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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.

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.

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ArwensDaughter

Adventurer
Is the "export character sheet" feature broken or am I doing it wrong? All I get is a PDF of a blank character sheet.

Are you working on an iPad or iPhone? There's a bug/issue with how iOS devices handle form fillable pdfs--not just those from DDB--that makes them appear empty. I've heard that the adobe's app for iOS will display them properly. I've had the same problem with fillable pdfs from other sources and have usually resorted to saving them on Dropbox and opening them on a computer, although I think one of my iOS apps that can display pdfs handles them right, but I don't remember which one.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app
 


This is awesome, thank you. Any idea if you can do this for a homebrew monster you created?

I didn't try it with a homebrew monster I created, but attempted to link to a monster from the "official" hombrew listing on the site; unfortunately it doesn't appear to link to homebrew at the moment (unless they are using some word in the brackets that I can't figure out - besides the normal [monster], I tried both [homebrew] and [hombebrewmonster] to no avail...)
 

fantasmamore

Explorer
There's gotta be an android emulator out there. It's probably even available from Google as part of their app development tools.

There is, I don't remember the name now, but I used something about a year ago (and it was running natively on mac). It was really slow and I remember that my computer was struggling afterwards, so I had to restart after every use. But that doesn't mean anything, there might be a better solution in the future or I will someday buy a new computer. The thing is that if you don't have install files and the updates with the purchased content for D&DB, you won't be able to use it. (At least I think so, I bought Neverwinter Nights 2 on the Mac App Store, then for some reason the game was withdrawn and nowhere to be found in the store but I could still download and install it through my purchase history. I don't know if the same thing could happen on Play Store).
 

fantasmamore

Explorer
Demo game?

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)?
 

dropbear8mybaby

Banned
Banned
There are plenty of perfectly legal tools.

Read the quote again and then ask yourself what "most of what D&D Beyond" actually constitutes. Because the character creator is a very, very tiny part of it. About 90% of it is content that would be illegal to have in any free, unlicensed tool.
 



fjw70

Adventurer
Are you working on an iPad or iPhone? There's a bug/issue with how iOS devices handle form fillable pdfs--not just those from DDB--that makes them appear empty. I've heard that the adobe's app for iOS will display them properly. I've had the same problem with fillable pdfs from other sources and have usually resorted to saving them on Dropbox and opening them on a computer, although I think one of my iOS apps that can display pdfs handles them right, but I don't remember which one.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app

The sheets were fine when I transferred them over to PDF Expert.
 

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