How many people subscribe to D&D stuff?


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Pour said:
Answer me honestly, Ab, would you continue playing 4e without the digital tools? I keep asking myself that question and thinking, initially, I would try out different game systems with the absence. Not saying I would abandon 4e forever, it's certainly my favorite D&D, but if that was taken away I'd be hard-pressed to just up and start a new campaign. Keep in mind, though, my current game which started December 2008 is about to wrap up come the end of summer, so I'm in a different frame of mind looking ahead.
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Without the Compendium things would be a lot tougher. Every day or two I use that thing. I'm constantly either on there talking with a player deciding what sort of power or whatever they're going to get, or looking up an item I gave them last week because they didn't write it down, or figuring out what I'm going to play in an online game, etc. I could use the CB for some of it, but that thing is slow, and frankly as a DM I just don't need to mess with it. I have the players do their own sheets and email me a copy. So I could live without CB, as a DM. MB is more useful, but frankly I have made up very few new monsters in the past year or two. If I do make one it is so far from standard that it is hard to even use MB for it (puzzle monsters and weird stuff). There have been long periods when I didn't even have Windows anyway, and couldn't even use MB/CB and didn't really miss it much.

There's also access to Dragon/Dungeon, which is NICE. I know people complain about them, but honestly, while there is somewhat less content than 4-5 years ago the quality is MUCH higher. Not all the adventures are brilliant, but many are at least decent starting points. For instance the Message in a Bottle adventure from a December isn't BRILLIANT, but it is NOT bad, really a simple side trek. The PCs happened to be sailing around, so I basically tossed in elements of it, used a couple of the characters and locations. I don't do it a lot, but I do find ideas or specific encounters I can steal moderately often.

SO, if DDI went away would I quite 4e? Well, I wouldn't go back to 2e, nor am I inclined to buy 3.x or PF at this point. I figure 4e is no harder to play than PF even without a master index. They both have tons of stuff out there. I might be motivated to try some indie FRPG, I don't know. Currently I have 2 campaigns going, both in Heroic, and I expect at least one of them will go for another year. The other will be paragon soon, if we all get back to it as it seems to be on hiatus the last month or so.
 

Blue said:
I'm still subscribing, but it's primarily because I chose DDI over buying all the new books and I'm in two ongoing 4e campaigns. I don't feel like I'm getting new content value. When Next comes out I can purchase the missing 4e books I want used cheaply, but at that point the new content for a young game will hopefully bring value to the subscription again.
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Do I have this right? They set DDI to compete directly with their entire 4E splat line?
 

Personally, I chose the books over the subscription, and our 4Ed DM looks like he's not going to renew his subscription because of the advent of 5th.

When is the online support for 4th supposed to end, again?
 

dd.stevenson said:
Do I have this right? They set DDI to compete directly with their entire 4E splat line?
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Pretty much. It's not that bad of an idea really. You can access the entire line for 7 bucks a month, or you can buy what you want to use and never pay again. It's not really direct competition IMO. Particularly since you cannot use the DDI elements offline. You have to have a computer.

I let my sub slide last September and I'm not really feeling the pinch. It was nice to have, but, not really necessary.
 

dd.stevenson said:
Do I have this right? They set DDI to compete directly with their entire 4E splat line?
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Pretty much. THe "crunch" gets added to the appropriate online tools a month or 3 after intial publication. You lose out on some of the art and fluff unless you buy the physical product.

So, if as a player, you want the additional options for character development, get a DDI account for the cost of about 2-3 books a year and you're done. That said, WotC gets to collect more direct revenue from the subscriber than 2-3 books worth -- no distributor or store margins. There is indirect overhead in the channel, but if you're keeping it active, individual transactions are almost free.
 

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