New Character Builder from WotC!

[Grabuto138]

It is very unlikely that WOTC has character limit to save storage space so I think the minutia about gmail etc. is mostly irrelevant.

Best case for WOTC is that every player who uses DDI is paying for an account. This is not likely to happen. Best case for people who expect to get whatever they want for free (ish) is to split one account for the entire playing group. I suspect that WOTC wants to find a sweet spot that accomodates their users but is not so wide open that it encourages sharing. I bet that the 20 character limit is more or less arbitrary. There was a meeting. Some people said "five" some people said "1,000". After the meeting they decided that 20 was a good starting number.

I am not making a value judgement here either way. As a DM I like to have my player's characters in the character builder. Then I need characters for one-offs and short-term games. And I have my own characters and test characters. I also keep "archtype" characters so if a player says, "a dwarf ranger using craighammers might be cool" I can say, "start with this and change whatever." I imagine even 100 characters would not be enough. I could probably delete most of them if I had to but I know the first time I am told I have reached the limit I will be annoyed.

On the other hand, I am really personally offended by alot of the complaining about expense that I have been reading. It is probably a character flaw on my part, I admit, so please do not take this as an attack. It is just that as hobbies go D&D is pretty cheap. Ever play Warhammer? Try woodworking and buy your first table saw. Tricking out a Honda Civic or restoring a Vespa scooter? Forget about it. Martial arts lessons. Weekly yoga. Model railroading. Recreational drinking and smoking (even if done at home instead of a bar). I just spent $1,000 for medical tests for one of my dogs. Xbox Live account and a Gamefly subscription. Netflix. D&D is pretty much the greatest hobby of them all. For $100 in books and $10 per month you can play forever (less if you go Rules Compedium + DDI).

I guess in the perfect world everyone who plays D&D will either buy the books they use or get a DDi subscription. Since this isn't a perfect world expect that WOTC is going to be constantly trying to find a balance between accomodating the customers and discouraging the freeriders.

 

[lutecius]

It is very unlikely that WOTC has character limit to save storage space so I think the minutia about gmail etc. is mostly irrelevant.

Best case for WOTC is that every player who uses DDI is paying for an account. This is not likely to happen. Best case for people who expect to get whatever they want for free (ish) is to split one account for the entire playing group. I suspect that WOTC wants to find a sweet spot that accomodates their users but is not so wide open that it encourages sharing. I bet that the 20 character limit is more or less arbitrary. There was a meeting. Some people said "five" some people said "1,000". After the meeting they decided that 20 was a good starting number.

but that's not the reason wotc gave, is it?

On the other hand, I am really personally offended by alot of the complaining about expense that I have been reading. It is probably a character flaw on my part, I admit, so please do not take this as an attack. It is just that as hobbies go D&D is pretty cheap. Ever play Warhammer? Try woodworking and buy your first table saw. Tricking out a Honda Civic or restoring a Vespa scooter? Forget about it. Martial arts lessons. Weekly yoga. Model railroading. Recreational drinking and smoking (even if done at home instead of a bar). I just spent $1,000 for medical tests for one of my dogs. Xbox Live account and a Gamefly subscription. Netflix. D&D is pretty much the greatest hobby of them all. For $100 in books and $10 per month you can play forever (less if you go Rules Compedium + DDI).

so...? many other hobbies (notably rpgs) are even cheaper or provide better value for money (like, say... the old CB). talk about irrelevance...

 

[Hussar]

so...? many other hobbies (notably rpgs) are even cheaper or provide better value for money (like, say... the old CB). talk about irrelevance...

Name three.

Really. Name three hobbies that five people can participate in that comes anywhere near the price of gaming on a per person/per hour basis.

I mean, good grief, when you break it down, gaming is so ridiculously cheap that it's darn near free. I actually took a bit of time and looked at one of my campaigns - my World's Largest Dungeon campaign. 80 sessions, 240 (give or take) hours of gaming. 100 bucks for the module, 100 bucks for the core books, another 500 bucks (maybe) worth of supplements.

Seven hundred dollars for 5 people X 240 hours. Fifty CENTS an hour per person?

Show me a hobby that I can do for that kind of money.

 

[Imaro]

Show me a hobby that I can do for that kind of money.

Five people can play Guild Wars for less than the cost of the D&D books plus ongoing subscription to DDI ($20 * 5 = $100)... and also don't have the problem of allocating more time/effort/money/resources into actually finding a group to play. You know I find it interesting that this isn't ever factored into the "cost" of D&D when people compare it to other hobbies. The books are virtually useless unless you can find a group of like-minded individuals to devote time and effort to play. I'm not saying D&D isn't a good value per dollar but there are other factors involved if one is trying to compare it to other leisure activities.

EDIT: For a leisure activity, often times D&D demands alot of work to get started and maintain.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Really. Name three hobbies that five people can participate in that comes anywhere near the price of gaming on a per person/per hour basis.

Gaming is pretty cheap, but it has plenty of company

1. Being in a band: initial outlay may or may not be higher, but unless someone gets G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome), cost per hour drop pretty rapidly
2. R.C racing: again, initial costs may be higher (though not necessarily); costs per hour drop rapidly unless you go nuts for gear.
3. Certain athletics: running, swimming, fishing, frisbee golf and street soccer all cost less per hour
4. Book Club
5. Bible Study
6. Poker night...assuming you're not compulsive

And that doesn't include stuff you & your buddies just come up with.

When i was in HS, we invented a dodgeball variant called TRON: as originally played, all you need is a room that is either empty or full of stuff that you're not concerned about breaking, a Superball, and a hardcover book or binder for each player. Then, it's just like in the movie- you're out if you get hit.

 

[kristov]

D&D is suppose to be cheap - all you needed was a book and your imagination (maybe a pencil and a blank sheet of paper).

You cant try and milk everything for every penny - some things are meant to be a certain way.

WOTC is simply trying to ensure everyone who uses character builder pays for it full price - and they are also wanting to ensure they give you a reason to never cancel because you will lose access or lose all your characters or something.

Its just how business works - on the other hand you get to vote with your wallet. If you want to support such business practices that is your right in our capitalistic society.

For me, its over the line. There are a lot of people who play D&D because it is as cheap as it is. Trying to force a group of people to pay monthly subs to your product who previously found a way to share it will not work well in this case I believe.

Running off players - giving them another reason to go play Pathfinder or Call of Cthulu instead just isnt a good idea in a competitive hard to make money in industry. Less books will be sold, there will be fewer D&D players - because they squandered the money they made off Character Generator to re-make it with additional anti-piracy measures in place. Thats the big investment they chose to make rather than making new and better tools to please customers.

 

[Sunseeker]

D&D is suppose to be cheap - all you needed was a book and your imagination (maybe a pencil and a blank sheet of paper).

You cant try and milk everything for every penny - some things are meant to be a certain way.

WOTC is simply trying to ensure everyone who uses character builder pays for it full price - and they are also wanting to ensure they give you a reason to never cancel because you will lose access or lose all your characters or something.

Its just how business works - on the other hand you get to vote with your wallet. If you want to support such business practices that is your right in our capitalistic society.

For me, its over the line. There are a lot of people who play D&D because it is as cheap as it is. Trying to force a group of people to pay monthly subs to your product who previously found a way to share it will not work well in this case I believe.

Running off players - giving them another reason to go play Pathfinder or Call of Cthulu instead just isnt a good idea in a competitive hard to make money in industry. Less books will be sold, there will be fewer D&D players - because they squandered the money they made off Character Generator to re-make it with additional anti-piracy measures in place. Thats the big investment they chose to make rather than making new and better tools to please customers.

Ah, the smell of entitlement in the morning.

Our rules here aren't difficult. One of them is the Wheaton Rule, which is summed up as "don't be a dick." It's fine if you don't agree with someone, but we expect you to express that without being insulting or condescending.

PM me if this is in any way unclear. ~ Piratecat

 

[Walking Dad]

Ah, the smell of entitlement in the morning.

Yes, I feel entitled to choose the game I'm playing. I could play Pathfinder or 3.5 D&D. Or something entire else.

---

My problem are the rushed (?) rules that require large amounts of errata. To keep up with them, without making your game another job, is to pay DDI for easily accessible current rules. And it was fine, because I least I had something with staying worth for me (offline CB), even if a new edition would come out or Hasbro ditched D&D for not producing enough money.

Now I will buy the books, to be able to play the game in some years (like I did with 2nd and 3rd edition D&D and White Wolf older World of Darkness) and for the right to quickly access the errated rules.


Speaking of paranoia:

I don't believe the official reason for 20 characters/account.

Should I believe there was to room for the Starpact Hexblade in the book?

Should I believe that the many rules mistakes are normal in a book from a professional RPG company?

Yes, both speculations are just paranoid, but no good way to keep your customers bound to your company.

 

[IronWolf]

Ah, the smell of entitlement in the morning.

Really? This is adding to the discussion in a constructive manner?

Kristov is right, D&D had a low hurdle for entry and continued play originally. Pick up a couple of books and you could play with pen, paper and those books for a long, long time.

Things do change as technology changes and WotC is embracing that with things like the character builder. The problem I see is that there is a push to *need* the character builder to keep up with the stream of errata that they have been releasing. Sure you can buy the books and play with pen and paper still, but the stream of errata makes the books you buy today out of date in a short period of time. Leaving you to either paste or mark up your book with errata or take the easier, though more costly path of subscribing to DDI.

WotC is welcome to do this and it may pan out well for them. But there are certainly people that think this is the beginnings of making the subscription model more of a de facto standard to play the game than it has been in the past. I am sure WotC is well aware that there are people that won't take well to the sense of a subscription model becoming predominant and have factored that into their decisions.

There are certainly people that think the character builder is still a good deal and a good way to play the game. But for those that disagree, I don't think it really comes down to entitlement.

 

[Hussar]

Ironwolf - D&D may have had a low hurdle for entry, but, let's not forget, those books were every bit as badly in need of the "stream of errata". It's just that we never saw it. The books were never corrected, except from time to time in the pages of Dragon.

Here's the secret - your books don't go "out of date" any faster today than they did thirty years ago. It's just that, unlike thirty years ago, they actually ARE correcting the rules regularly, instead of letting each group stumble around in the dark trying to find their own corrections.

Another secret is, you absolutely don't need the new books or the DDI for the errata. They still release the errata for free as a pdf.