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]​

 

[hbarsquared]

This is just such a weird announcement. What does this Reader offer that Beyond doesn't do already? Bookmarks, turning pages by sliding? That's it? I'm pretty confident, too, that Beyond will integrate such features soon, judging by their excellent communication with users and adaptability.

No issues with the idea, but I agree with the "knife to a gunfight" metaphor. What's the point.

It actually sounds made-up, like some bloke saw an old Beyond announcement and assumed it was by the same guys of Dragon+, having done zero research.

 

[Jhaelen]

You are never going to get legal PDFs of 5e until 6e comes out. It's time to start going through those stages of grief on that issue. It's time man. Time to accept.

Fine by me, I'm waiting for 6e anyway.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Fine by me, I'm waiting for 6e anyway.

I doubt 6E will have PDFs either!

 

[Jhaelen]

I doubt 6E will have PDFs either!

Well, depending on when 6e will hit the market, it may be offered as mem-chip implants...

 

[Echohawk]

Like I said, I have four copies of Aliens!

Please tell me that you have the other movies in the series also in all four formats? Otherwise I'm going to get all twitchy visualising an incomplete Aliens collection on your shelf. (It's perfectly okay to lie about this just to ease my imagination.)

 

[Morrus]

Please tell me that you have the other movies in the series also in all four formats? Otherwise I'm going to get all twitchy visualising an incomplete Aliens collection on your shelf. (It's perfectly okay to lie about this just to ease my imagination.)

There’s only one other movie in the series.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

This is just such a weird announcement. What does this Reader offer that Beyond doesn't do already? Bookmarks, turning pages by sliding? That's it? I'm pretty confident, too, that Beyond will integrate such features soon, judging by their excellent communication with users and adaptability.

No issues with the idea, but I agree with the "knife to a gunfight" metaphor. What's the point.

It actually sounds made-up, like some bloke saw an old Beyond announcement and assumed it was by the same guys of Dragon+, having done zero research.

Perhaps it provides a stream of income for Dialect, while Beyond doesn’t?

I think that a lot of assumptions are being made about a product that hasn’t even been announced by either company that stands to benefit.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

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?

Well, since it appears to be their core business model and product, I’d say yes.

Since Adobe isn’t in the business of publishing digital content themselves, it’s simply a product that a company like WotC could choose to use themselves. As I said, I think WotC has chosen to NOT be in the digital content delivery business, instead maintaining the content only and allowing companies who are the ability to sell it.

Plus, creating a content delivery system for RPGs opens up additional business for them, since they can just as easily deliver content for any company that they license content from.

Perhaps this product is horrible. That’s ok. The market will sort it out. Undoubtedly there are other companies that have different products in development.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

This is just such a weird announcement. What does this Reader offer that Beyond doesn't do already? Bookmarks, turning pages by sliding? That's it? I'm pretty confident, too, that Beyond will integrate such features soon, judging by their excellent communication with users and adaptability.

No issues with the idea, but I agree with the "knife to a gunfight" metaphor. What's the point.

It actually sounds made-up, like some bloke saw an old Beyond announcement and assumed it was by the same guys of Dragon+, having done zero research.

Actually it sounds like a rumor/leak. Because I don’t see any announcement by Dialect or WotC yet.

The point seems obvious to me if you look at what Dialect does. They are a digital content delivery company. The point, for them, would be to sell some digital content...

 

[Ilbranteloth]

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.

What!?!? A company (Dialect) that wants to sell you their product? I can’t believe it.

Dialect doesn’t have any skin in the game about piracy.

And like I said, I think that this, along with several other digital content providers selling this content is a pretty strong argument that WotC isn’t providing PDFs because it would compete directly against the companies that are buying their content to sell digitally.

Let’s see...we can sell or provide PDFs to our customers directly, or we can sell the same content to multiple companies competing in the open market to develop innovative products to add value?

Sell at a discount/give away with purchase or....sell more stuff?

Seems pretty obvious to me. And from what I can tell, of the three (more?) sources already selling the content, they all seem to be doing quite well in selling the content. Each company isn’t really concerned about getting their product in every gamer’s hand, not that they would mind. No, they each have their sales goals, their own business model, and they measure success off of that.