[UPDATED!] D&D Beyond: An Official D&D Digital Toolset & Character Builder

D&D Beyond has just been announced! Coming this summer, and billed as "Your digital D&D source", it has a compendium of official content, character builder and manager, the ability to use home-brew content, D&D forums, and is usable on any device. A 1-minute announcement trailer can be seen below. D&D Beyond is produced by a company called Curse Inc, owned by Twitch. Right now, there's a signup for the Beta version. More info as/when it becomes available! [UPDATES: The D&D Beyond folks have offered some more info, which I have included below; I will be chatting with them later this week, with luck!]

"We are excited to announce development of D&D Beyond, an official digital toolset for use with the Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rules. We have partnered with Curse to take D&D players beyond pen and paper, providing a rules compendium, character builder, digital character sheets, and more—all populated with official D&D content. D&D Beyond aims to make game management easier for both players and Dungeon Masters by providing high-quality tools available on any device, empowering beginners and veterans alike!" goes the official description.

"D&D Beyond speaks to the way gamers are able to blend digital tools with the fun of storytelling around the table with your friends,” said Nathan Stewart, Senior Director of Dungeons & Dragons. "These tools represent a way forward for D&D, and we’re excited to get them into the hands of players soon!"

The company, Curse Inc., is owned by Twitch, and is based in San Francisco, with offices in various countries. They produce tools and communities for gamers - up until now, mainly video games. They started as a way to organise the founder's World of Warcraft add-ons about 10 years ago, and grew into a multinational company from there. The company makes a desktop app called the Curse Client, along with community driven wikis, tools, guides, and databases for games like Minecraft, Diablo, Countersrike, Overwatch, and more. In 2016, it was announced that Twitch would acquire Curse.

Features, from the website, include:

• D&D Compendium with Official Content
• Create, Browse, & Use Homebrew Content
• Manage Characters - Build, Progress, & Play
• D&D News, Articles, Forums, & More
• Access Anywhere, Anytime, on Any Device

That last item makes it sound like it'll work offline, which will be a popular move. And the home-brew content mention is also important, especially because WotC supports DMs Guild.

UPDATES: I checked with WotC's Greg Tito who confirmed "D&D Beyond will work without an internet connection. That's a big deal for the devs!"

Adam over at D&D Beyond confirmed a little about the pricing model:

"At launch, players will be able to access SRD content and build and view a small number of characters with a free D&D Beyond account.

We don’t have exact pricing nailed down, but you will also be able to buy official digital D&D content for all fifth edition products with flexible purchase options. You can pay only for the D&D content you need. If you only play fighters, for example, you’ll be able to just pick up the stuff you need to track swinging that giant two-handed sword.

A small monthly subscription will be needed to manage more than a handful of characters and to enable more advanced features, like homebrew content integration. At this time, we don’t know exactly how much the subscription will cost."

He also confirmed that the pricing structure is not about microtransactions: "I'm about to get on a plane so I've got to be brief, but I wanted to check in and make it clear that "microtransactions" were not mentioned and are not what the model is about."

And also that D&D Beyond is definitely not a Virtual Game Table (VTT): "D&D Beyond is intended to enhance gameplay around a table (virtual or otherwise) - we intend this to be completely complementary and have no intention of creating a VTT."

[video=youtube;Dn8Kpmm_aJA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn8Kpmm_aJA[/video]

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[Remathilis]

What I can say for now:

At launch, players will be able to access SRD content and build and view a small number of characters with a free D&D Beyond account.

We don’t have exact pricing nailed down, but you will also be able to buy official digital D&D content for all fifth edition products with flexible purchase options. You can pay only for the D&D content you need. If you only play fighters, for example, you’ll be able to just pick up the stuff you need to track swinging that giant two-handed sword.

A small monthly subscription will be needed to manage more than a handful of characters and to enable more advanced features, like homebrew content integration. At this time, we don’t know exactly how much the subscription will cost, but please continue to check dndbeyond.com for the most up-to-date announcements and information!

Headed to grab dinner...it's been quite a ride to get to this point and we're going to hit a little R&R tonight. I'll be able to check back in after I fly home tomorrow!

So basically...

1.) The SRD is Free. That grants you access to all 9 races (though 1 subrace each), all 11 classes (one subclass each), 1 background, 1 feat, a huge selection of monsters from the MM, most of the DMG magic items, and 75% of the spells.
2.) Additional stuff from the core-rulebooks will be separate content packs. You'll probably be able to buy them by class (Fighter's pack; granting access to EK, BM, and PDK), book (PHB pack; all the missing stuff from the PHB) or bundle (Core rules pack; everything from the PHB/DMG/MM). This will live or die by the pricing model, as I'd be willing to spend $5-10 to get the data from a sourcebook (like SCAG or VGtM) but I'm not rebuying the book at $40-50 per pack.
3.) You get a few PC slots, but if you want more (as well as homebrewing entry and other goodies) you'll need to pony up more. Again, price is key: anything more than $5/month is a dealbreaker. I mean, Microsoft will sell me MS Office, a terabyte of storage, and 60 Skype minutes for $8, I sure hope WotC isn't going to charge that much for a character builder. (Although, if you want to give me access to all the features AND all the datasets for $10/month, I'll consider that equal to a Netflix subscription)

I'm intrigued (and signed up for beta testing), but the price point is what is really going to determine if this is a must-buy or pass. (Also, remember if there is going to be a mobile app to make for both Android AND Apple; don't put us Android users on the "wait months later" plan)

 

[robus]

I mean, I get it, I understand why that's probably a necessary requirement, but... man, there are so, so, so many subscription services these days, it's becoming a headache to manage them all and they're all becoming a really significant monthly expenditure to the point that I'm not keen on adding any more and, honestly, need to drop several already.

As a software developer I can tell you that funding ongoing development with just new sales is hard. Especially for a niche product such as this. Subscriptions are really the only feasible way to keep the work funded. Think of it like patreon You like the stuff, you want it to continue so you give a small amount each month to support it.

It's that or clickbait and adware.

 

[Zhern]

What I can say for now:

At launch, players will be able to access SRD content and build and view a small number of characters with a free D&D Beyond account.

We don’t have exact pricing nailed down, but you will also be able to buy official digital D&D content for all fifth edition products with flexible purchase options. You can pay only for the D&D content you need. If you only play fighters, for example, you’ll be able to just pick up the stuff you need to track swinging that giant two-handed sword.

A small monthly subscription will be needed to manage more than a handful of characters and to enable more advanced features, like homebrew content integration. At this time, we don’t know exactly how much the subscription will cost, but please continue to check dndbeyond.com for the most up-to-date announcements and information!

Headed to grab dinner...it's been quite a ride to get to this point and we're going to hit a little R&R tonight. I'll be able to check back in after I fly home tomorrow!

[MENTION=6874542]DnDBeyond[/MENTION] - will characters be able to be exported? In XML or JSON? It would be great if they could be exported and imported into a VTT like Fantasy Grounds. Thanks for taking the time to answer questions and participate in an informal Q&A.

 

[darjr]

Will there be any Adventurers League support?

 

[BurntToast]

Will there be any Adventurers League support?

If you watch the teaser video... there is a shot that says "Adventurer's League Legal" or something along those lines.

Besides, an official D&D resource without AL support and functionality would be quite stupid.

 

[fjw70]

Great official D&D digital rules, and with a bonifide gaming company. That's awesome. Really looking forward to seeing an online compendium. That was my favorite part of DDI.

Will there be digital versions of the adventures? Either at launch or down the road?

 

[darjr]

[MENTION=29132]BurntToast[/MENTION] thanks. Didn't notice that. Also I see the story made the verge.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

As a software developer I can tell you that funding ongoing development with just new sales is hard. Especially for a niche product such as this. Subscriptions are really the only feasible way to keep the work funded. Think of it like patreon You like the stuff, you want it to continue so you give a small amount each month to support it.

It's that or clickbait and adware.

Yeah, like I said, I get it, just not really excited about dealing with yet another subscription and having to choose between and the dozen others (which I already really need to reduce to no more than 5, it's costing hella money every month).

And what's really required for ongoing development for something like this? Get it right the first time and aside from some tweaks to fix things that were missed or improve based on feedback, the only work required is in the data sets which are extra money on top of the client anyway. Hero Lab hasn't really been changed for however long it's been out... a decade? And they just increased their prices to do basically nothing to their product other than keep selling it and adding packages which they charge for.

On another note, I just installed the Curse client. Yikes. 400mb for this? And it bugged out, spamming system password requests to install, and then wouldn't recognise my Twitch password to merge accounts. All for a clumsy amalgamation of mod installer and Discord clone. Ugh, not impressed by their offerings so far.

 

[Dausuul]

Hmm. Color me cautiously optimistic, which considering WotC's track record in the digital arena is a ringing endorsement.

I shall be interested to see how the encounter tracker shakes out. I have yet to see the encounter tracker that I would even consider using. It's got to be faster than (or at least no slower than) pencil and paper, and (for me, at least) that's a high bar to meet. It also has to be able to gracefully handle large numbers of monsters, on the order of 15-20. If it meets those requirements, I'm on board.

As for the character builder, I'm fairly certain I'll sign up for that if it's executed reasonably well.

 

[LexStarwalker]

This looks very promising! I'm looking forward to trying out the beta.