D&D General Hey, are we all cool with having to buy the same book twice, or what?

[Ruin Explorer]

So... WotC has a "track record" of picking unknown companies to build digital stuff for them that either never comes to life or ends up a dud or being rejected by fans....

And, since DDN was done by a well-established digital player, is alive and kicking AND solidly loved by enough of "the fans" to become a staple in current D&D world: What was the initial argument here again?

I mean, the first is definitely true. Up to Beyond, WotC's digital history was so astonishingly bad. They made TSR look like genuises re: games, particularly. Even in 5E they've had some shockingly bad decisions. I could write an essay on all the weird mistakes they made.

And Curse weren't really a "well-established digital player" in the way you describe at the time they were picked. They'd never shown any signs of the ability or desire to make a product like this (and yeah I was extremely familiar with them because I was a WoW player, and the stuff they managed wasn't... great...). The only thing they could definitely do was scale. They also had an unfortunate habit of shutting down sites which were somewhat popular, and half-hearted attempts to copy other sites which went nowhere (like when they bought MMO-Champion and started trying to make it into like, their own WoWHead).

So they rather fit the "Uh-oh" model for WotC up to that point. And early signs around Beyond were really not-great. Like they didn't have good software, the app was iOS only and kind of rubbish (and took a long time to appear), the character sheet was dreadful for like a year, and the thing they seemed to be really talking about most was the monetization, which appeared predatory and focused on trying to nickle-and-dime people.

However, I do agree that it turned out to actually be a pretty great decision. Yeah it took a while, but Beyond totally got their act together. The app matured. The character sheet stopped being rubbish (and got better just recently). The predatory pricing faded into being largely meaningless (the only sore point remaining is that all the search stuff turns up things you don't own, even if you only want to work with things you do, and it really feels like advertising/trying to get your microtransactions, esp. as the devs are totally silent about it despite regular questions), especially as more and more books came out.

As the same time, WotC's non-Magic (which had always been ok-ish) digital strategy started looking less shabby in other places. Larian for BG3 looks solid (yeah, sure, okay, it doesn't look it'll actually be a sequel or meaningfully set in the FR, but I expect it'll be a good game at least, just maybe not a BG game), and they're buying studios and hiring cool people (practically mini-Bioware at one of the studios!).

So whatever was wrong seems to have been sorted, and hopefully stays sorted.

 

[DEFCON 1]

All of this arguing because people don't want to pay another $40 that they paid 5 years ago.

If you had just saved $1 each month after buying the Player's Handbook the first time, you'd have had enough to buy it again on D&D Beyond right now if you wanted to. But apparently you've been using that buck for other things this entire time. LOL!

Word of advice-- if you want a digital copy of 6E... once every month from now on only buy the Medium and not the Large hot coffee from Starbucks and put that extra buck in a mason jar. By the time 6E comes around you'll have saved enough to get yourself both the hardcover and the digital version. Or better yet... take all the money you are saving by not going to Starbucks at all due to the quarantine, and use that money to buy yourself a digital copy on D&D Beyond right now if you really want it. Everybody wins!

 

[darjr]

Yea this. It’s so freaking petty. It’s almost always from folks that CAN afford it too. Pay the people who create the things you love or enjoy. If you can. If you can’t that’s understandable, I’ve been there.

However for the love of Pete stop asking the creators to sacrifice when the price to value ratio is so much in the purchasers favor, especially if you CAN afford it.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

All of this arguing because people don't want to pay another $40 that they paid 5 years ago.

If you had just saved $1 each month after buying the Player's Handbook the first time, you'd have had enough to buy it again on D&D Beyond right now if you wanted to. But apparently you've been using that buck for other things this entire time. LOL!

Word of advice-- if you want a digital copy of 6E... once every month from now on only buy the Medium and not the Large hot coffee from Starbucks and put that extra buck in a mason jar. By the time 6E comes around you'll have saved enough to get yourself both the hardcover and the digital version. Or better yet... take all the money you are saving by not going to Starbucks at all due to the quarantine, and use that money to buy yourself a digital copy on D&D Beyond right now if you really want it. Everybody wins!

I think the difference here is a lot of other publishers give you the pdf for "free" if you buy the hard copy. Just in comparison, WotC doesn't look as exciting an offer in the market - if the free pdfs from other publishers and D&D Beyond were the same.

However, the way to combat that difference in market positioning is to ADD VALUE. Which I would say Fandom and WotC have done. But it could be they haven't communicated that value well to certain segments of the market.

And tbh, it could be those segments of the market are ones that they don't want as customers any way.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think the difference here is a lot of other publishers give you the pdf for "free" if you buy the hard copy.

And that's the big question, isn't it? Do other companies give the pdf for free because they are nice, or do they do it because they know that have to in order to get people to buy their product in the first place?

What's the norm here? Is book and pdf sale combined the way companies feel it should be done and thus WotC are just being jerks for not going along with it... or is it that all companies would sell books and pdfs separately if they could, but all the small companies know intrinsically that they can barely get people to buy either of them individually, so they package them together as a sort of discount sale to compel purchases?

My guess? All these companies that give you the pdf when you buy the book aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts... they're doing it to help inspire people to take a chance on their stuff and hopefully make a sale they otherwise wouldn't have gotten.

 

[Oofta]

And that's the big question, isn't it? Do other companies give the pdf for free because they are nice, or do they do it because they know that have to in order to get people to buy their product in the first place?

What's the norm here? Is book and pdf sale combined the way companies feel it should be done and thus WotC are just being jerks for not going along with it... or is it that all companies would sell books and pdfs separately if they could, but all the small companies know intrinsically that they can barely get people to buy either of them individually, so they package them together as a sort of discount sale to compel purchases?

My guess? All these companies that give you the pdf when you buy the book aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts... they're doing it to help inspire people to take a chance on their stuff and hopefully make a sale they otherwise wouldn't have gotten.

Yeah. WOTC does give away a free PDF. It's called the basic rules. Some other companies have such a small footprint that to get product out there they have to provide PDFs instead of hardcopy.

But other than a stripped down version of a rule set nobody gives away the PDF. They may include it with your purchase, but that's a lot easier when you are the sole proprietor and the one stop shop for all sales.

Most books that also provide a PDF do not provide a PDF if you buy the book in a physical store, you can't buy it off Amazon and so on. I can't believe WOTC wants to get into the direct book sales business or selling PDFs.

 

[seebs]

Yea this. It’s so freaking petty. It’s almost always from folks that CAN afford it too. Pay the people who create the things you love or enjoy. If you can. If you can’t that’s understandable, I’ve been there.

This has nothing to do with whether I can "afford" it. It's that they do not make the product I want. I don't want D&D Beyond. I want a PDF. I don't want a subscription-based access to something elsewhere, I don't want a service that could go down later. I want the book, in a format that I will be able to continue reading even if they get sick of supporting it.

And if you don't want that, or you want something else, that's fine. But it's sort of rude to dismiss people's complaints by misrepresenting what they're complaining about.

(EDIT: Except I was misunderstanding darjr's post, so nevermind.)

 

[darjr]

Really? I meant the complaints about “buying the book twice” NOT and I repeat NOT the desire for a PDF. If you paid attention you might have seen me state I’d also like a PDF.

 

[seebs]

Really? I meant the complaints about “buying the book twice” NOT and I repeat NOT the desire for a PDF. If you paid attention you might have seen me state I’d also like a PDF.

Okay, that's fair. I guess this thread is moving too fast for me and I'm not tracking correctly, sorry.

I think the complaints about "buying the book twice" have some merit, but in practice I expect to have to buy two copies of a book separately, and that's true for physical copies, and also for one physical copy and one PDF.

I wouldn't object to some clever hackery like the books having a per-book-unique QR code you can scan to get access in D&D Beyond, but it's a lot of work and overhead for them, and I suspect it'd be error-prone and vulnerable to possible attacks, and... Eh, not really worth it, I think. I seem to recall that places like Paizo are taking advantage of the fact that they're the one directly selling the book in a lot of cases to bundle the PDF with it; if you buy a book elsewhere, it's not as likely that you get a bundled PDF.

 

[darjr]

dang, yea sorry.

I need to bend some bars.