D&D Beyond Launches -- Electronic Tools For D&D Are Here!

D&D Beyond, the official online toolkit for 5th Edition D&D, is now live - just in time for Gen Con! With a character builder, online rules compendium, digital character sheet, and more, the software has been in beta testing for a while. D&D's relationship with electronic tools has never been an easy one -- Master Tools, Gleemax, DungeonScape all being failed initiatives - but D&D Beyond looks like it might be the one which actually breaks that curse.

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Here's their launch announcement:

This morning, we launched D&D Beyond - an official digital toolset for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition.

For over 40 years, Dungeons & Dragons has been bringing players together at tables all over the world. D&D Beyond, our new digital companion web app, aims to enhance the D&D experience by making game management easier by putting all of the game information you need to tell fantastic stories with your friends into a digital format, eliminating the need to manually search through books, and taking the load off of players through other features.

At launch, D&D Beyond offers a compendium with all the game rules, lore, and adventures, as well as sought-after tools like a character builder and an interactive digital character sheet. It’s built with official D&D content and the ability to create and add your own custom homebrew spells, magic items, and monsters. Groups can play with digital versions of every official D&D sourcebook within the compendium. They can build characters using all the material published by Dungeons & Dragons for fifth edition, while adding custom magic items or spells created using the homebrew system. That homebrew content can then be shared with the community for other players to use in their own games.

We never could have gotten to where we are without the incredible support of over 200 thousand beta testers. For all of the help, for enduring "Basic Rules only" content and the accompanying forum posts for all these months, we sincerely thank you. You have already built nearly 300 thousand characters and 25 thousand homebrew creations. You have shared feedback that has been vital to the development of the toolset, and we have taken great strides to build confidence that we not only listen to that feedback, but we move quickly to act on it when it's needed.Our team has an extensive roadmap for D&D Beyond, including implementing features such as a native mobile app, monster and encounter building, digital dice rolling, combat tracking, and much more. D&D Beyond is excited to continue to work closely with the D&D team at Wizards of the Coast to introduce all new adventures and rules material into the toolset, such as Tomb of Annihilation and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything coming this fall, the new mystic and artificer classes and other Unearthed Arcana playtest material, and Adventurers League support.

With the launch of the toolset, we are also excited to also unveil our new video and content initiative. We have a vision for DDB to be your hub for all things D&D - your companion both at the table and between sessions - whether you're looking up spells or watching Mike Mearls geek out about ogre magi. We'll tell the story of Dungeons & Dragons and help you play out your own D&D stories. We can't wait to see where all of it leads.

This truly is only the beginning for us and for what D&D Beyond will become in the upcoming weeks, months, and years. We welcome you to the adventure. Pack your gear and let's hit the trail!

Check it out over at the official website.

The pricing is subscription based, with costs ranging from $2.99 per month to $5.99 per month, depending on the features you require. You also buy official D&D content (rulebooks and adventures) for $24.99 for adventures and $29.99 for rulebooks, or you can engage in micropurchases and grab single classes, races, feats, monsters, etc. for $1.99 to $3.99. Full pricing info can be found here.

NOTE -- if you can't see the comments below, click here instead. For some reason they aren't showing for everybody.

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[ArwensDaughter]

2) you can undo xp/likes and laugh/hearts...

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

I have yet to figure out how to do so in the enworld app. Pointers would be appreciated.



Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app

 

[fjw70]

I have yet to figure out how to do so in the enworld app. Pointers would be appreciated.



Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app

I think you just tap the button again.

 

[kenmarable]

Has anyone done a video of an actual game session or even a tutorial for running adventures using DDB? I am really curious to see how it feels and how you "share" things with your players. (A search in youtube turned no results). Can you share a map on their screen? Are there tokens? Do you throw dice? Do you resolve the attack automatically (like FG)? Can you push "handouts" to them? I mean, other than a more functional, easier to read and navigate pdf, what exactly does it do? It's not that the "more functional pdf" isn't enough, it's just that I don't understand the "sharing" thing... If I buy an adventure on DDB do I still need to create / print maps, do my players have to use their phones or we could just create a "demo" player on a separate computer and use the TV monitor / projector as out battlemaps when we play in-person (like we do with roll20)?

A lot of those features sound like a virtual table top, but DDB is an online rules reference and character generator, not a VTT.

The "sharing" is content sharing, like sharing your books at the table. So if the DM buys the DMG and MM, a player buys PHB, and another player buys SCAG, and a third buys Volo's Guide, if you turn on content sharing in a campaign you are all linked to, then everyone in that campaign has access to all of those books in the compendium and in the toolset. (Just like if you had all of the books at the table they can be shared around.) That's what "sharing" means in this context.

Or in my case, my son's friends are just starting D&D, so I can create a campaign for all of them, and being able to afford books better than my teenage son and friends, I can share all of the books I buy with all of them. So, within D&D Beyond, they can have access to every book I purchase.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

And what's funny is that I used the aboleth as the monster when I was testing it out too! I guess it's lucky being at the start of the alphabet!

That is until they publish my homebrewed AAAboleth monster! (I also have a Famous Original Scorching Rays spell in the works.)

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Or in my case, my son's friends are just starting D&D, so I can create a campaign for all of them, and being able to afford books better than my teenage son and friends, I can share all of the books I buy with all of them. So, within D&D Beyond, they can have access to every book I purchase.

Actually it's even better than that. All those kids can have free accounts. Whoever is DM'ing can then create a campaign, invite their friends to it, and as long as you join as a player and have a Master Tier subscription, you can turn on sharing for them, even as a player. Then you can either play, or leave them to it.

The content sharing is absolutely one of the best parts of DDB. I couldn't afford the DMG or SCAG or Volo's. Last night, I was a player for once, and the DM bought TYP, SCAG & Volo's and another player bought the DMG. So now all of us have access to all of that and it's even shared in another campaign I run where those two players participate. So that's a total of 8 people getting the benefits from those purchased materials. That's amazing value. The Legendary Bundle is a bargain when you take that into consideration.

 

[Ricochet]

So, just found out something very neat and useful:

If you have started a campaign, you can link monsters, items, and spells in your private DM notes. Just use [monster][/monster], [item][/item], [magicitem][/magicitem], and [spell][/spell], and it will create tooltips and links to said monsters, items, and spells. So, while they don't have a full campaign or encounter builders yet, you can at least use this for the moment to link in a lot of important information into one place...

That is grand! Found the code for linking to homebrew stuff yet?

 

[jaycrockett]

I was impressed enough by the character builder and basic rules compendium to buy something to see what the content looks like. I bought Lost Mine Of Phandelver since I never got the starter set. It's...it's pretty cool. The links to all the monster stats and basic rules make it pretty useful. $15 seems pretty high, as $10 is about the most I'd normally pay for a PDF. But the fact that the compendium linking means I can run this as a complete game all from my tablet, that's pretty neat.
Now, the characters my kids have run include some PHB content not included in the basic set. I'm considering doing the crazy thing of buying those items piecemeal with the understanding I would probably pickup the PHB later. I think I'm only missing the illusionist sub class and a few spells they might have picked out.

 

[ddaley]

Lost Mine of Phandelver was a fun adventure. I wish they would release more adventures like that. That is a big reason I have started using the Next play test adventures. They are more inline with LMoP.

I was impressed enough by the character builder and basic rules compendium to buy something to see what the content looks like. I bought Lost Mine Of Phandelver since I never got the starter set. It's...it's pretty cool. The links to all the monster stats and basic rules make it pretty useful. $15 seems pretty high, as $10 is about the most I'd normally pay for a PDF. But the fact that the compendium linking means I can run this as a complete game all from my tablet, that's pretty neat.
Now, the characters my kids have run include some PHB content not included in the basic set. I'm considering doing the crazy thing of buying those items piecemeal with the understanding I would probably pickup the PHB later. I think I'm only missing the illusionist sub class and a few spells they might have picked out.

 

[Ricochet]

Lost Mine of Phandelver was a fun adventure. I wish they would release more adventures like that. That is a big reason I have started using the Next play test adventures. They are more inline with LMoP.

Crystal Shard, Dragonspear etc? Or what do you mean by Next play test adventures?

 

[ddaley]

Legacy of the Crystal Shard, Scourge of the Sword Coast, Murder in Baldur's Gate, etc.

I am running my group through Legacy of the Crystal Shard.

Crystal Shard, Dragonspear etc? Or what do you mean by Next play test adventures?