D&D General Is D&D Beyond Exclusivity Bad for D&D?

[AlViking]

I don’t think a single exclusive thing on d&d beyond matters of itself. The real concern is the signal it sends that this shift in direction has a chance of becoming predominate. That's what people are reacting to. There's certainly a way to thread that needle, but it can be a fine line.

I'm not sure how younger generations feel, i suspect they find such practices more normalized, but I think my generation and older will react very negatively to that kind of change in direction.

I don't buy the slippery slope argument. The things that have been online only are things that otherwise would never been available to anyone anywhere. Printing and distributing a pamphlet sized book of short adventures simply is not and never has been an option. We can either get a digital version or nothing.

To me these online resources aren't much different than the blogs, news articles, entertainment I access online every day. At one time if I wanted to discuss D&D I had to sit down with someone in person to do so, if I wanted news I had to buy a paper or get a magazine. As far as it being a generational issue I don't have a problem with it and I pretty much guarantee I don't qualify as a younger generation.

Last but not least there is still no indication of anything turning into a true walled garden. You do not need to have a paid subscription on DDB in order to purchase anything they sell digitally, anything that has enough content to be sold as a book is available in physical format in many places and DDB is not the only place you can access them digitally.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't think this issue is one of obligations. It's more that after there are already common established product channels, that moving similar products away from such channels and into a walled garden in the hopes of selling a service is very consumer unfriendly. It creates trust issues.

I would feel more bad about that if there hadn't already been dozens of things WotC has done to create "trust issues" in certain people that they have been complaining about for decades.

I'm willing to bet that anyone who is truly upset that WotC has released a couple minor bits only on DDB (rather than just playing up their indignation for the audience) is someone for whom WotC has already lost their trust in any number of other things. Which means at this point there's not much reason for WotC to concern themselves about it.