D&D Beyond Launches on August 15th for $3-6/m

$3/ month isn't that bad. And you really only need it if you want to use homebrew.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

What I would LOVE to see, but won't be holding my breath for . . . . bundled deals that would include multiple ebook formats (PDF, EPUB, web-based), D&D Beyond integration, and Fantasy Grounds/Roll20 integration. I would love to purchase Tales of the Yawning Portal online, get a PDF, and have the book unlocked on D&D Beyond and Fantasy Grounds. I'd pay full price for that! Having these deals available through the DM's Guild store would be pretty awesome too. Hell, if Curse could get D&D Beyond on STEAM, like Fantasy Grounds has, that would probably move a few sales their way!

I just want to say first that this is not directed at you, Dire Bare, but this was a good overall comment to use.

What a lot of people here wanting, complaining, whining, etc, about this seem to forget is that this would involve WotC and THREE different companies that WotC has no ownership of. They are only licensing the game material to those companies. While I am sure their approval is needed before anything goes live, they cannot just tell these other three companies to work together. Maybe if everyone had gotten their licensing deals at the same time, something could have been included to that effect, but I am sure at least one, or even all three, would have said no to this because they may feel it would hurt their profits.

As for D&D Beyond in general, I am not going to put money into it right away. I am going to wait and see what the offline functionality is like. Will it only let me have the program and purchased material active on one device at a time? Or will it let me have it downloaded and usable on multiple devices at the same time? Will being usable on multiple devices be done as part of the $6 rate, the same as with sharing purchased material with 11 other users? Or will we be able to do that at the $3 rate or even the free membership? If this system is included, I would have no need ever for a pdf of the 5E books.

 

[Caliban]

What does D&D beyond give me that I don't already have in my book, or can get from free on the internet? What makes it worth paying for?

Honest question, I've pretty much completely ignored it up until now.

 

[fantasmamore]

Why?

Because my players want to just "play" the story. They don't want to read hundreds of pages or learn rules or search for ways to optimize their characters. They just come to the table, take their character sheets and we begin our adventure. I am not sure that they know the name of the system that we play when it's not D&D.

The only thing that I need to know from them is how they imagine the characters (race, if they have spells or if they are good with weapons, if they wear heavy armor etc), their background (what they did before the adventure begins) and when they level up (if there is a choice) I just ask them which one they prefer.

It's more work for me but on the other hand they don't behave as most players do. They think out of the box simply by not knowing that the box exists. Less meta-gaming, more roleplaying, it is fun!

 

[JeffB]

Because my players want to just "play" the story. They don't want to read hundreds of pages or learn rules or search for ways to optimize their characters. They just come to the table, take their character sheets and we begin our adventure. I am not sure that they know the name of the system that we play when it's not D&D.

The only thing that I need to know from them is how they imagine the characters (race, if they have spells or if they are good with weapons, if they wear heavy armor etc), their background (what they did before the adventure begins) and when they level up (if there is a choice) I just ask them which one they prefer.

It's more work for me but on the other hand they don't behave as most players do. They think out of the box simply by not knowing that the box exists. Less meta-gaming, more roleplaying, it is fun!

Understood. I am in the exact same situation with my "kids" group...all 17/18 yo. They dont care about the rules, leveling, reading the books. Its like "monopoly" to them..we get together, play, but they don't get invested in it..and thats OK. we have fun. All that matters.

 

[jimmifett]

It's a one-time buy and it's yours thing for many of the elements you're talking about. You don't need the subscription. The subscription is for some things, but the one-time buy for the aspects you're talking about does in fact work that way with this product. They even explain how you don't even need an internet connection once you own most of the elements involved - you buy it, you download it, it's yours. I admit, that's not completely clear however from this announcement text.

Not quite. What i'm envisioning is you buy a book. It has scratch off to reveal QR code.

Scan code and register to your account on a site.
You then have option to pay $5-15 to unlock all digital forms of the content at once. FG, rollCrappy, Hero Forge, PDF, and for wotc, Beyond.
Or perhaps $2-5 for each digital option. All managed from one place. Wotc got their full cut of the book, and maybe lets say 20-33% of the digital option cut.

It advances the dead tree model by supplying the digital without ripping off the consumer.

Win all around.

This is of course all predicated on buying the book. If you don't have the book, normal price for digital stuff. It's basically subsidizing the digital content for having already made a dead tree purchase.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

If I keep running 5e after the current game is over I'll definitely be looking into this. Price isn't that bad and it looks like a functional product.

 

[Satyrn]

What does D&D beyond give me that I don't already have in my book, or can get from free on the internet? What makes it worth paying for?

Honest question, I've pretty much completely ignored it up until now.

Well, it's essentially digital version of the books, so you're not getting more content than you would from the books. So, you get what digital gives you: it all fits on your phone, tablet laptop, rather than a bookshelf full (or half full since there aren't that many books) and a robust search engine and filters to help to navigate and sort the material much better and quicker than you could shuffling through your books.

And compared to what you can already get online: You can get all the content legally, not just the basic rules and odds and ends like the elemental evil guide.

But if you've already been buying this stuff through Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, You're not really getting anything new as far as I can tell.


Here's the big selling point for me, and I think this will work: If I was to buy Curse of Strahd through this, I would run it off my tablets (because I already use multiple tablets for DMing my homebrew adventures) and never need to buy the book itself.

 

[Lichemaster]

Hey, at least take a moment to read the briefest amount about what you're commenting about. This is not a PDF product. You're in the wrong thread.

Also, WOTC has no public shares - they're a wholly owned subsidiary of Hasbro. No matter what happens to Hasbro stock, it will never have an impact on the flexibility of the D&D team.

I still hope it fails and your characters dies next session

 

[lkj]

Well, it's essentially digital version of the books, so you're not getting more content than you would from the books. So, you get what digital gives you: it all fits on your phone, tablet laptop, rather than a bookshelf full (or half full since there aren't that many books) and a robust search engine and filters to help to navigate and sort the material much better and quicker than you could shuffling through your books.

And compared to what you can already get online: You can get all the content legally, not just the basic rules and odds and ends like the elemental evil guide.

But if you've already been buying this stuff through Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, You're not really getting anything new as far as I can tell.


Here's the big selling point for me, and I think this will work: If I was to buy Curse of Strahd through this, I would run it off my tablets (because I already use multiple tablets for DMing my homebrew adventures) and never need to buy the book itself.

You do get the character builder, neither of which FG or Roll20 do well (it's not their purpose. so not a complaint). And roll20 isn't much for smaller screens. And if they eventually get a good export working for roll20 and FG, it'd be a nice enhancement of those two platforms. I also find the search features and organization better than the compendium on roll20. Haven't played around much with FG lately, though I do have some data for that platform.

Probably worth pointing out that it's really intended as a game aid at the table and not a VT. So while there is overlap with roll20 and FG, they're kind of perpendicular to one another feature wise.

AD

 

[guachi]

If you can't afford that, then you obviously have bigger issues in your life than 'having D&D in the most accessible, sortable, searchable, networkable interface possible' and should spend your time fixing those instead.

You want things for free. Sorry. Life isn't free.

So you're volunteering to pay for my subscription then? I mean, if you can't afford TWO STARBUCKS COFFEES A MONTH then you obviously have bigger issues in your life. How many Starbucks coffees does something have to cost before you stop being a smarmy jerk about it?