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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3901796" data-attributes="member: 18280">Maybe I can help you here.4th Edition is, one must assume, being devised in such a way as to work well with the Digitial Intiative.  The idea is to sell you books, of course, but even more so to get you to sign up for the DI and pay a monthly stipend.  Design decisions that require you to have a "bigger table" (for example), or keep track of terrain pieces, help to make the DI worthwhile to DMs even if they are playing a tabletop game.  The laptop replaces the DM screen.Let's not forget that there are some beautiful projection tables out there now, and folks are playing D&D by projecting the map from the DM's laptop to the tabletop.  Hell, I wish I could afford such a system myself, as well as the ability to devote a whole room to the game.  If you subscribe to the DI, and have such a system, you can project not only the DI tabletop, but the DI minis as well.  And the DI tabletop automatically shows you only what you can "see" based on your light source.In addition, I imagine that if they are selling you digital "items" like minis, they might also be willing to sell you digital enhancements, such as quest cards.  In fact, it might well come to pass that there is a basic subcription rate where you get basic services, but if you pay more you get more.  Right now, for example, they are saying that the digital tabletop will offer counters if you don't fork over cash for minis.  This is, in fact, rather similar to the very successful Second Life model.Players outnumber DMs by a large margin, and playing over the Interweb is becoming a big thing.  I'd love to have taken Hussar up on his offer to join his WLD Interweb group, but I don't have the free time to commit to sitting at the computer from X-Y pm however many nights a week.But say, instead, that it was a job.  Imagine that WotC set me up with access to a special DMing platform, and gave me a percentage of "sales" from folks playing in my games.  Then say that they set up a "pay-n-play" section of the DI for folks who don't have a regular DM, or who want to be in the game of a particular DM.  Under such a setup, I could easily make as much as I make at work now, and WotC would make a boatload of cash as well.Better yet, WotC knows that I would give back a % of that income, automatically, to update the rules, minis, and whatnot that I had available to make my "table" a better one.  After all, if I don't update, my players may well trickle away to the "table" of someone who does.  They might even make me pay upfront for the DMing platform, ensuring an income on the basis of offering that resource.Now, remember also that WotC has unlimited rights to anything you create using their software (unless the user agreement has changed from when I last looked, at draft), meaning that WotC can easily use the materials of all those DMs to create a "core world" that is, in effect, one hell of a huge sandbox with all kinds of quests and all kinds of characters running around, with full-time DMs who pay for the priviledge of being full-time DMs (and, perhaps, make something off it as well).If they get the DI up and running, and do as good a job as is possible, WotC may well give MMORGs a run for their money.RCEDIT:  Dang.  I might have just talked myself into supporting the Digital Initiative..... <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /></blockquote>

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