pretty sure most people aren't going to pay for a forum subscription just for access, especially when there's alternatives. Enough people didn't want to slap down their 5bux for Something Awful that it resulted in a few funny times around a certain game series, and that's just a one time payment

Sure sounds like one.

No, I do. Text files are kinda small? Low to mid traffic forums are pretty cheap to keep up and running, that's why there's so many of them out there. Things are different if, say, you're a mid 00s giant forum like Something Awful, but the existence of Facebook and other social medias means those days are long gone





Okay, real talk, it is really annoying to respond to these one-off little quote things as you tear apart an entire paragraph to quote individual sentences, and it really loses the context of the whole thing overall.


We're in a market where the biggest competitors to forums at the moment are free. These things have been around and free for over 20 years, and if you count their predecessors in newsgroups, even longer. People absolutely will not start paying out cash if something's been free for that long, and their assumption is that its free


Plenty of people are completionists. Its a legitimate question and concern, and 'pay to subscribe NOW to get this temporary thing before it goes away forever' is FOMO marketing that other games absolutely use.

A terminology synonymous with 'Temporarily availability to get people to join something for a reward' is going to.... Make people think of terminology involving temporary availability to get people to join something to get a reward. Why would I not assume the wording used in FOMO marketing is going to lead to FOMO situations?


The amount of money is irrelevant given we're talking about things that have been free for 20+ years and have competitors that are also free. Its a bit of a differnet situation and why for most forums, they'll charge for ad removal or other features, rather than access

Or, y'know, just be Something Awful and charge people to change other people's avatars, because nothing makes the cash roll in than silly hijinks.

If you do not want to pay, you do not have to pay.
NOthing changes. But if you get a hero tier subscription you get something.

I really do not understand why that annoys people.
If you want something, pay for it. I do pay for E world by supporting En5ider on Patreon. I don't even use most of that material. Only Zeitgeist adventure Path. Which I could have downloaded long ago.

To server cost. Each individual server/forum might be cheap. The sum of everything out there is high. AI especially is using up a lot of energy and resources. The extra load to the network in sum is high.
A paywall might reduce some of it.

Would also help keeping children out of too many social media.

So no April joke.

Edit! Sorry, did not see the moderation when I replied. I do not know if my post is OK or not. If it is not, just delete it.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Many of your posts confuse me. Why could a DM not say "no" if they don't want something allowed? You seem to dislike digital gaming, but if a player shows up at your game with a book that you don't want to use in your campaign, do you feel you have to allow it, since they have access to it?

Like, what do you think has changed in terms of the DM's ability to decide what they will allow in their games? It's not like the WotC police will show up at your house and require you to let the player use the thing you don't want.

The metaphor doesn’t work. It’s not like saying “hey, you can’t use Strixhaven in our Forgotten Realms game”. It’s like having new pages show up in the Players Handbook automatically. These aren’t options players select, they’re added automatically. So players feel like of course this stuff is allowed until a DM has to explicitly exclude it.

This is the reason so many complained about Silvery Barbs. It wasn’t because the spell itself is busted. It’s because anyone who had it didn’t even remember what book it was from and DDB didn’t have (and doesn’t have I don’t think) a good way for a DM to filter material at the book level.

So now WOtC is adding lots of new stuff and thr DM is the bad guy for saying “yeah, no”.

I’m glad you have no problem with any of this. I do and so do many others.

 

[EthanSental]

I’m lucky that in my 35 or so years of gaming, it was an easy conversation on what was cool to play or not allow. Seems like enough people have had issues but it all comes down to communication in the group.

 

[FrogReaver]

I really do not understand why that annoys people.
If you want something, pay for it.

Who has said they don’t want to pay for something?

The complaint appears to be that this is the start of a direction where there won’t be anything left they want to pay for, where group dynamics around what content is usable is less easy to declare upfront, where finding groups becomes more difficult due to this, where your not buying anything but instead you are renting it till the provider closes down shop or bans you.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Who has said they don’t want to pay for something?

The complaint appears to be that this is the start of a direction where there won’t be anything left they want to pay for, where group dynamics around what content is usable is less easy to declare upfront, where finding groups becomes more difficult due to this, where your not buying anything but instead you are renting it till the provider closes down shop or bans you.

Yeah. That is quite some heavy extrapolation from a single point of data.