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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 3750009" data-attributes="member: 150">It's my understanding that the game will be a complete game if all you get is the books, as much as the 3.5 edition is the full game with just the books.  Each book will come with a code that unlocks access to the online/electronic version of the book. It's not clear (at least to me) exactly what that looks like.  That won't cost anything extra. There will be a subscription service that will basically replace Dungeon and Dragon -- that's the Insider part.  That service will include premium content meant to be the new outlet for Dragon and Dungeon types of magazine content.  It's also going to include the character building tools and the virtual tabletop for playing games via computer (rather than at the table). I'll be the first to admit that I've been lukewarm at best at WOTC's ability to deliver on electronic products and services in the past.  Their much-promoted Gleemax dohicky is a skin over an old world message board.  Their e-tools were a prettier but less useful version of the open source PCGen toolset -- a toolset they gutted to protect the E-tools footprint in the marketplace. I went from having a tool that I found immensely useful (PCGen pre-assertion of the WOTC copyright) to a frustrating attempt to use etools for the same functionality, and finally went back to sketching out NPCs on paper.  So . . . I'm a bit wary myself about the electronic side of the new edition.  They're hanging out a big, big shingle, though.  They're making a very big pitch.  And I hope they can pull it off.  I have nothing but buckets of respect for the team running the project, and there hasn't been an announced change in the game that I haven't liked the sound of. I figure, if the only thing that works out is the new edition of the rules, I'm happy.  If the other pillars of the offering they're promoting bear workable fruit, that's gravy.  Personally, I think the more interesting questions to think about are the ones you get to once you assume that they're going to be able to deliver on the Digital Initiative.  For one thing, how does DI work for 3rd party publishers, if at all?  Will WOTC release the Database API that describes how the game rules and stats are stored in their database so that third party publishers can provide their own data for DI users to access?  The biggest example is probably Paizo and Pathfinder -- will Paizo be able to connect to the DI database and make their campaign world information (feats, class options, new monsters, etc) available?  What possible business reason would WOTC have for making that sort of service available?  Will they make money from Paizo doing that?  not likely.  Will they maintain a larger subscriber base if they open it up in this way? Probably, but it comes with added expenses and the natural problems that come with adding someone else's data to your carefully maintained database. Is it worth it?  Clearly, I need to spend more time thinking about work <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. -j</blockquote>

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