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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 5365739" data-attributes="member: 63">I like the Steam model. My dream version of the D&D subscription would be:Dungeons & Dragons Insider1. Free Demo. You can create an account for free, and play with the basic character builder that can store one 1st level character at a time for free, and access monsters of up to 3rd level. There would be occasional freebies added to this, like sample adventures and such, because you want to let prospective customers try out your product. 2. The Astral Sea. If you subscribe, you gain access to [hq]The Astral Sea[/hq]. This is the primo online package. As long as you're subscribed, you have full access to the character builder, monster builder, and so on, and can create and store any number of things on their servers. You can browse Dragon and Dungeon online, or purchase the pdfs for $1 an issue. Likewise, while you're online you can browse the actual rulebooks (not just the rules compendium), and you can purchase the pdfs for $3 - $10.When you purchase a book or magazine on The Astral Sea, you can download it to your computer. There would be an offline program -- [hq]The Material Plane[/hq] -- that lets you easily track your offline material. More on that in #4 below. 3. Gaming Group. The idea is that the DM has the main account, and the players can use whatever the DM acquires for the group. There would need to be an option to buy a gift subscription, like if a player has money but wants somebody else to run the game. Also, make it easy for players to buy books for the group to use.You can assemble a gaming group, tying them to your subscription. In a given month, you can have up to 6 people in your gaming group. If you're full and you drop somebody, you either have to wait a month to add the new guy, or you spend an extra $1 a month per extra person. People in your gaming group just need to have free accounts, not paid accounts. While they're online, they can use the full character builder, and can browse any ebooks or magazines you have purchased, because those are part of the group's shared bookshelf. They can't browse the other books or use the monster builder or adventure tools, though, and they can't download pdfs unless they want to purchase them for themselves. When someone in a group owns a pdf of a book, it's cheaper for others in the group to buy it. 4. The Material Plane. This is the offline-use program, which any subscriber can get for free. It lets you download and keep track of monsters and characters you've made. Additionally, whenever you do log in, it checks what books and magazines your group has access to. The offline character builder would let you make characters using any off those resources, plus all the free 1st level stuff.(This is another way to discourage piracy. Sure, you can pirate the pdfs of the books, but unless you actually purchase them through the Astral Plane, your Material Plane character builder program won't be able to use them.) 5. Gaming Apps. Eventually, they need character sheet apps for cell phones. This is where I see the game going in the next 5 years. Every player makes a PC -- maybe through their phone, but probably on a computer -- then has their phone at the game table, using it as their character sheet. When you take damage or use a power, you tap the screen a few times and keep track of it. As things get better, they could make it so a GM could sync up with his players' phone-based character sheets. Maybe the GM is running from a laptop, and he wants to see a character's current status. He just clicks a button, and the character sheet pops up.(They can put in a dice roller if they want, but I prefer to use real dice, thank you very much.)</blockquote>

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