Online Digital Tools Disappearance Risk Discussion

[Thomas Shey]

I think I used D&D beyond for gaming for a year or more before paying any money. Not that your choice is a wrong one, but it seems to focus on the "spend", when you may not need to do so.

My attitude is that while ongoing costs annoy me more than single-pay costs, I also don't like being at the mercy of someone else's server.

 

[billd91]

Ever have someone steal your physical game bag with your books and character sheets in it? Or even have players who forget them? Those physical artifacts can be lost or misplaced, and that creates interruption and inconvenience as well.

They do, but there's a very different feeling between that and a publisher, for example, removing your access to it. It strikes me that you're being deliberately obtuse about the topic.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ever have someone steal your physical game bag with your books and character sheets in it? Or even have players who forget them? Those physical artifacts can be lost or misplaced, and that creates interruption and inconvenience as well.

I think there's a big difference between tools and support you have control over and ones you don't, though.

 

[Voadam]

Ever have someone steal your physical game bag with your books and character sheets in it? Or even have players who forget them? Those physical artifacts can be lost or misplaced, and that creates interruption and inconvenience as well.

Right, so the game company yanking access to your tools creates inconvenience and ill will like the thief stealing your game bag.

A person forgetting to bring stuff is more like a server problem on the company disrupting short term immediate stuff. Annoying but not as bad as deliberately choosing to end someone else's access to useful stuff.

 

[Scars Unseen]

So, you seem to be sliding past the fact that a written character sheet is also a tool you can become dependent on.

Unless you keep all the game information in your head, ANY and EVERY tool you choose will tend to impact how you interact with the game.

Not really sliding past; it's part and parcel to why I prefer products over services. If I'm going to be dependent on something, I prefer to have a say over when that dependency ends.

Ever have someone steal your physical game bag with your books and character sheets in it? Or even have players who forget them? Those physical artifacts can be lost or misplaced, and that creates interruption and inconvenience as well.

I've had my entire collection stolen from me before due to a storage unit break in when I was between apartments Yes, it was massively inconvenient. I don't really feel that burglary or theft is a great analog to having an really great online tool shut down, but in a way, it's kind of worse. On the one hand, it's worse because the company is offering this tool, already knowing that they'll take it away one day. On the other hand, it would make it worse for me to use such a service, because at least with that storage unit, I wasn't going into the deal expecting to have everything taken away from me.

Fact is, pretty much anything being offered as an online service could function as a product instead. They used to. Even online games that use central servers used to offer the software to run those servers privately. Other than the convenience of not having to do any initial setup (the existence of which would not preclude having an offline or privately hosted option anyway), everything integral to online tools' design is to serve the control and profit of the company that owns it, not the benefit of the user. And I don't see why I should buy into that, knowing it's going to bite me later on when they don't see the profit in it anymore.

 

[MNblockhead]

I absolutely rely on digital tools as I have to spend a lot of time working abroad and most of my gaming is via VTT and Google Meet/Zoom/Discord. But I have also have physical copies of the books on my bookshelf at home. Beyond that I don't worry too much. These are games, not cryptocurrency wallets.

 

[Bohandas]

When you need a specific platform to view your content (Roll20, DDI), once that service stops being supported, if you can't download it as a PDF, then it's gone.

What about saving as an mht or screenshotting

 

[Thomas Shey]

What about saving as an mht or screenshotting

Think about what screenshotting an entire document would involve.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While I understand that I could easily lose physical books, etc. in a variety of ways- fire, rot, puppies, left on a bus, spilled a drink, etc.- I’ve actually lost more electronically stored data than physical.

Some of that was due to someone else’s child downloading a virus onto my Mac. Some was lost becau of lost passwords. But the bulk of it was due to obsolescence of hardware or software, sometimes due to a lack of portability to another platform or program.

So I don’t really buy electronic gaming material. I do get some for free, on occasion. And I’ve been creating my own content digitally since 1991 or so.*


* which comprises most of the stuff lost to obsolescence.

 

[Voadam]

While I understand that I could easily lose physical books, etc. in a variety of ways- fire, rot, puppies, left on a bus, spilled a drink, etc.- I’ve actually lost more electronically stored data than physical.

Some of that was due to someone else’s child downloading a virus onto my Mac. Some was lost becau of lost passwords. But the bulk of it was due to obsolescence of hardware or software, sometimes due to a lack of portability to another platform or program.

So I don’t really buy electronic gaming material. I do get some for free, on occasion. And I’ve been creating my own content digitally since 1991 or so.*


* which comprises most of the stuff lost to obsolescence.

All of my Apple 2e character sheets and character stories are long gone too.