D&D 5E Online RPG Tools Platform Demiplane Announces '5E Nexus'

Demiplane, the platform which hosts tools suites for a range of tabletop RPGs including Pathfinder, World of Darkness, and Free League's offerings, has announced a new 'nexus' -- the 5E Nexus based off the 5E System Reference Document which WotC recently released into Creative Commons. Demiplane, the home to official digital toolsets for a diverse range of award-winning tabletop roleplaying...

5e NEXUS Screens.png

Demiplane, the platform which hosts tools suites for a range of tabletop RPGs including Pathfinder, World of Darkness, and Free League's offerings, has announced a new 'nexus' -- the 5E Nexus based off the 5E System Reference Document which WotC recently released into Creative Commons.

Demiplane, the home to official digital toolsets for a diverse range of award-winning tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), is proud to announce its next digital toolset, a first-of-its kind for the roleplaying community: 5e NEXUS. Explore more at 5eNEXUS.com.

This innovation recognizes that interest in alternatives to first-party Dungeons & Dragons products has never been higher, with millions of players expanding their horizons into new game systems and new 5e-based worlds. Even before the Wizards of the Coast debacle in January, a large portion of the 5e community used resources from independent publishers to bring their campaigns to life. 5e NEXUS will serve these players by delivering a premium experience for 5e fans to not only prep and play, but also connect with each other through matchmaking, group creation, scheduling, built-in video voice and chat, and professional tools for Game Masters ready to earn some gold by running amazing adventures.

This new digital toolset–referred to as a NEXUS on Demiplane–brings vital capabilities to third party 5e publishers and creators. Instead of a toolset to support one Tarrasque-sized publisher, 5e NEXUS will support game content from multiple independent publishers who use and base their game content off SRD 5.1 content, which was originally created for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game and is now publicly available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Demiplane’s support for independent 5e publishers and the massive D&D player community who enjoy their books will arrive in three stages:

Stage One: Pre-Launch, available now: 5e group creation and group-finding tools. These are based on proprietary technology that compares a series of preferences to find the best matches between players and Game Masters. This supports any way that players want to play: using Demiplane’s built-in video, voice, chat, and dice rolling service, their favorite VTT, or simply as a means to find, schedule, and manage their in-person tabletop game.

Stage 2: 5e NEXUS Early Access Launch, available 1H 2023: Official NEXUS-enhanced digital tools for game books from multiple independent publishers. These will include Demiplane’s Digital Reader and Rules Compendium tools to make it easy for 5e enthusiasts to discover, learn, and play games from an assortment of their favorite 5e publishers. TheDigital Reader is a technology that presents all of a game book’s content dynamically formatted for mobile, tablet, and desktop use. To reduce the time it takes to learn and prep, Digital Reader books include integrated tooltips, drill-down sidebars, and cross-references that span a player's entire digital library. The Rules Compendium is an invaluable tool to have at the table while you’re playing or when you need to quickly find specific game rules information. It categorizes and sorts the most frequently-needed game elements so players and GMs can find exactly what they need without slowing down the flow of the game.

Stage 3: 5e NEXUS Character Tools, available 2H 2023: 5e games from independent creators and third-party publishers create orders-of-magnitude more options for players, and Character Tools on 5e NEXUS will unleash character creation creativity on a whole new level with a character builder and digital character sheet.

“As the tabletop roleplaying space thrived in recent years, the openness of 5e led to the creation of indispensable expanded content from myriad creators and publishers. Every play group I come across uses third-party content in their games,” said Adam Bradford, Chief Development Officer of Demiplane, “The challenge still remains to make all that content accessible in a unified and seamless way. 5e NEXUS is a major step in that direction, giving fans the high-quality digital tools they crave without having to leave their favorite toys in the toybox.” Demiplane is pleased to stand alongside the community to support a vibrant, diverse range of independent 5e publishers for years to come. In the days and weeks ahead, look for announcements on specific publishers and the titles coming to the Early Access launch of 5e NEXUS. You can stay in the know by:

●signing up for inbox alerts,
●following us on Twitter,
●joining us on FB, and
●tuning into Demiplane’s weekly Dev Update with host, Demiplane Chief Development Officer, and father of D&D Beyond Adam Bradford

If you are an independent 5e publisher interested in learning more about 5e NEXUS, get intouch with us at publishers@demiplane.com
 

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Zaukrie

New Publisher
Track record?

Idk man do what you want?
We can disagree here. I think if you are building a new tool, not updating what's new on your site for over a year shows a lack of attention to detail. Also, what could I possibly know about progress given that? Nothing.

I don't want anything. I'm merely giving feedback from a potential customer
 

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lkj

Hero
I'm not sure what you mean by this...there is a main menu item on Demiplane.com called "What's New" that details multiple updates in the last several months.


And in Early Access, the Digital Reader and Game Compendium (listings / primers) work pretty well in their incomplete state. The character tools are in Closed Alpha for Pathfinder right now, but once we get to Open Beta with that the first half of this year, more games will be supported much more quickly since the platform will then be in place. Building something out of nothing is always hardest. Once something is built, adding things to it is easier.
Hey Adam-- Glad to see you guys are doing this. Definitely glad to see a place for 3rd party publisher support. Sad face for me, since what I really want is all my official and 3rd party D&D stuff in one place. But I suppose that'll have to be a dream for a later time.

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Zaukrie

New Publisher
Well, we're not an IT company, but I agree we're at a point where the site should be updated more frequently - which is why I asked the team to get it up-to-date now. We've been more focused on getting the actual toolset development done than updating the website while we're in Early Access. That will change as we ramp up for the full launch.
Great! I'll check out the progress. I'm hoping you build some great tools.
 

cbwjm

Seb-wejem
Current DDB can't even let people make sidekick characters from Tasha's, which came out 18 months ago. (Remember: WotC insists that sidekick characters are great PCs, although I just want the builder to work for them as NPCs, which I make a lot of.)

I'm not sure WotC knows what they want to do with it, independent of Demiplane.
I know, we can make regular PCs, not sure why it doesn't use the same system to make a sidekick, surely they can make a tabbed interface for players to switch between their main PC and sidekick.
 

cbwjm

Seb-wejem
I was actually wanting to delete my account when I saw nothing that I wanted to use, but Demiplane doesn't make it easy. Might wait to see what tools they put out for pathfinder first before deciding.
 




Now I am thinking the VTTs could be useful to give a second opportunity to cancelled videogames. How to explain it with the right words?

You know there are lots of online multiplayer videogames what after a couple of players are cancelled and the server closed because they didn't make enough money.

Now let's imagine the elements: characters, enemies, "artrezzo".... all that recycled to be "miniatures" in a VTT. Then the players could pay to buy "licenced packs". And this can be used in two ways, as pieces of a VTT, or for a "arcade created by youself" as Little Big Planet, Sony's Dreams, Mario Marker, Roblox or Manticore's Core. Then you could be playing a "Hero Quest: RPG" (a recycled version of D&D 4th) with miniatures from Warcraft, Zelda and Final Fantasy, or a post-apocaliptic Gamma World with heroes and monsters from Fallout, Fortnite: Save the World, Battleborn and Sunset Overdrive.

Maybe it is a crazy idea, but some times to find a good idea you need to start with a fool idea and thinking about how this could be fixed and imprived.
 

Nathaniel Lee

Adventurer
And the sidekick classes are just three more classes. Not even particularly complex ones, by design. It's very odd.

From what I've heard from multiple sources, it boils down to the particular architecture they went with, one that the current team has been actively trying to refactor (or perhaps rebuild from scratch) for at least a couple of years now. It sounded like there was some serious tech debt they accrued in the earlier part of development, trade-offs made in order to be able to get something out, which later made it more difficult to build upon.

I was told by a developer there that the one major feature I really wanted — the ability to homebrew an entire class — was impossible in the legacy architecture due to how they approached the class design within the system, but that said new architecture, when it was eventually completed, could potentially support that feature.

In any case, this situation is something that we encounter all too often in software development, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if this were true. Of course, this is all just hearsay plus some guessing on my own from my own long experience as a software engineer, and unfortunately I have a feeling that the person best qualified to talk about this — already in this conversation, no less — wouldn't be inclined to say anything about it. Maybe I'll see if lessons learned result in the ability to homebrew full classes in Demiplane...?
 

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