D&D (2024) Wizards of the Coast Backtracks on D&D Beyond and 2014 Content

Wizards of the Coast posted an overnight update stating that they are not going forward with previously released plans to require those wishing to use some 2014 content on D&D Beyond to use the Homebrew function to manually enter it. Instead, all the content including spells and magic items will be included. From the update:

D&D (2024) - How D&D Beyond Will Handle Access To 2014 Rules

D&D Beyond has announced how the transition to the new 2024 edition will work on the platform, and how legacy access to the 2014 version of D&D will be implemented. You will still be able to access the 2014 Basic Rules and core rulebooks. You will still be able to make characters using the 2014...

www.enworld.org

Last week we released a Changelog detailing how players would experience the 2024 Core Rulebooks on D&D Beyond. We heard your feedback loud and clear and thank you for speaking up.

Our excitement around the 2024 Core Rulebooks led us to view these planned updates as welcome improvements and free upgrades to existing content. We misjudged the impact of this change, and we agree that you should be free to choose your own way to play. Taking your feedback to heart, here’s what we’re going to do:

Players who only have access to the 2014 Player’s Handbook will maintain their character options, spells, and magical items in their character sheets. Players with access to the 2024 and 2014 digital Player’s Handbooks can select from both sources when creating new characters. Players will not need to rely on Homebrew to use their 2014 player options, including spells and magic items, as recommended in previous changelogs.

Please Note:

Players will continue to have access to their free, shared, and purchased items on D&D Beyond, with the ability to use previously acquired player options when creating characters and using character sheets.

We are not changing players’ current character sheets, except for relabeling and renaming. Examples include Races to Species, Inspiration to Heroic Inspiration, and Cast Spell to Magic.

We’re dedicated to making D&D Beyond the ultimate digital toolset for Dungeons & Dragons, continuously enhancing the platform to ensure you can create, customize, and play your game just as you envision it. From your first one-shot to multi-year campaigns and everything in between, we're grateful to be on this journey with you.

- The D&D Studio

 

[Belen]

Except they DID listen. They did!

People cheered when they said they were getting rid of Vancian casting. And then when the actual game came out, people excoriated WotC for it. People absolutely ripped WotC to shreds over the "Golden Wyvern Adept" discussion, how DARE WotC decide what flavor THEIR characters would have! So they kept the flavor light and minimal to respond to customer complaints....only for those customers to then rip them ANOTHER new one, because how DARE they make books that are so lacking in flavor!!!

The D&D fanbase was, simply, unpleasable. And as we are now seeing with design choices in both 5.0 and 5.5e, design by committee and farming out all your decisions to the madding crowd has its own set of delightful ills. It just, as noted above, rewards the company with mega-bucks and then causes the controversy afterward, so the company is rewarded for doing it and will thus keep doing so.


And yet this had almost no impact on the actual players--it was only the producer side. The players revolted when WotC tried to actually kill the OGL last year.

Plenty of people screamed that 4e was a mistake before it came out. There were massive arguments here that people hated getting rid of Vancian etc.

It’s fine that you liked it. I found it great for minis or board games but not for tabletop.

 

[mamba]

As part of his research for his next book, Riggs found out that after 4E folded, WotC was actually in talks with Fantasy Flight Games to license the D&D brand to them. As in, 5E would have been made by FFG rather than WotC.

looking forward to that book

 

[Belen]

To get away from yet more 4e arguments…

With D&D Direct today and 3pp announcement for DDB, I think this drive the backtrack.

They needed to derail the DDB negativity to protect their move forward.

It also makes perfect sense if they are going to support other games or 5e material.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Plenty of people screamed that 4e was a mistake before it came out. There were massive arguments here that people hated getting rid of Vancian etc.

It’s fine that you liked it. I found it great for minis or board games but not for tabletop.

Had a great series of random arena battles with my friends for a while using 4e, where we would pull a mini from my collection at random and make a 4e character based on it to fight it out. Most fun I ever had with the 4e ruleset by far.

 

[TiQuinn]

Plenty of people screamed that 4e was a mistake before it came out. There were massive arguments here that people hated getting rid of Vancian etc.

It’s fine that you liked it. I found it great for minis or board games but not for tabletop.

If they had launched it as a totally different game, like say Battlesystem or the new Gamma World for instance, I wonder if the reception would’ve been better.

 

[Belen]

If they had launched it as a totally different game, like say Battlesystem or the new Gamma World for instance, I wonder if the reception would’ve been better.

D&D Combat Arena….

You could have had PvP battles or PvE scenarios. It would have been great for it.

 

[mamba]

Except they DID listen. They did!

People cheered when they said they were getting rid of Vancian casting. And then when the actual game came out, people excoriated WotC for it. People absolutely ripped WotC to shreds over the "Golden Wyvern Adept" discussion, how DARE WotC decide what flavor THEIR characters would have! So they kept the flavor light and minimal to respond to customer complaints....only for those customers to then rip them ANOTHER new one, because how DARE they make books that are so lacking in flavor!!!

still means they missed the boat as far as what their customers wanted is concerned. You can argue that their customers have differing opinions and that is certainly true, but that is true with 5e as well and they somehow managed to not end up between two seats with it

The D&D fanbase was, simply, unpleasable.

and this is not the case now?

Yes, design by committee has its limit, esp. if WotC chooses to agree with or ignore that committee as it sees fit, but at least they actually have an idea of how popular something is now, 4e was flying blind until it hit the mountain range of encountering players.

Clearly you like 4e, I am not saying it was a bad set of rules, I am saying it was an exceedingly unpopular and divisive set of rules, and that is where the design failed. They did not understand what their customers wanted.

 

[Von Ether]

I wanted to make a separate thread about the panels that Ben Riggs gave at Gen Con, but never managed to find the time, so I might as well mention this here.

As part of his research for his next book, Riggs found out that after 4E folded, WotC was actually in talks with Fantasy Flight Games to license the D&D brand to them. As in, 5E would have been made by FFG rather than WotC.

Well, that would have doubled down on the board game/gribbles vibe. Their take on WF provided a tuckbox for every player so they could store all their cards and cardboard bits between games.

 

[Von Ether]

If they had launched it as a totally different game, like say Battlesystem or the new Gamma World for instance, I wonder if the reception would’ve been better.

I felt like the Gama World version was a great fit for 4e's mechanics.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I felt like the Gama World version was a great fit for 4e's mechanics.

That's a fun game. I still have it.