DDI and the future viability of Online D&D products

[Sunseeker]

I believe that DDI should serve as
A: a repository for all current and past edition information for people who don't want to or can't buy the books.
B: a place to find useful tools to aid in character, monster, encounter, and campaign stuff.

So, pretty much it should work as it does now. My only addition would be to allow people to enter a code for any book they've bought, and then download a digital PDF version, in case their book gets damaged or simply because carting around my 7lb laptop is much easier than carting around my 17 1lb books.

It would be interesting to see it also serve as a VTT for people who play games online, but I think that might be better as a standalone product than a subscription service. Along that line of thought, I'd like to see every tool through DDI be purchasable as a standalone product. I'd gladly pay 39.99 for the character builder instead of 39.99 each for 3 different PHBs.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

If I was in charge of DDI, I'd do the following things

1. End the monthly subscription to the product.
2. Give away the Core Tools for free (Character Builder, Compendium, Monster Builder). The only material that would be included in these would be the Player's Handbook 1, Dungeon Master's Guide 1, and Monster Manual 1
3. Upon the release of each new book / product, I would sell that products info. Example, Complete Warrior comes out. For $X, you purchase the Complete Warrior Digital Rules and that data is added to your Core Tools.
4. Dungeon and Dragon would continue being published as is, but cost $Y to purchase and add the content to your Core Tools.
5. As time went by, I would add older editions to the Core Tools with the same model to make revenue on WotC's back catalog.

I like this. But then I've seen it before. Or something pretty close.


Hero had "Hero Designer" - you have to buy the software (at a more than reasonable cost), and you can buy packs from all the books they publish for it. Equipment, race templates, characters, Monsters etc.

If the book was an adventure or setting sourcebook where mechanics and do-dads were a relatively minor part of the book, the the pack was fairly cheap. But if the physical book was all about mechanics and stuff that could be built (a spell compendium, a Monsters/NPC book, and such) then the pack was almost as much as the book, because most of what was in the pack was in the book. This made the books still useful, but if you were using the designer without the book, the costs were still profitable for the company.

I really liked that model- I'd love to see it in D&D. And make the tools to create you own stuff for houserules, and that third party could use to make their stuff available for the builders and compendium.

 

[Uller]

I recently started using ddi. I like it a lot. I use google docs for writing adventures, tracking combat and party status. I find the charcter builder immensly useful, especially since it includes stuff from books I don't own. I use the monster builder and I use the compendium to pre-lookup monsters, traps, etc, andprint them as a pdf (with cutepdf) and store them in my adventure folder. So at the ta. ble I almost never crack a book.

Current ddi cb does support some limited house rules.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I really liked that model- I'd love to see it in D&D. And make the tools to create you own stuff for houserules, and that third party could use to make their stuff available for the builders and compendium.

Again, if I was in charge of DDI, I would allow 3rd Party Publishers to sell their content. WotC would take a percent of each sale.

 

[Arlough]

[MENTION=16726]jsaving[/MENTION]
I don't disagree with you, but there are a couple of points that I think should be considered as part of this discussion.
I realized I rambled on a bit, so I have parsed my statements down to the vital parts, and hidden for the curious all the rambling that went with it.
At the beginning of 3rd, WotC was trying to take lessons from TSR's failure. But they mistook too much specialized material for "Non-Core books aren't worth it."
[sblock]
I really "found" D&D during AD&D 2nd edition. And my friends and I invested in it heavily. But we invested most heavily in the core books (and the Player's Option books, as they were an extension of the core in our view) because all the other books were too narrow in scope for the price. And it seemed like there was a handbook for everything.
At one point, I remember joking to my friend (as I was trying to find the correct reference table to resolve a potions issue) that I would buy "The complete book of tables" except I couldn't be sure it wasn't a handbook on furniture.
Many of the players I knew suffered handbook overload. So, we basically formed a communal library where each of us owned some of the books, but nobody owned the same book as another person. So each of the anciliary books was shared amongst 9 players. But, each of us had our own copy of the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide.
[/sblock]
Third edition's OGL was a great first step towards allowing 3rd parties to share the burden as well as promote the core. But because it was reacting to incorrect assumptions it was made too vulnerable to pollution of the brand.
[sblock]
Third edition was a very different model than other editions in the development of OGL and its early implementation. The idea was to outsource all those handbooks (effectively) to other companies, thinking that the problem was that the core was the only real profitability, when the glut was a primary problem. OGL was a great first step toward broadening appeal and focusing on core products, but it also made the glut problem much worse. As much as you had good material come from this, you also had untested and, honestly, bad material being tied to the D&D brand. It was kinda like the '80's was for music. There was a lot of good music that came from then, but that merely a result of statistics playing out. If you only have a one in a hundred shot, but you try it a million times...
[/sblock]
Fourth tried to turn the breech in the dam into a useful spillway. But with the overzealous lawyer-ing up of the OGL/GSL/SRD as well as what can be described as schitzophrenic levels of paranoia regarding intellectual property protection, they overly stifled 3rd party contribution.
[sblock]
Fourth came out with a combo OGL/GSL/SRD that many people, I think I can safely say, loathe. And, I admit, I am not thrilled about it either. But, I can see the potential of what they were trying to get.
I speculate they wanted to protect the brand, and some of the team thought they could extract additional concessions from the third parties as well, as compensation for all the R&D WotC did on 4e.
But, the OGL/GSL/SRD for 4e was, at the least, poorly marketed and at the worst, poorly executed. There was push back and retaliation from much of the community.
Combined with the rather erratic quality of the WotC products, the DRM panic debacle, and the early failures to deliver on DDi products (that may be continuing to this day, but I dropped my DDi subscription quite a while ago so I can't confirm) and you find that in many minds there is now a taint upon the brand that tends to be blamed on either the deviation from the playstyle of yesteryear, or DDi.
[/sblock]
So what does this have to do with DDi? Well, DDi could be something akin to the Android Market Google Play Marketplace as well as a open beta for new material.

Third parties wanting to make D&D products could go through DDi.
If the product involved new mechanics, it could go to the... I don't know, D&DD (Dungeons and Dragons Dreamatorium) which would basically be a test area for early adopters and the such. Kinda like the forums here at ENWorld, but with a more focused purpose. Once the optimizers have had their chance to break the system with the new rules, and game pundits have had their chance expose the inherent flaws, and the creators have used this feedback to refine, etc. The product could then be sent to a review board (with a reasonable administrative fee) and approved or disapproved.
If it is nothing new mechanically, but just an adventure or article or the such, it could go directly to review board (again, with a reasonable fee) to be approved or disapproved.
Once the approval is on the product, it could go directly to the DDi Market with Wizards putting their stamp on it saying it is good enough to be tied directly to the D&D brand. WotC would take a small licence and hosting fee out of each download, with the majority of sale going to the third party.

Combine this with Alaxk Knight of Galt's idea, and I think DDi would be not only viable, but would quickly become indispensable to WotC.

P.S. I've rambled so long that the thread has gotten to my destination already. More particularly, Alaxk.

 

[Uller]

My son will be turning 14 this summer. Like many kids his age, he is crazy busy...school, hockey, lacrosse, time with his buds...he has an interest in rpgs, but definitely not the time. I introduced him to 4e a little over a year ago with the Red Box...we've played through the Red Box and Reavers of Harkenwold. He has DMed a game for me as well...

He likes D&D, but it is just hard for him to make the time for it. I DM a group of work friends so I recently subscribed to DDI. This lead to me discovering the Virtual Gaming Table beta...it's clunky and could use some work...but after introducing it to my son I have become convinced that _this_ is the way to the future of D&D.

He took to it immediately. He's made some maps, figured out how to import and edit characters and have them interact. We've played using it twice now and he says he likes it a lot better because there is zero setup time...we decide to play, we each open our laptops, connect to the game and off we go.

If WotC wants to fully tap the 12-16 year-old market they have to provide D&D to them on their terms. I think some sort of VT that is fully integrated with the rules is the key. Something like a DDI subscription for the DM and some cheaper (or even free) subscription to give players limited access would go a long way toward making the game accessible.

Yes...D&D should always have the ability to be played at the table, with books, a battlemat, tokens/minis (or not), friends, and Mt Dew and Dominoes. But observing my son and his friends...they very often "hang out" online...he spends as much time playing Xbox games with them from our basement as he does at their houses (and usually that involves street hockey or airsoft). Make D&D playable that way as a co-equal method to playing at the table.

 

[Mostlyjoe]

When it became a paywall for the Character Builder being updated with the seemingly endless weekly erratas...I gave up. What was the point.

I don't mind them offering a service via pay. Like a virtual tabletop. But rules updates and character builders should be free to use.

 

[Blackwarder]

Why? I find that having all the rules can be a bit doubting, especially when you can restrict rules by source and not to mention that it nullify the need to actually buy the damn books...

I strongly agree with the idea of releasing the tools with on,y the core set and selling the rest with micro transactions.

Warder

 

[Janaxstrus]

Someone mentioned XBox and Kinect support for remote gaming.
This would be very interesting to me, way way more than a virtual tabletop.

Support the voice/video chat via XBL and Kinect and I don't need a virtual tabletop.