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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jan van Leyden" data-source="post: 4669187" data-attributes="member: 20307">Yes to your first question: That or you pay for a one month access to DDI (let's call it "installation fee" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />), re-install and update the whole stuff.No to your second question: The software is designed to let you access a paid-for service. You may opt out of this service and running the risk of losing your data your recieved as part of this service."Thwarting" sounds a lot like "the evil Wizards actively try to enforce people to remain subscribers or else..." But it's just a paid service you can use even after you subscription has expired. Try that with WoW! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />Sorry Mark, it was not my intent to put this on a personal level. It's rather that I'm a bit fed up with this argument that your DDI subscription/access buys you something in the traditional sense. This is not the case.It buys you a service. It's the idea of buying a service which some people seem to have problems with. And this is something I frankly don't understand. Last time I rode a bus in my hometown, the bus ticket didn't buy me the bus, but maybe that's different in the US. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" />The group you envision has two options within the DDI model:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">They could use the CB as usual, making backups and disk images to ensure that CB survives computer break-downs and changes. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">They could use the CB as usual, buying a one onth subscription to DDI if their hardware fails them or they change to a new computer. I don't know how frequent such a situation turns up for these people, so they might decide that this solution is too expensive for them. They can even define a campaign to limit the data shown in their new installation to what was formerly accessible to them.</li> </ol>For me, it sounds like a decent offer, although I intend to maintain my subscription anyway. Perhaps my point of view can be made understandable by my "history" with computer aided character building:Shortly after 3e premiered I discovered PCGen, which had lots of data files for most of WotC's D&D books. When this changed, one had to enter ones own data for all the new, shiny books. For a lazy guy like me, this was not cool, but we made do until we wanted to switch to Eberron. Many Eberron- things were not supported by the old version of PCGen I was running, so it was either re-entering all the data (argh!) or running with compromises.It was than that I found Codemonkey Publishing, who offered data sets for PCGen and etools. For reasons I can not precisely recall, I decided to go the etools route and bought quite some datasets. When the CMP-license for using WotC data was not extended, I was in a situation comparable to the one described in this very thread: I had paid money for the stuff I had to make sure that all the data and software patches were securely saved and backuped. If something would happen to my computer and one backuped file would be damaged, I'd have irrevocably lost the data and my investment.The difference ist that I pay much less for the DDI subscription than I would have to have paid for comparable features under etools or PCGen. Oh, and I have to wait four weeks for the incorporation of new data, not four months or years...All in all, even if WotC decides to stop the service and throw CB in the garbage can, I've made a very favorable deal: I gladly pay for a great service.</blockquote>

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