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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[kenmarable]

Options don't bother me one bit. What I'm highly dubious about is the pricing model that offshores all risk onto partners and the consumer and are strongly premised on multiple purchases of the same content.

I wouldn't say they are "strongly premised on multiple purchases". You only need to buy them once. The only reason you might *need* to buy them more than once is because these other formats come out later than the original physical books. But that was certainly not WotC's master plan and a strong premise of their business plans.

Now that there are so many options are out there, there is no need to buy anything more than once going forward. Zero. From here on, buy it in your preferred format. I'm not sure how giving consumers what they want to such a terrible thing. The biggest gripe I can maybe sympathize with is still not releasing them as PDFs or some other non-proprietary format as many others have pointed out.

But giving consumers what they want is exploiting them is... well... a weird notion.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I wouldn't say they are "strongly premised on multiple purchases". You only need to buy them once. The only reason you might *need* to buy them more than once is because these other formats come out later than the original physical books. But that was certainly not WotC's master plan and a strong premise of their business plans.

There are other reasons: Players (and especially DMs) may well need to purchase multiple times if they're in a game on Roll20 and another on Fantasy Grounds. So WotC gets multiple purchases of the same content as opposed to, in the past, people buying lots of new content, and it's content they have to do nothing for but collect rents on.

Now that there are so many options are out there, there is no need to buy anything more than once going forward. Zero. From here on, buy it in your preferred format. I'm not sure how giving consumers what they want to such a terrible thing.

That's assuming that content providers will survive to ensure access to the content.

The biggest gripe I can maybe sympathize with is still not releasing them as PDFs or some other non-proprietary format as many others have pointed out. But giving consumers what they want is exploiting them is... well... a weird notion.

Well, yeah. Even PDFs won't have the lifetime of a good quality hardback book, but they are likely to last longer than "lifetime access" to some content delivery service (except perhaps Amazon). I understand WotC's gripe about piracy, but I really wonder. Many other companies give PDFs out for free or at reduced price (e.g., Paizo) and they're making it work. Of course they're in a different market.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Exactly, and that's something buyers definitely need to be aware of. Caveat emptor and all that.

Exactly. I don't think many buyers are particularly aware of it.

To each their own. I'm sorry their current business methods aren't to your liking. On the flip side, I'm buying more WotC products since 3.x. Stuck with Pathfinder rather than 4e, and even early 5e just got the core books and Out of the Abyss cuz it sounded cool and might have stuff to re-use but still mostly played PF.

However, with the greater options to purchase products, <snip> Some business methods will work for some customers and not for others. I'm happy it's aligning well with my needs and interests. I'm sorry it doesn't work for you. But it's also bonus if they are focusing more on long-term viability as they appear to be rather than getting as much product out there every month to spike short term revenue like in 3.x days, that's even better.

You're an example of someone for whom their current business model works very well, evidently!

I would be happier if they released things I was interested in and felt solid about. E-content to me I really don't. I am OK with streaming though for a long time I was just a buyer but now consider paying a streaming service monthly fee to be essentially a rental service for access (and simultaneously a way for me not to have to have the ridiculous amount of RL storage for a collection). That's premised on my feeling that those streaming services are likely to survive but even if they don't, I won't have a big one-time purchase down and I can cancel when I want. Maybe if I amortized the cost over time it might make sense. However, their proliferation of possible delivery services feels like it's setting up for multiple purchases, some of which are likely to disappear when the inevitable contraction happens. If I was loving their content I might go... eh, OK, and buy. But I'm not.

Part of my resistance here comes from my own professional life experience where a market leader software vendor (SPSS, now owned by IBM) pulled similar ploys by going from a comprehensible and straightforward licensing model in the late 1990s and over the course of the 2000s made it progressively more arcane, meanwhile raising prices and/or messing with licensing terms as they transitioned from a company adding value to being a rentier. They felt they had a lock on the market due to user loyalty....

 

[Mistwell]

FG and Roll20 service all RPGs, not just D&D. In fact I think both were profitable before 5e was even a majority of their games. I seriously doubt either is going away any time soon.

D&D Beyond and this app are certainly dependent on D&D. However, D&D Beyond is a Twitch Interactive company, which itself is a subsidiary of Amazon, one of the largest companies on the planet.

This app is made by Dialect. Dialect, while not as huge as Amazon of course, is still a much larger and more stable company than just their D&D stuff. They work with Logitech, Mass Effect, Eve Online, etc.. I don't think their company is dependent on this product.

So no, I don't think this is a situation where any of these four companies are going anywhere or are dependent on D&D for their survival. Each started out as not primarily a D&D company and each has sources of revenue independent of D&D products.

 

[darjr]

OK I’m a die hard PDF kinda person. However, if curse pulls off integration with FantasyGrounds and their promise of an offline app I’m probably in.

Also the dragon+ app, notoriously slow and buggy for me, on the latest iPad is kinda amazing. Night and day. I went back and tried it again on my old phone/tablet and it was just as bad as always. If their new thing is as good on my iPad I’ll definitely give it a look.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

So no, I don't think this is a situation where any of these four companies are going anywhere or are dependent on D&D for their survival. Each started out as not primarily a D&D company and each has sources of revenue independent of D&D products.

I knew about FG and R20 as I've used R20 for a while (in its free incarnation). I didn't know about the others being that size. You're right those two bigger companies are unlikely to go away, but their support for D&D might if they decided to get out of those particular lines of business, though given their track records one presumes they think there's money to be made. I wonder what will happen to customers if a company decides to get out of the WotC servicing business, though, but one would hope they'll figure out some license transfer. I still think WotC is busy turning itself into a rentier, but that makes a customer's investment in those platforms more solid.

 

[seebs]

I'm curious - what do you want out of PDFs?

Compared to hardcovers:

Searchable. I can carry everything they've ever published in a jacket pocket, instantly navigating to desired pages (assuming they do a table of contents, which is pretty normal). So instead of having a twenty-pound stack of books, I have a less-than-one-pound object, and yet it's got all the books, I can turn to any page of any book instantly, I can keep places in all of them, I can have annotations... Basically they're better in every conceivable way. But! If I have a PDF, I have a PDF forever. I can open it whenever I want. I can open it on any device that displays PDFs. If I get a brand new device, and it reads PDFs, I can read the book on that too. I don't have to wait for support. I don't have to worry that the vendor will have something that works on most things but doesn't work on the resolution this particular tablet uses, or that it'll render poorly, because I have choices.

Compared to a proprietary app: I have no idea which of the functionality I want it provides, but since it doesn't provide it in a way I can count on having access to and control of in the future, none of it matters.

 

[fantasmamore]

Compared to hardcovers: [...]

+ copy - paste the text in vtt / programs, apps etc
+ extract images, maps and handouts (not always, some pdfs are locked)

A book or an app on your phone may be able to do some things better than pdf (reading is not that fun if you have to zoom in - out every 5 seconds on your mobile device, at least for me) but on the table a pdf is more useful in my opinion.

 

[JetstreamGW]

Maybe one of these days, WotC will actually act like they want my money.

 

[seebs]

+ copy - paste the text in vtt / programs, apps etc
+ extract images, maps and handouts (not always, some pdfs are locked)

A book or an app on your phone may be able to do some things better than pdf (reading is not that fun if you have to zoom in - out every 5 seconds on your mobile device, at least for me) but on the table a pdf is more useful in my opinion.

Yeah. For instance, if I had gotten the various adventures as PDFs, I could use the maps from them on roll20 without having to separately buy copies for roll20, or use a scanner.