Forgotten Realms Books to Have Several Digital DLCs, Including One Featuring Asterion

Wizards of the Coast plans to release several "digital DLCs" alongside the upcoming Forgotten Realms rulebooks. This week, Game Informer released a pair of articles about the upcoming Forgotten Realms rulebooks. Tucked away in the article is the announcement that the upcoming releases will include several "digital DLCs" that expand on the new setting. One example was Asterion's Book of Hungers, which focuses on urban vampire adventures featuring the character from Baldur's Gate 3.

No other details were made available about the upcoming releases, such as whether the new supplements will be paid DLC or free to D&D Beyond subscribers. Wizards has released several digital-only supplements alongside their various books, ranging from mini-bestiaries to supplementary adventures, but all were free to D&D Beyond subscribers or available as pre-order bonuses.

Since the Forgotten Realms books aren't currently available for pre-order, it's hard to say whether this is a new strategy or simply a continuation of current works. The fact that Wizards commissioned art specifically for Asterion's Book of Hungers and the usage of the phrase "digital DLC" suggests that this might be a new monetization scheme for the company, albeit one that makes sense given the growing use of D&D Beyond's marketplace.

 

[Tea Cozy]

LOL, I'm literally writing this for the front page as we speak.

There is a typo in the title and body of the EN World article. The character's name is spelled "Astarion" not "Asterion."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Having played through BG3 a couple of times I do not get the love for Astarion. I guess it’s because he’s the super hot manipulator that you can actually fix. The living embodiment of “I can fix him.”

He's also practically the archetype of a sassy bitchy gay* best friend. (Who, in this case, wants to drink your blood.) That's a massively popular pop culture archetype and one that D&D has never had so prominently before.

* pansexual, in this case

 

[Dire Bare]

We also live in a world where digital purchases don’t actually legally grant you ownership of the product you bought, just a license to access it.

If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing, and I have no intention of buying D&D “books” I can’t own.

No matter the format, you are purchasing a license rather than ownership of the book (or other type of media). The physical media definitely has the advantage of not disappearing into a puff of smoke with a website change or some other corporate change . . . but physical media can be lost too, as I can attest to over the years.

I do think that WotC and other content providers could be more consumer friendly and offer formats with more staying power, such as PDF formats in addition to web formats. I prefer D&D Beyond's web format for actually using the books, but worry that it will all someday disappear. If I could download a PDF of each book also, I could more easily back that up. But everything is ephemeral to some degree . . .

But piracy is still theft and still hurts creatives, whether they are working independently or employed by a corporation like WotC. Just because you don't like the terms of the deal doesn't mean you get to resort to stealing the content you want.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

Hard to say until we find out more about the DLCs (DLCs for PAPER Books just sounds weird, this isn't a video game).

I mean, it is downloadable content, so even if the term is historically linked to video games, technically speaking it's 100% accurate. <shrug>

 

[Dire Bare]

Content I can only access online and cannot export from beyond in a digital only format rather than in a book at my table? Referred to as DLC? In the coming years I will remember this as the moment I truly tapped out of thinking if I am gonna bother with the new edition.

Please.

First, we don't know the digital format yet . . . WotC has released this kind of content both in PDF format and in web format before. It's likely it will be web format, but we'll have to see. But even so . . .

WotC has offered digital extras going back to the days of 3E. In various formats, of varying quality and size . . . if the existence of digital extras is killing D&D 2024 for you . . . shrug.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

No physical version? I hate that. Like, a lot.

While I'd prefer physical, we're in the age of DriveThruRPG, itch.io, etc. The thin modules I used to sit in B. Dalton to fawn over on the weekends are ancient history...

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

We also live in a world where digital purchases don’t actually legally grant you ownership of the product you bought, just a license to access it.

If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing, and I have no intention of buying D&D “books” I can’t own.

I mean, you are owning something... the limited, ephemeral access to something you otherwise don't have the corporate-granted privilege to look at. LOL

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

Having played through BG3 a couple of times I do not get the love for Astarion. I guess it’s because he’s the super hot manipulator that you can actually fix. The living embodiment of “I can fix him.”

I thought Neil did a great job voice acting Astarion, but I didn't really care much for the character. I only used him when I absolutely needed his talents. He was rarely part of my party through the game, though.

 

[Stormonu]

I've been taking the content like the recently released Uni's Adventure and copy + paste into a document that I then turn into a PDF for my own archiving. Mostly as I don't like trying run from Beyond in the middle of a game and fighting with an internet connection at the FLGS. Having it as a reformatted PDF on my i-Pad makes it a lot easier to use. And, I can reformat it in a way I like better.

At the very least, IMHO if you want the stuff long term, make some sort of copy for yourself you can access off-line. Too many past lessons about things being taken down not to do this if you got the storage space (and thumb drives are cheap...).

Hopefully the new DLC stuff won't be behind a paywall and remains free like the current stuff.

 

[Charlaquin]

No matter the format, you are purchasing a license rather than ownership of the book (or other type of media). The physical media definitely has the advantage of not disappearing into a puff of smoke with a website change or some other corporate change . . . but physical media can be lost too, as I can attest to over the years.

I do think that WotC and other content providers could be more consumer friendly and offer formats with more staying power, such as PDF formats in addition to web formats. I prefer D&D Beyond's web format for actually using the books, but worry that it will all someday disappear. If I could download a PDF of each book also, I could more easily back that up. But everything is ephemeral to some degree . . .

But piracy is still theft and still hurts creatives, whether they are working independently or employed by a corporation like WotC. Just because you don't like the terms of the deal doesn't mean you get to resort to stealing the content you want.

I don’t think the ethics of digital piracy is really appropriate to discuss here, mea culpa for bringing it up in the first place. But, I will say that when I buy a physical book, I am buying a real object, which I then own and can do with as I please, up to and including reselling it. This is not the case when I buy a license to access a digital copy of a book.