D&D 5E Ideal DNDNext Digital Support

[Zephrin the Lost]

I was logging into the DDi for the millionth time because it never remembers me and started thinking about all the lackluster and incomplete digital support products WotC has offered over the years. Since they are stripping down every aspect of every edition to get at the heart of the gameplay experience, it follows they will be doing something similar with their digital tools. I didn't see a thread about this, so thought I'd kick one off.

What would be ideal digital support for dndnext? what tools and products should be available, and what should they do?

--Z

 

[Savage Wombat]

#1 - Free PDF copy of any book you buy in hardcover.

 

[Yora]

#2 - Lower price pdfs for sale when you don't want to buy a hardcover book.

 

[Blackwarder]

#3 Interactive digital books for tablets with built in tools.

#4 a DnD store where anyone can sell his stuff on one central place that will keep your purchases online (like iTunes only for DnD) with all the support for digital tools in it.

Warder

 

[KidSnide]

What would be ideal digital support for dndnext? what tools and products should be available, and what should they do?

Don't we need to see how D&DN works first? Could you have figured out the tools we needed for 4e before seeing how classes, powers, items and feats work?

-KS

 

[Janaxstrus]

The best Digital initiative for me would be one that is non-intrusive to the pen and paper game, meaning completely optional.

If I purchase a book, any errata on it should be readily available.
A searchable PDF (even for a nominal fee) with the purchase of a book would be high high up on my wishlist.

 

[CleverNickName]

Things I would love:

- Make PDFs available again for all books, in all versions and editions. I don't care if they cost the same amount as printed hard copies; I will cheerfully buy the entire library over time.

- A "print on demand" service for the aforementioned PDFs, for the out-of-print books that I want a hard copy of. Again, I do not mind paying for this service.

- Searchable text and embedded hyperlinks would be nice in the PDFs.

- Electronic character and treasure generators.


Things I will ignore:

- Anything requiring a subscription.

- Anything requiring an Internet connection to use.

- Electronic documents that cannot be printed.

- Any electronic content that cannot be used on a PC laptop.

 

[Mengu]

There are still a lot of things I like about the current DDI. I just love the online compendium. Every monster at my fingertips, every class, every skill, every feat. It's all easy to search and filter. Glossary is pretty solid. I definitely want something of this caliber in the next edition. I will gladly pay for a subscription.

Regardless of what the system looks like, we will be building characters and monsters. So I would like tools for those.

That pretty much covers everything I personally need and would use. I also don't really need books all that much. Put everything online and I'm good to go (including artwork please; if the compendium included artwork for races, classes, paragon paths, and monsters, I'd be ecstatic).

A tablet/phone application for play assistance (both DM-side and player-side) could eliminate paper altogether.

Also, don't care about PDF's, if they have them, fine, people will use them. But give me digital tools.

 

[Frostmarrow]

D&D Kickstarter. A service where you can pledge money to buy modules that are yet to be realized. Face it. We love longing for stuff. Companies like to know that a product will sell. A match made in heaven.

 

[Blackwarder]

Don't we need to see how D&DN works first? Could you have figured out the tools we needed for 4e before seeing how classes, powers, items and feats work?

-KS

Not necceseraly, wouldn't you love to be able to type "this room seems empty beside a small statue in the corner, there are three ghosts in the walls" and be able to automatically link the states for ghosts in the document (as a popup hyperlink or a paragraph in the text).

Warder