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."

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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."

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[Ilbranteloth]

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.

I’m sure they appreciate your goodwill over a product that they haven’t even announced yet.

Personally I think I’ll wait to see what their actual product is, with their actual pricing including promotions and discounts, and decide whether it’s worth purchasing then.

I like D&D Beyond and have played around with it a bit, but so far I have yet to see a product that is a must have for me. So I haven’t purchased any content yet. None of the products released so far provide the sort of interface and features I would like. I did purchase some content for Fantasy Grounds when it was on special on Steam over a year ago and have yet to log in and actually use it.

So I’m excited to see what they come up with, and I’m hopeful I can incorporate my own content too. D&D Beyond allows some of that, but not where I really need it.

But if I can’t add my own content, then I don’t want a product designed around a lot of bells and whistles I can’t use. And D&D Beyond is not well designed as just a reference, it’s designed as a game aid centered around a character creation and maintenance system I can’t use yet.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Just weighing in to shake my head in disbelief over WotC's crazy pdf allergy this edition.

I'm not sure what the thinking is, or who the buck is stopping with, but it baffles me. I mean, D&D isn't being run by idiots right now, and I'm pretty sure they've already thought of pretty much everything we've thought of. So why the decision not to do pdfs? Why attempting to find ways to do everything but stand alone file formats (ie, pdfs or other e-readers)?

It makes me wonder if maybe Hasbro has implemented a company-wide no pdfs policy or something.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I mean, D&D isn't being run by idiots right now, and I'm pretty sure they've already thought of pretty much everything we've thought of.

Exactly, which is why they haven't released PDF's.

 

[darjr]

They have released PDF's. DMSGuild has quite a few of them. The Basic set is a collection of PDFs. They release PDF's for sale and free ones seemingly all the time without a hitch.

If the reason were they thought it was such a terrible format, they wouldn't release nearly as many as they do. As it is it seems they think PDF is a very fine format to sell things in and give things away in. New things even.

Just not for the three core and a select few other products.

 

[Mercule]

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.

I thought the DMCA removed the lower limit for covered items. I could be very wrong, though. I just know the law goes well beyond what I'd consider reasonable (I'm pretty much in the camp of strong protection for 7-10 years, then it automatically goes into public domain, with some protections for personal likenesses but the whole Disney/Happy Birthday thing should have been moot several decades ago).

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

The articles I read on it when that decision was made, didn't say anything about how YOU obtained the file. Just the legality of owning it, and that you were allowed to obtain it, even if someone else made it. The court recognized that many people that would need or use this ability, don't have the ability to do so themselves. Of course, there apparently wasn't anything to protect the person making it for you, so they are still liable for distributing, and if DRM had to be broken, something books don't have, they were up the creek for that as well.

Law rarely talks about the process of how something happened and focuses on things that can be proven or disproven by evidence. Possession, for instance, doesn't require that you "own" something. It does usually require that you know you have something, though that's likely to be an issue if you ever get involved with the legal system. If I give you a closed up bag that happens to have illegal drugs in it and you're arrested the fact that the drugs are "mine" not "yours" is irrelevant to whether you possess them. It's going to hinge on whether you could be reasonably said to know that there are drugs in the bag. For instance, if the drugs are carefully concealed in the bottom of a larger bag and there is evidence you had just got it then you may be able to claim that you didn't "knowingly possess" the drugs. (Caveat: IANAL but many years ago I was a juror on a trial that hinged on this point and thus had it explained in detail by lawyers.)

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

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

I'm not saying that WotC doesn't want to sell their product, that's obvious. I don't mind paying for it either. My issue is that I feel that they're pushing novel content delivery platforms that are not too likely to be sticking around and making a confusing and non-transparent marketplace with too many slightly different features. There's the dead tree variety, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, DDB, and now Dialect, maybe yet others. You want to use content in each, pay for it separately.

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.

So they care about those companies more than their customers? Many of us have been customers for decades.

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?

Big assumption that they'll be "adding value." I'm actually rather skeptical, very much based on WotC's track record in the electronic world.

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.

I'm not questioning their right to do it. Clearly they have that legal right.

From the (or at least this) consumer's standpoint though they've made a situation with a confusing set of competing ecologies, all built on WotC's cable TV style "bundling" pricing model for books, which are already highly bundled to ensure that there's a large proportion of the book that will never be used by many purchasers, all of which require multiple purchases for the rights. This means WotC is attempting to get me to open my wallet over and over, not for novel content, but for the same thing I already own. The only difference is delivery mode. So what happens when I meet someone who's, say, invested in Roll20 and I'm invested in, say, Fantasy Grounds, and basically we can't play the game simply because of platform incompatibilities? Well the answer is... someone's going to be buying access again. What happens if, as is fairly likely, rights are bought but one of the companies goes under or the inevitable merger happens next time there's a dot.bomb? WotC happily keeps all the cash from the multiple purchases, that's what.

Adding value digitally would allow for solid discounts of purchasing unbundled by WotC's choice of how to put the books together. Alas, if you want a few magic items from one of the titles... it's time to spend $5. DM switches platforms? Buy it again!

From their standpoint that might be "innovative" and "smart business". From my standpoint, I know rent-seeking behavior when I see it.

If I realistically thought I could get a different game going I'd probably do it, just because of their increasingly predatory pricing model built solely on being the biggest game in the marketplace of potential games. Their propensity for bundling already cut way back on what I'm willing to purchase even in dead tree format and I won't be buying their digital stuff.

Actually, now that I think about it, they don't really care about the companies they're doing business with, either. It's not going to be fun when the music stops in two years or so and there's one fewer chair....

 

[DEFCON 1]

If anyone wants to play D&D 5E via PDF, they can. They can download the Basic Rules.

If someone is choosing not to do that, and also is choosing not to buy the 5E hardcover books because they can't also get it in PDF... my personal opinion is that that person doesn't really care to play 5E or not. Which means they are probably playing a different game (quite possibly another version of D&D)... and if that's the case, then Wizards of the Coast is fine with that.

After all... if having a full suite of PDFs of the edition of D&D you are playing is a requirement to you... you have many previous editions of D&D you can play right now. Most books from most of the previous editions all available to you on DMsGuild. Congrats! Happy gaming!

I just hope no one is cutting off their nose to spite their face. Deliberately not playing in a 5E game they actually really want to play in but won't, just because they can't get a book in PDF. That seems ridiculously self-flagellating to me. But hey... if playing a High Elf Noble Thief, a Mountain Dwarf Folk Hero Champion, or a Human Criminal Evoker doesn't do it for you (all things you can play in 5E via PDF)... c'est la vie.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Exactly, which is why they haven't released PDF's.

I'm not entirely sure they're as smart as they think given that pretty much every digital endeavor they've launched has vastly over-promised on what it could deliver. Insider ended up just being the character builder without any of the additional tools and it was a bloated and crash-prone beast built on a product that Microsoft had sunsetted.

 

[seebs]

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.

I have accepted it. Accepting it involves mocking them. I am sure they have long since accepted that.