Tyranthraxus
Explorer
You are really bringing up TSR as a way to explain whats happening now? hmmm
D&D 5E WTF Wizards of the Coast? *RANT* (video link)
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MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
I have bought Hero Labs. The SRD is limited but the community-developed back fills in the gaps nicely and you can download it from the interface itself. It isn't perfect but it is very useful. In my 5e game I have one player who uses HeroLab on a tablet instead of a paper charactersheet.
I use Hero Lab as the DM for the tactical console. It helps keep larger and more complex battles moving along. The encounter builder is also helpful.
I would say give the trial a go.
There's a big difference between a rulebook that you will be referencing constantly during play, and character options books that you only really need when building your character. I never bought any of the 4E splatbooks since the character builder had all the info I needed in a much more accessible and well-organized format, and the character sheets and power cards it would print contained all the relevant rules.
Actually buying the books would only cost extra money and take up space in my bookshelf.
Greg Benage
Legend
At worst, it's Early Bronze Age. Papyrus dates from around 2300 BCE, if I remember correctly.
Wizards is a relatively small subsidiary of a large toymaker dating from 1923. They make niche hobby games that are made of paper and cardboard, and that compliments their parent company's toys, which are made of plastic. (In truth, it was probably a much bigger compliment when Pokémon was driving very large revenues, a fact which likely causes Hasbro executives great consternation.) They also publish novels that are made of paper, though like all commercial publishers, they're trying to slowly manage a transition to digital that doesn't make their distribution and retail network disappear overnight, since most of their sales still come from paper.
Wizards is good at making up, writing, editing and illustrating stuff. They're also good at outsourcing the manufacturing of printed stuff, and the moving of printed stuff from factories to retail shelves. That's their core competency and their core business. They don't know much about digital stuff, except that when they let someone try to do digital stuff it usually either ends badly or results in them selling less printed stuff. This means the costs of their printed stuff increase and their sales of printed stuff decrease, and it also makes their distribution and retail partners unhappy, because they also depend on printed stuff. These companies' net profits are about five dollars and thirty-seven cents as it is, and they mostly worry about going the way of the record store.
There may come a time when not enough people want printed stuff with cards, boards, and books to support even a niche business. Then Wizards will go away and Hasbro will just hold onto its IP and license it to makers of digital stuff. But right now, enough people seem to like the printed stuff that Wizards can run a lean and profitable operation and their tier partners can continue to make their five dollars and thirty-seven cents. That's not saying someone at Wizards can't propose a project or partnership to produce some digital stuff. But someone at the company with an MBA or common sense is probably going to ask, "Sounds cool. What do we know about it and how does it drive our core business"? And then the digital stuff doesn't happen because the answer to both questions is, "Nothing."
While there may not be a ton of RPGs that have pulled this off, I think the hobbyist board game industry is proving this false. Many board games are going full analog iOS versions (including, *cough cough* Lords of Waterdeep), and increasingly I'm seeing official companion apps as well, like with the new-ish XCOM game.
The problem with the 4th Ed tools wasn't execution (though the app had flaws) it was its monetization strategy. They built two products that didn't encourage players to buy both. That's, like, a business 101 thing.
The board game industry is at least an order of magnitude larger than the RPG industry.
Jester David
Hero
If that's "the baseline" how does every other major RPG fare?
Pathfinder
They have PDFs. Not really hyperlinked.
They have Hero Labs licence for much of the rest. It's expensive and PC only.
FFG Star Wars
They have a dice app
Fantasy/Dragon AGE
They have PDFs. (Possibly hyperlinked, possibly not.)
Why is D&D held to a standard while every other RPG company - large or small - is given a free pass?
darjr
I crit!
The fans have added everything else, from what I understand, so it can actually be feature complete.
I'm not talking Monopoly or Checkers here, I'm talking boutique hobbyist board games. While the industry may be larger, it's also far more crowded. The market for any specific game—I think XCOM is the perfect example—is far, far smaller.
Wizards of the Coast is pretty uniquely positioned to leverage economies of scale far better than its competitors. The problem has always been vision, never market or capability.
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