D&D General DnDbeyond AMA tomorrow (Tues, Dec 9)

[SkidAce]

It's not an issue of a DM trusting the players so much as one of convenience/making the software less clunky I think is the point being made. If a DM sets up a campaign with certain restrictions for flavour/world-building/whatever reasons, being able to set those restrictions at the campaign level so that players don't have to remember them when creating their characters saves some work, which is the point of software really.

Uh, what they said, better than I said it....

 

[SkidAce]

I don't think you should be able to toggle off a book that the player has bought independently (would that even be legal?). That would be like searching a players backpack and taking away their copy of the Monster Manual or something. In that sort of situation I think you've just gotta explain what your rules for the campaign are.

Not even for a character in a specific campaign?

I mean, obviously they bought the book, they have access.

Just curious...

 

[Distracted DM]

I don't think it's unreasonable at all but, aside from streamlining the toggling, I'm not sure what more you want DDB to do about it.

They can't stop your players from buying their own books on DDB, anymore than the FLGS can stop players from buying books for your pen and paper games. The toggles allow you to control what content you share, and access to the character sheets lets you check to make sure your campaign restrictions are being followed, both of which features offer a leg up on pen and paper games, but beyond that I think you just gotta have a conversation with your players.

Note that you can already directly access the character sheets yourself and change toggles, as well as add/remove/edit whatever you want. Though here I would again recommend a conversation.

Again, aside from making toggling features on and off a bit simpler, like having a set of master toggles for the campaign, which I agree with you about, I'm not understanding what more you are asking for.

I don't think you should be able to toggle off a book that the player has bought independently (would that even be legal?). That would be like searching a players backpack and taking away their copy of the Monster Manual or something. In that sort of situation I think you've just gotta explain what your rules for the campaign are.

I've literally just been saying "a DM should be able to choose what content sources they allow into their DnDB campaign." That's it. They have existing settings for sharing your purchased content in a DnDB campaign. They have settings on the player character creation home page for what content you can use for the character. Just move those character settings over to the DM campaign settings, so it applies to all characters in the campaign.

I can't imagine what grand overreach you're imagining that I'm asking for, I never said I wanted to control what content players can buy and own on their own DnDB accounts. Anything like that, you've cooked up from your own imagination.

 

[darjr]

There is at least one other variant of D&D 5e I think they need better support for, The Lord of the Rings

 

[Dire Bare]

There is at least one other variant of D&D 5e I think they need better support for, The Lord of the Rings

Yes! I've gotten used to D&D not being fully implemented, but for some reason I was really disappointed in how poorly LotR was implemented. I do find the web-format book handy during game sessions though!

 

[Clint_L]

I've literally just been saying "a DM should be able to choose what content sources they allow into their DnDB campaign." That's it. They have existing settings for sharing your purchased content in a DnDB campaign. They have settings on the player character creation home page for what content you can use for the character. Just move those character settings over to the DM campaign settings, so it applies to all characters in the campaign.

I can't imagine what grand overreach you're imagining that I'm asking for, I never said I wanted to control what content players can buy and own on their own DnDB accounts. Anything like that, you've cooked up from your own imagination.

But you can already do what you're asking for. So that's why I'm not clear why it's even an issue, other than it could be made a bit more convenient, by letting the DM toggle all the character sheets at once, or something. But that just would be literally a 2-3 minute time saver at the start of campaigns, so it's not the end of the world not to have it.

People are clear on this, right? There are toggles on the first page of the character creation sheet that you can ask players to toggle or you can go in and toggle yourself, to limit what content and sources you allow into a DDB campaign. That is already a thing. I use it for every campaign. As well, if you are using content sharing, it's up to the DM to decide what sources to share, and you do that for the whole campaign via the "content sharing" button on the campaign screen.

I'm not accusing you of a grand overreach, I'm trying to understand what else you are asking for that you don't already have. The only thing I could think of that you can't already control is content that players have bought for themselves, so I did assume that maybe that's what you were worried about. I totally agree that ultimately it is up to DMs what sources to allow into their campaigns!

 

[lkj]

Thanks for these quotes

I have long been of the opinion that technical debt was holding back DnDBeyond and that they needed to rebuild the back end to properly support the game and addition of new data. I wonder how much this impacted the development of new features in the game itself.

You are probably correct but if they get the resources to do it well, then it should, in principle be able to support any game.

Further confirmation that a lot of content update was being hand done or massaged to fit the existing data structures. There will probably a nice data conversion job at the end of the back-end development. This is beginning to sound like a substantial job, and I would not expect anything soon but a pretty radical change when it gets rolled out.

I agree. But what seems a shame is that before d&d beyond was acquired, they were working on just such a background revamping. Something they called the general feature system. My impression was they'd made a lot of progress on it. Somehow got lost in the transition? New team didn't think it was a good approach? I have no idea. But it's a shame.

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[UngainlyTitan]

I agree. But what seems a shame is that before d&d beyond was acquired, they were working on just such a background revamping. Something they called the general feature system. My impression was they'd made a lot of progress on it. Somehow got lost in the transition? New team didn't think it was a good approach? I have no idea. But it's a shame.

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Sounds like the usual Corporate BS, either senior management were not inclined to fund it, "Wadda ya mean ya need to rewrite the application, looks fine to me" or the dev's did not like the new management style, followed by key people leaving.