Grognard view of One D&D?

[MNblockhead]

A significant amount of D&D fans are collectors. As long as people buy expensive printed books, they will continue printing and selling expensive books.

There really is no need for me to buy the print books. I've not used the printed version of any WotC book during a game in a couple years. I use D&D Beyond. For third-party books I almost exclusively use PDF versions when running games.

But I still buy lots of print books. I like how they look on the shelf and when I have free time, I like to skim the spines, grab a book and flip through it. It might be my age, but I've yet to find a digital book that captures the feeling of "browsing" a shelf of books and flipping through a physical book.

For reference and reading, I prefer digital. For browsing and perusing rules and adventures in my solo free time, or admiring art, give me print.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A significant amount of D&D fans are collectors. As long as people buy expensive printed books, they will continue printing and selling expensive books.

That's absolutely true.

However collectors do not need up-to-date rules or the like.

So we may well see a 4E-ish situation, where the rules for 1D&D get frequently or at least seasonally updated, and where if your group wants to use any digital content, and/or the "right" rules, rather than outdated ones, they'll need to stay subscribed to D&D Beyond or whatever.

It's also entirely possible they'll increasingly move the books into luxury pricing (and I'm some increased quality too, or at least more art, and more "coffee-table"-worthy-ness). Which is fine if you're some late-30s or older middle-class dude with a bunch of disposable wealth, but that's not most of D&D's audience and never really has been. Doesn't matter though if you're getting most people to subscribe to your much-more-profitable subscription service.

Given that the new guy in charge of D&D is someone whose main background is transforming physical product customers into digital product users, I think we have the shape of WotC's plans here. My strong suspicious is that WotC's current vision for D&D (presumably not shared by Winninger) was that in say, 2032, or 2034, the actual people who play D&D are primarily accessing D&D through tablets/phones/laptops, and are subscribed to some version of D&D Beyond, and that D&D print rulebooks basically these attractive objects that are left on tables to be perused lightly, not used seriously.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I think a lot more people are playing online as well - or, at least, accessing their character sheets via laptop, even in an in-person game, which makes digital copies of everything much more convenient and, for online games, necessary.

I have to agree with @Ruin Explorer that they will continue to errata rules just enough that hard copies will not be properly up-to-date. I can also see them making it more difficult to use the system on roll20 without subscription in hopes to attract people to their own table-top.

With Microsoft's success with X-Box Gold subscriptions, companies know the subscription model is a cash-cow.

 

[Lanefan]

I think a lot more people are playing online as well - or, at least, accessing their character sheets via laptop, even in an in-person game, which makes digital copies of everything much more convenient and, for online games, necessary.

We have all our spells online on our own website, along with our roll-up rules, pantheons, and setting info. Character sheets are still on paper, as are most DM-side elements e.g. tables, charts, etc.

We access the spells through tablets or phones. Laptops are a bit too cumbersome for our small table.

With Microsoft's success with X-Box Gold subscriptions, companies know the subscription model is a cash-cow.

And that alone is a good reason to oppose the subscription model whenever possible.