NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 9410940" data-attributes="member: 6801228">You keep presenting the idea that they are going to market their new product as somehow sinister or dangerous.The rules are the product that WoTC is selling. They are the thing that will "dovetail" into how the VTT is run according to you. So your fear is either that WoTC is going to change the rules (which is something you keep insisting they will do to support the VTT) or that people will change how they play DnD... which is an especially bizarre take for you to be ringing the warning bells about.But if they don't allow the VTT to support custom and homebrew content, then their efforts to "monetize the game through a recurrent spending environment" dies a sad and pathetic death before it even draws its first breath. Because OTHER VTTs allow that. So if they want to offer a premium, high dollar product to get people hooked into a paid subscription but offer a product that is inferior to other FREE products, then they will crash and burn because no one with any knowledge of the VTT community will ever go for it. That is a false endpoint. I still use both my Kindle and Google Docs. I just can't use Google Docs on my Kindle, instead I use my cellphone and my computer. You keep claiming the sunk-cost fallacy will link people to the WotC VTT forever, but you can't articulate what they are actually getting beyond "it will look really cool, with bells and whistles". That isn't enough. Not if it is going to lack basic functionality that I can get from six other major VTTs FOR FREE. Because a free discord bot is different than cracking your Iphone open and changing the hardware? Do you somehow think that the Avrae bot will somehow stop functioning in the future and will be unable to work?Um... probably a lot of them? Talespire isn't set up for mechanics, it is purely the aesthetics as far as I know. So everyone using it is importing mechanics. And sure, WoTC doesn't need to capture the totality of the fanbase, but your concern seems to be "digital tools will change the culture of play to emphasize rules over creativity"... and my dude, it is so far too late to stop a large portion of DnD from having a "rules over creativity" mind-set. We are the community that coined the terms "Rules as Written" and "Rules as Intended". This isn't a concern. And having fancy flashing lights and fun sounds isn't going to be enough to wrench people away from doing what they want with the rule set.How will they do that? You just claimed above that they aren't going to be removing the rules you are concerned about. So what sort of "dovetailing" are you talking about? Heck, you've put forth that the very idea of the rules changing isn't your point. I am quantifying "incredibly common" as: I do not believe there is a single VTT on the market that does not allow for custom content to be put into their digital environment. A full zero percent of them lack this function. Why do I think WoTC will allow what every single VTT allows? Because every single VTT allows it, and their product (D&D) is BUILT on the idea of making your own stuff, of modifying your own game. it doesn't matter if it will be a little harder to do, because it is ALREADY a little harder to make custom things than to use what is in the book. The creation process of homebrew material is the hardest possible part of it. Typing it into a box in a VTT is trivial in comparison. I know, because I have done it.</blockquote>

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