DDI Group Penetration

[Zinovia]

For those of you running regular 4E games (weekly-ish for months on end), how many people in the group have DDI subscriptions?
2 (out of 7 people living in 4 separate households)

How many of those people spend time behind the DM screen for the group?
1

How many are players only?
6

How many also keep up with the books in addition to the DDI?
1 if you mean buying more than the PH. There are 4 copies of the PH among the 7 people. Only I buy more books than that, and I have a lot.

How many are books-only gamers?
2

How many are DDI-only gamers?
0

How many keep up their subscription constantly?
2

How many spot-subscribe (periodically just for updates)?
0

How many subscribed but no longer do, preferring to either use someone else's subscription or simply what they have from their previous downloads?
0

 

[Mark]

Sure, but keep in mind that this trend isn't just about personal DDI use, but about how much the rest of their group uses it - I imagine there could be a lot of people who just don't know how many other players use it or have active subscriptions or so forth.

That's interesting. I hadn't considered that. I just assumed that if other people in a group used the DDI that everyone in the group would know it (and that we'd get a good idea based on EN World members giving us full group info). Doesn't having the printed out sheets generally let folks know? Or are you talking about what others might do that isn't apparent at the table (and if so, in what way)?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That's interesting. I hadn't considered that. I just assumed that if other people in a group used the DDI that everyone in the group would know it (and that we'd get a good idea based on EN World members giving us full group info). Doesn't having the printed out sheets generally let folks know? Or are you talking about what others might do that isn't apparent at the table (and if so, in what way)?

I don't really know if someone had his subscription lapse or not. I might see DDI character sheet, but I won't see when it was updated the last time.

(THough in my case I know at least two - besides me - have subscribed for a full year, so the subscription should still be going.)

 

[Mark]

I don't really know if someone had his subscription lapse or not. I might see DDI character sheet, but I won't see when it was updated the last time.

True. Unless someone is using something from a more recent book, and until they need to update a character from such, someone else in the group might not be aware of a lapsed subscription. Well, best guesses should be fine (erroring on the side of keeping it up rather than dropping it), and certainly if someone wanted to just ask their group when they get together, the answers might be forthcoming.

 

[MrMyth]

That's interesting. I hadn't considered that. I just assumed that if other people in a group used the DDI that everyone in the group would know it (and that we'd get a good idea based on EN World members giving us full group info). Doesn't having the printed out sheets generally let folks know? Or are you talking about what others might do that isn't apparent at the table (and if so, in what way)?

If you mean printed out sheets from the character builder, that can be hard to tell - a player could just use the demo version, or could have the full version but no longer subscribe. Or they could be subscribers, but prefer to use written character sheets, or their own program for the character sheet. I know I would often print out the basic sheet via the character builder, but use power cards from another program.

Now, on the other hand, it might be more likely the sort of thing that would come up in conversation: "Hey, did you see that cool new article on Tieflings this week?" Except there are people that might not regularly read the articles, or get the subscription just for the Character Builder/Compendium.

But yeah, I game with my group regularly, everyone uses content from DDI, and several of us discuss new articles when we meet... and I still had to sit down for several minutes and really think things through to try and figure out whether everyone was a subscriber, not to mention answer some of the more detailed questions.