D&D Reader App Coming This Fall? [UPDATED]

Many people have been asking for official D&D PDFs, and WotC has been addressing the need for electronic reference materials at the table in various ways. According to Mashable, WotC is releasing a D&D Reader App this fall. It's not a PDF, but it's basically a D&D-specific Kindle-esque app for iOS and Android. Mashable reports that "Each book is broken up into different sections. So with, say, the Player's Handbook, you can tap on little thumbnails in your library to check out the introduction, a step-by-step guide to character creation, a rundown of races, individual sections for each character class, equipment, and all the other pieces that, together, form the D&D Player's Handbook."

​

It's possible they are just referring to D&D Beyond (some of the details below correspond very closely with that), but it may be that a separate D&D Reader is in the pipeline.

UPDATE -- EN World member TDarien asked Adam Rosenburg (the author of the article) whether this was different to D&D Beyond, who replied "Yup. Beyond is more activity-oriented, so it can handle stuff like dice rolls. Reader is basically Kindle, with good, clear chapter divides."

UPDATE 2 -- EN World member kenmarable has spotted that Polygon also has an article about this. It is a separate app called D&D Reader - not D&D Beyond - being made by Dialect, the company which does Dragon+ for WotC. They tried a beta version, although it wasn't complete at the time.

Other items from the report include:

• You can favourite specific pages.
• Some of it is free, and the rparts of books are paywalled. "If, for example, you'll only ever care about rolling a bard, you can just buy that. Prices for individual sections are $3 or $5 (depending on what you buy) and the three full rulebooks — Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide — are $30 apiece for everything."
• If you buy parts of a book then buy the full thing, the cost is pro-rated.The free sections include "character creation, basic classes, gear, ability scores, combat, spellcasting, and all the other sort of ground-level features that everyone needs to understand in order to play."

[FONT=&amp]Save[/FONT][FONT=&amp]Save[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Save[/FONT][FONT=&amp]Save[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT]​

 

[Pravus]

You can have a digital version of the books, in a proprietary digital format, using a propitiatory digital app. That is one of the dumbest things I heard in a long time.

So what is going to happen with iOS and Android OS updates? Who is going to pay to keep that app current? What happens to your digital book when Wizard's stop paying to update that app?

I just cannot believe someone thought that spending a huge amount of money for a reader when Adobe or the many other third party PDF readers are available to everyone for free, that gets updated when devices and OSs change.

That is why PDF is my preferred digital format, I am confident that there will be a reader available 5, 10, even 15 years from now. This effort by Wizards I doubt will survive 3 years before we hear complaints it is not working on some device or a future updated OS.

 

[Jester David]

This should have been released BEFORE not after the core books were released I'm not paying for my books twice.

They tried. With DungeonScape. That didn't work well because they chose a poor partner. I'm sure WotC isn't happy it took three years either.

 

[dave2008]

..., and for some reason own Aliens in four(!) formats.

Because it is totally worth it!

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Hello? WotC? This is Remathilis. We need to talk.

Ok, I have nothing against yet-another digital variant of 5e coming out. I don't mind its a self-contained e-reader rather than PDF. I don't even mind that its done by the same people who did Dragon+. Lets talk about your pricing.

No, not the "I'm not buying the book twice" conversation. Its the "compared to D&DBeyond, what does this app offer me?" conversation.

Curse is working on an App version of D&D Beyond that will have offline capabilities. Right now, they can sell me for $30 the complete Player's Handbook. I can read it on my phone, tablet, or laptop. I can search, bookmark, and cross-reference/hyperlink. I get databases of monsters, spells, magic items, and rules, plus custom player content, and did I mention a character builder on top?

This app will charge me $30 for the same PHB content, and it offers me... what advantage again?

"Oh," he chortled "I don't use the character builder, I just want the rulebooks!"

But, you can buy the Compendium Content only on D&DB "Purchasing this bundle unlocks the Player's Handbook book in digital format in the game compendium with all the artwork and maps, cross-linking, and tooltips. The Compendium Content bundle does not grant access to all the content’s options in the rest of the toolset, such as the searchable listings, character builder, or digital sheet."

Price: $19.99.

Did nobody at WotC TELL Dialect that they're product is redundant AND overpriced compared to Curse's? Is it mandated that they charge $30/$25 for per book? EVEN IF I was in the market to just buy the books to put on my device for easy carrying and never touch the character builder or databases, its STILL cheaper to buy the Compendium Only Content from D&DB for $20 a pop.

Now, if WotC REALLY wants this to be the "digital PDF alternative" for 5e books, they need to do the following:

1.) $19.99 per book. Sell it at the same price Curse sells Compendium Only. People who want all of D&DBeyond's bells and whistles (like the character generator and eventual encounter builder) can plunk down $10 more for the database stuff.

2.) Offer a Subscription-based Model. This would be the perfect place to test out a $6.99 monthly access to all books model. People who want to own the books can buy them, but if you just want to rent them (ala music streaming services or Netflix) have an alternative.

3.) Start offering cross-platform purchases. It might be impossible to track who bought a hardcover PHB, but its much easier to know who bought Curse of Strahd on Roll 20 and offer them a discount on the D&DB or D&DReader version just by allowing the companies to share access to customer profiles. I'm not sure the technical logistics of it, but I'm thinking it can be done.

4.) DMs Guild Integration. Its an E-reader; it should be able to emulate PDF reading easy enough. Allow purchases from the DM's Guild to show up on D&D Reader and the app to allow the user to read the PDF from inside it. Sure, it won't be as nice as the rendered pages of the main books, but if I buy something from DM's Guild, I'd like to have it at my fingertips the same way I can have the PHB.

5.) Web-based access. They can do it for Dragon+, they can do it for this.

Right now, Dialect is being set up for failure because its priced equal to D&D Beyond or Roll 20, but offers 1/2 the features of either. D&D Reader should be the budget-friendly version compared to those.

So to me this sounds like a 3rd party company is making a product, and will be paying WotC licensing/royalties.

Why is that important?

First, because it's somebody else putting together a product that they think will appeal to gamers and that they can sell. My guess is that somebody had the concept, but until the OGL was available, couldn't go forward with it. Then it's just development time.

It's not up to WotC to tell other companies how to design or price their products. Welcome to the free market. A company looks at the marketplace, the product they want to design, and price based on what they think will sell. Many use a pricing structure that allows frequent specials, so you never actually pay "full price."

Of course, their goal as a company would be to make money. Which means they need access to the stuff that's not OGL. So they license that from WotC, just like all of the other companies with a digital product that has this content.

The pricing is influenced by WotC because they obviously set the licensing/royalty fee. But from there, it's the company making the product that has to decide what they need to make on each sale to have a viable business/product.

Perhaps one of the main reasons WotC avoids releasing pdf versions is because it would stifle the market for 3rd party companies to produce products that would purchase their licensable content? In other words, don't compete with your other revenue streams.

And that is a better thing in general because:
More products licensing the content, making them more money.
Other companies do the heavy lifting of designing, building and maintaining the digital products.
That companies that specialize in digital products will be better at it than a company that designs a TTRPG.
You get a variety of digital products, none of which will appeal to everyone, but hopefully everyone will find a digital product that appeals to them.

Etc.

So I don't think WotC spent anything on this. I think Dialect is probably spending the money, and they are developers of content that is formatted to work on today's technology (phones and tablets). PDFs are great for documents you want to print, but far from optimal for content you intend to view on your computer, phone, or tablet.

Let's see: https://dialectinc.com

Well what do you know? A company that specializes in producing digital content solutions. A company that has no connection with WotC other than they were hired by WotC to produce Dragon+.

Here's their page about Dragon+: https://dialectinc.com/portfolio/dragon/

I would guess they were hired by WotC to design a solution for them. Now I'm guessing that Dialect is designing their own product, but it could be one that WotC is footing the bill for. But I suspect that they wouldn't be competing directly with their other digital content providers.

Since it's a Dialect designed product, I'm sure it will be accessible in the same ways that Dragon+ is.

 

[Jester David]

That is why PDF is my preferred digital format, I am confident that there will be a reader available 5, 10, even 15 years from now. This effort by Wizards I doubt will survive 3 years before we hear complaints it is not working on some device or a future updated OS.

PDFs, as a technology, are 24 years old (according to Wikipedia).
Adding another 15 years to that is a long time for a file format.

The *oldest* PDFs I have are under 16 years old. Some ancient pirated 3.0 books I found on a burned CD a few months back and threw onto Google Drive (the CD was barely readable and I was unable to recover half the files on it).
It's a *big* file. 29k for <100 pages. And it looks like absolute crap. No hyperlinks, no bookmarks, no OCR. The pages change size every few pages. The text is blurry and the images have the pixelated artifacts of a bad JPEG conversion.

In theory PDFs wills still be usable in 15 years. I'm not sure if you'll want to use one at that point. Assuming your rollable iPad 3D-X will have an app that even reads them...

 

[Remathilis]

So to me this sounds like a 3rd party company is making a product, and will be paying WotC licensing/royalties.

Why is that important?

First, because it's somebody else putting together a product that they think will appeal to gamers and that they can sell. My guess is that somebody had the concept, but until the OGL was available, couldn't go forward with it. Then it's just development time.

It's not up to WotC to tell other companies how to design or price their products. Welcome to the free market. A company looks at the marketplace, the product they want to design, and price based on what they think will sell. Many use a pricing structure that allows frequent specials, so you never actually pay "full price."

Of course, their goal as a company would be to make money. Which means they need access to the stuff that's not OGL. So they license that from WotC, just like all of the other companies with a digital product that has this content.

The pricing is influenced by WotC because they obviously set the licensing/royalty fee. But from there, it's the company making the product that has to decide what they need to make on each sale to have a viable business/product.

Perhaps one of the main reasons WotC avoids releasing pdf versions is because it would stifle the market for 3rd party companies to produce products that would purchase their licensable content? In other words, don't compete with your other revenue streams.

And that is a better thing in general because:
More products licensing the content, making them more money.
Other companies do the heavy lifting of designing, building and maintaining the digital products.
That companies that specialize in digital products will be better at it than a company that designs a TTRPG.
You get a variety of digital products, none of which will appeal to everyone, but hopefully everyone will find a digital product that appeals to them.

Etc.

So I don't think WotC spent anything on this. I think Dialect is probably spending the money, and they are developers of content that is formatted to work on today's technology (phones and tablets). PDFs are great for documents you want to print, but far from optimal for content you intend to view on your computer, phone, or tablet.

Let's see: https://dialectinc.com

Well what do you know? A company that specializes in producing digital content solutions. A company that has no connection with WotC other than they were hired by WotC to produce Dragon+.

Here's their page about Dragon+: https://dialectinc.com/portfolio/dragon/

I would guess they were hired by WotC to design a solution for them. Now I'm guessing that Dialect is designing their own product, but it could be one that WotC is footing the bill for. But I suspect that they wouldn't be competing directly with their other digital content providers.

Since it's a Dialect designed product, I'm sure it will be accessible in the same ways that Dragon+ is.

Then Dialect has shown no foresight into the market and has set itself up for failure.

Dialect is attempting to sell the bare-bones DVD version of a movie at the same price as the feature-rich Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital combo pack. EVEN IF I was in the market for a digital D&D reading solution, D&D Beyond is far better price at $10 less PER BOOK than D&D Reader's price. Simple math; I could buy all three core books Compendium Only on D&D Beyond for the cost of two on D&D Reader. At for the same cost as a D&DR book, I get a character generator, databases, an forthcoming encounter builder, even a pronunciation guide with D&D Beyond.

This isn't Fantasy Grounds vs Roll 20 where both digital tabletops offer mostly similar options, this is bringing a knife to a gunfight.

I wish them the best of luck. They are going to need it. Because right now, Curse has eaten their lunch.

 

[Pravus]

I did some Adobe Acrobat work a few years back maybe 8 to 10, and yes PDF has been around for a long time, but it has not been static. I remember the upgrade from PDF 3 to PDF 4 and how not compatible things were from the back end of PDF authoring, but regardless of the authoring version the Reader still reads old version of the PDF format. I don't know what the current version PDF authoring is running at today, but my point is that PDF is evolving and Adobe is invested to make sure things work for the end user.

The question to ask, is Dialect invested to make sure whatever their digital property format will continue to work when the costs become too great, be it from licencing fees or the cost of maintaining their application?

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Then Dialect has shown no foresight into the market and has set itself up for failure.

Have you seen Dragon+?

 

[JohnnyZemo]

IANAL, but I believe it is. US IP laws are pretty draconian.

Unless there are special laws related to pirating books, it's probably just a misdemeanor. In most states in the U.S., the value of the thing being stolen has to be at least $500 for it to be a felony.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

You can have a digital version of the books, in a proprietary digital format, using a propitiatory digital app. That is one of the dumbest things I heard in a long time.

Exactly so, and I agree with you about the issue of longevity of their format. They're doing it because they want to force us into their ecology and prevent piracy. However, it's classic "punish the honest" because the pirates don't much care and get illegal PDFs anyway. Many other game companies realize this and provide PDFs with their books via programs like Bits and Mortar (hence incentives for shopping at your FLGS) or via a nice discount if you buy it online from them.