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."

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I get what you're saying, but let's see what they come up in response to the concerns raised in the AMA. They've already acknowledged the elephant in the room, and have said they will look at alternatives. Personally, I liked the suggestion of one-time bundles for those items that don't make it to books, or making the player options shareable by Master subscription. They have also said they don't care if people share the player options as Homebrew within a campaign and encouraged us to do so while they decide how to move forward.

I just want to say, in addition to all this;

1. No one is losing anything. if you have a sub already, you keep your stuff put out before this even if you unsub.

2. This broadens what they can do with dnd design, allows things to see daylight that were never going to be in a book, allows more people to see their design work being used by players and in turn gives more opportunities to designers and artists.

An increase in maps, tokens, reveals, etc, means more working artists. And increase in experimental game elements means more designers being paid to make dnd stuff.

That is awesome. and yeah, they have to pay for that increase in work. That isnt even a corpo thing it is just...the world. Short of The Federation'Federation's post scarcity utopia, even in proposed IRL socialist systems, folks gotta get paid for their work.

 

[Selas]

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

Had they marketed this as the new version of Dragon Magazine (or Dragon+), a lot of the flak would've been avoided. Drops essentially offers the same type of content Dragon used to do during it's run.

 

[Hatmatter]

There's an almost infinite amount of content available for D&D.

If WotC publishes some content only in Beyond it may as well not exist for me or my table and that's fine. If a player wants to use it they can send me a screenshot and I'll decide if I allow it but that's it.

I still don't understand what's so alarming about all this.

Agree entirely.

 

[SothFan]

producing content rapidly is actually a labor-intensive thing to do

@doctorbadwolf

more working artists

Someone said that a few of the maps were from an old archive. If they are only adding old maps from previous websites, then it is less time and cost. They are just charging for re-used maps.

 

[Dire Bare]

Had they marketed this as the new version of Dragon Magazine (or Dragon+), a lot of the flak would've been avoided. Drops essentially offers the same type of content Dragon used to do during it's run.

I'm all in on the new "drops" content, but . . .

Dragon Magazine wasn't simply a collection of player options and maps, the various articles in the magazine also had lore, and lots of it. For me, all of that was better than the "crunchy bits", although I loved that stuff too.

 

[Shiroiken]

Last year?

Might have been 2 years ago or even more (I'm old and lose track of time easily). Whenever it was that they determined that D&D was under monetized and discussed some ideas that created a bunch of backlash among the fans. IIRC, this was the backlash that led to the creation of the Creative Commons. I could easily be forgetting a bunch of important details (I'm old dammit!), but that's the general gist that I remember.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

@doctorbadwolf


Someone said that a few of the maps were from an old archive. If they are only adding old maps from previous websites, then it is less time and cost. They are just charging for re-used maps.

So you took "someone said some" and translated it to "it is definitely true that all"?

You dont find that absurd?

 

[SothFan]

So you took "someone said some" and translated it to "it is definitely true that all"?

You dont find that absurd?

Can we prove any are new maps? Are we sure they were not sitting on hard drives from those 1100 fired in 2023?

Already completed work is not hiring or paying anyone new. Just upload the file to a directly, flag it as a drop/map. Make the data team work for their pay rather than sit around and wait fir the designers to write a new book in 6 months to add.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think there's a possibilty that WotC will see backlash from this and alter course almost immediately,

I would honestly be surprised if there was that much backlash. While there's a lot of complaining by diehards about "paywalled content," in reality all they've done is provide more for a service that some people are already buying. The fact that they're using a subscription model for parts of Beyond hasn't changed; if you didn't have a problem with it before, you shouldn't have a problem with it now.

or soon find out that producing content rapidly is actually a labor-intensive thing to do, so it will peter out quickly.

I think this is much more likely. I suspect the drops will become infrequent, and while a nice benefit to people who already subscribe to Beyond, not enough of an incentive to bring that many new, regular subscribers. I would imagine that most will subscribe for a month or so to copy the information, then cancel their subscription. I'm considering that to get the maps to use in my Roll20 campaign.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Might have been 2 years ago or even more (I'm old and lose track of time easily). Whenever it was that they determined that D&D was under monetized and discussed some ideas that created a bunch of backlash among the fans. IIRC, this was the backlash that led to the creation of the Creative Commons. I could easily be forgetting a bunch of important details (I'm old dammit!), but that's the general gist that I remember.

It was Winter 2022 almost 3 and a half years ago. With an entirely different leadership