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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
D&D Beyond Launches on August 15th for $3-6/m
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<blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 7720255" data-attributes="member: 40359"><p>But it is NOT just purchasing digital access to the same content. </p><p></p><p>Your book is a bunch of prose text. D&D Beyond takes that text and turns it into DATA. </p><p></p><p>It is parsing the information IN the text into something much more useful. It is not seeing a class chart on my computer screen rather than in a book. It is turning every single one of those class abilities into something a computer can understand so that I can create characters, and monster stat blocks into encounters, and so on. Turning prose text into data is a massive effort and so much more than just a digital copy. (Just consider entering all 400+ stat blocks from the Monster Manual into DDB compared to paying someone $20 to do it all for you, and it is suddenly looking like a great deal!)</p><p></p><p>If you don't want the parsed data and just want prose text, that's a very different issue than saying you shouldn't have to pay for the parsed data because you already own a copy of the prose text.</p><p></p><p>I see a lot of analogies being thrown around, and each one of course misses something. But in it's own weird way, the best I can think of at the moment to get my point across is that it's like buying a raw steak at the grocery store and then wondering why you have to pay a world class chef to prepare it. It's the same content, right?</p><p></p><p>If you want to cook it yourself, go right ahead. If you can't afford to eat at a fancy restaurant and pay the chef, that's unfortunate, but not unfair. But thinking that having to pay the chef for the steak is "borderline offensive" (to quote someone earlier in this thread) is simply absurd. </p><p></p><p>THAT is the "fairly straightforward concept" many people are missing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kenmarable, post: 7720255, member: 40359"] But it is NOT just purchasing digital access to the same content. Your book is a bunch of prose text. D&D Beyond takes that text and turns it into DATA. It is parsing the information IN the text into something much more useful. It is not seeing a class chart on my computer screen rather than in a book. It is turning every single one of those class abilities into something a computer can understand so that I can create characters, and monster stat blocks into encounters, and so on. Turning prose text into data is a massive effort and so much more than just a digital copy. (Just consider entering all 400+ stat blocks from the Monster Manual into DDB compared to paying someone $20 to do it all for you, and it is suddenly looking like a great deal!) If you don't want the parsed data and just want prose text, that's a very different issue than saying you shouldn't have to pay for the parsed data because you already own a copy of the prose text. I see a lot of analogies being thrown around, and each one of course misses something. But in it's own weird way, the best I can think of at the moment to get my point across is that it's like buying a raw steak at the grocery store and then wondering why you have to pay a world class chef to prepare it. It's the same content, right? If you want to cook it yourself, go right ahead. If you can't afford to eat at a fancy restaurant and pay the chef, that's unfortunate, but not unfair. But thinking that having to pay the chef for the steak is "borderline offensive" (to quote someone earlier in this thread) is simply absurd. THAT is the "fairly straightforward concept" many people are missing. [/QUOTE]
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D&D Beyond Launches on August 15th for $3-6/m
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