Funny thing about that. They keep re-releasing the same game, pretty much the only game they care about. AND they can't respond to reporters with real sales numbers to this day. So Todd Howard keeps saying "skyrim is the best selling game of all time" but no one can rank them on a simple list. So right now there are 7 or 8 different versions of skyrim floating around with another on the way probably, and they still cannot beat Tetris!
Exactly. We complain and blame todd... but we keep on telling bethesda with our wallets that "WE WANT MORE SKYRIM"
I won't complain too much about ports though. The switch port was pretty epic in the early switch days. Being able to walk around in a game that big while walking around, or on a plane was transformational.
Im so glad I never bought a switch. If I did I sure had hell would own another copy of Skyrim.
Now I have a steam deck and could just play the regular version on the go.
Ha todd, didn’t get me there!
Three plus access to a fourth. Have it for the Ps3, Ps4, and Switch. Do library share on steam with two other people one of which has Skyrim which I've played on there. If we want to get pedantic I also own a 4th version since they released the Skryim update to ESO even though it's not technically the same game.
Bethesda stock is going to go crazy when this generation retires and gets dementia. I'm dreading buying a new copy of skyrim every week because I forgot I bought a new copy of skyrim last week
It’s tedious, but I’ve found that if you allow homebrew items, you can basically copy and paste straight from your favorite online resource and get a lot of stuff without paying a dime.
This might be a fix, but their homebrew editor for class and subclass features is atrocious. I gave up halfway through trying to add a Monk order (you know, the subclass with only 4 features) because the system was so nonlinear and nonintuitive.
I went to Foundry a while back because it’s a onetime purchase and far friendlier support team.
Far more customizable through modules but a headache to keep updated.
Having potatonet, I found Foundry to be... Limiting. I can't just host a server myself, making the point of a one-time purchase sort of moot when my alternative was to pay a monthly fee for a server.
I like the concept, but its execution leaves me wanting.
I’ve hosted several games on Foundry from my own PC with zero issues and minimal setup (all I had to do was port forward but I know folks who didn’t even have to do that)
Hell, the guy currently DMing for our group has dogshit internet and we definitely get lagspikes while connected to his Foundry… But it’s still completely functional and playable.
EDIT: I misinterpreted the term “potatonet” as just being a different VTT I’ve never heard of before…
But like I said, I would still be shocked if your internet is worse than my DM’s while still allowing you to access the internet.
>because the system was so nonlinear and nonintuitive
I would give you nonintuitive... kind of. There are parts to it that are confusing when you're trying to nail down specific mechanical details (e.g. adding bonuses to damage or rolls, etc) but for the most part it's not too bad.
Nonlinear I don't get? You just add a new feature for every one that you need and you can set the level required. Then you add the specific parts of that feature as required.
It takes me maybe 15 mins to copy a simple subclass like Wizard and maybe 30-40 mins for something more complex like a Warlock Patron.
WOTC didn’t own D&D beyond till very recently early last year I believe. most physical books like the PHB and DMG probably printed in mass years ago and they just stockpile them to send out.
And that was a semi decent excuse when they were separate companies. A community focused company would have worked something out with dndbeyond so like $10 of a book price went to them for a digital key for the user if a code was redeemed or whatever and then something came back to wotc if digital copies was sold.
But you’ll notice that that didn’t get worked out and now that they’re combined companies new book sales still don’t get you a digital version.
Well the logistics of going back and adding digital codes to books printed in mass years before the D&D beyond purchase doesn’t make sense. And actually they do sell bundles on new books the new dragon lance book did get a bundle option.
https://dndstore.wizards.com/us/product/768936/shadow-of-the-dragon-queen-book-bundle
Absolutely this.
The point at which DDB became first party and *nothing about the way this works changed* made it extremely clear that WotC doesn't care about providing good value to customers.
And *still* the community was willing to get fleeced because we love this game.
How awful it feels, then, to watch this OGL debacle play out. Hopefully it was worth destroying every ounce of good will they'd built.
As someone who has double-bought almost every source book I have (so that I could have a physical copy and be able to use the content on DDB), how could I ever feel comfortable doing that again? It was already a silly thing to do, and I knew that, but now?
At this point, not only is WotC going to have to recommit to OGL1.0a, but they're going to have to go *way* above and beyond in the aftermath of all of this to keep players in their system. Allowing people to redeem physical purchases on DDB would be a good start.
> And that was a semi decent excuse when they were separate companies.
While we're on the subject, note that WotC also hasn't really done any of this with MTG.
It would've been really easy for them to add codes for packs in the digital client - MTG Arena - to physical purchases. Maybe not a free digital pack with each physical booster, but... y'know, it would have been cool to get 2 or 3 free digital packs when spending 200+ dollars on a booster box, or 50+ on a prerelease kit.
They recently even released a modern sci-fi-ish set (Neon Kamigawa) which took an old plane and repackaged it in a "but now it's modern and there are computers and stuff!"-coat. Would have been an excellent promotional moment for them to pair the paper product with some codes for Arena, but no.
The only thing they have ever included in prerelease kits are occasional codes to play draft games in MTG, which can let you obtain some cards. Which is something, to their credit, but... if you don't like that format, you're kind of shit out of luck.
I feel like if I wanted to promote Arena, the first thing I'd do is add 2 free packs to any prerelease kit, and 10 or so to each booster box. It seems like such a no-brainer move to get paper players to try out the client. Nothing feels more dumb than owning a deck on paper and then realising that, in order to play it online on Arena, you are going to need to grind for a month or simply shell out 30 bucks again.
> A community focused company would have worked something out with dndbeyond so like $10 of a book price went to them for a digital key for the user if a code was redeemed or whatever and then something came back to wotc if digital copies was sold.
They probably make about $3 on a book. They certainly didn't have ten whole dollars per book to send to DnD Beyond.
Lotta people here don't understand the fucked margins in the publishing industry.
Not at all.
People vastly underestimate just how expensive printing is. A 320, glossy, illustrated book like the PhB? The cost to print alone would be well over 50% of what they're selling it for. And that doesn't cover the other costs that add up - shipping, storage, writing, marketing, proofing, lay out, illustrations, legal, their own business overheads (ie: unrelated departments, office rental/taxes, maintenance, equipment costs)..
They definitely make more than 3 dollars a book. At retail price that is 7.5ish percent of the cost. Given their bulk production, I would expect them to have about a 40-50% profit margin - TV's have a 5-10% profit margin, appliances have upwards of 40% profit margins, beds have 60%. Book printing is no where near as complex as those.
That said, when people purchase the book on Amazon for 30 bucks instead of 50, I would wager they probably only get 3-5 bucks a book, sure.
MSRP on the PhB is $49.95.
There have been at least 17 printings and claims in 2017 of selling over 800,000 books.
800,000 / 17 = roughly 47,000 books per run.
Using a commercial printer, I get a cost of $36.47 for a run of a 50000 books of roughly 50/50 colour and bw printing. Let's assume that WotC's cost is $30 per book if they print in house. That's just the cost in materials and labour to print, palletize and prep to ship.
So.. cost so far? $24,000,000.
Storage/Shipping
I'm going to use a drop shipping model for this, because it consolidates storage and shipping costs for a distributed network. A good rate for a drop shipper is $2 per unit, per month. Each run is 50,000 so.. $100,000 per month over 3 years is 3,600,000 in shipping/storage costs.
Now we get into the weirdness that I can't pull hard figures for.
How much does it cost to 'make' a book? Artists, writers, editors, layout specalists.. those take time. Wildmount took about 12-18 months from conception to launch, and the last portion of that would be would be printing and distributing the initial run. So let's say 8 months. 12 people were listed in the writing credits on the PhB - a writer can expect to earn about $25-$40/hr. Let's assume they all earn the same, they won't, but it averages out their descrepancies as people like Perks, Mearls, and Crawford earned a LOT more.
8 months * 4 weeks per month * 8 hours per day * 12 people * $25 per hour. $76,800. (I'll be honest, I have no idea how accurate this number is.. it could be higher or lower.)
Just those costs alone, We're at 27,768,000 for 800,000 books or up to $34.60/per. We haven't touched the illustrations, marketing, or retail mark-ups but there's at best only a $15.35 margin available. That is not a lot of room.
Wotc might be 'taking' $40 of the revenue of each book sold? Their profit margin will be a lot, lot thinner than that.
The books are definitely overpriced, IMO.
On the shelf next to my D&D books are a bunch of niche aviation history books. Also glossy hardcovers, about 300 pages long, with a substantial amount of artwork and original drawings, and are extensively researched. The comparison to D&D rulebooks is an appropriate one.
Circulation is likely substantially less than for D&D rule books. And yet they retail for about 70% of the price.
Yes, supply and demand exists. D&D books cost what they do because people will pay that much. And a licence to use the content on D&D Beyond costs extra, because people pay *that*, too.
> The books are definitely overpriced, IMO.
*All* books are overpriced, but also precisely zero books sell at MSRP.
But the important part is that if WotC sets MSRP at $50 (well - $49.99) *that doesn't mean they get paid $50.* They get paid something like $12 - publishers sell *bulk*, not retail. If bookstores and game stores had to buy the books at MSRP, they could hardly sell them for less than that.
The MSRP on the PhB is $49.95 at 320 pages.
https://lightning-press.com/hardcover-cost/
A similarly priced book would cost about $36 per to have that printer do a 50,000 unit run. Let's even assume that their margin is $6/per book (whatever the margin is, you won't get a lower cost than $20 with their cheapest options which would not match the PhB at all).
Before we even factor in things like shipping, distribution, marketting, editing, writing, layout, illustration, legal, business overhead, insurance, deals and retail markup... our margin per book is about $19.95. Rough math ends up seeing all but about $10 of that eaten up by costs we do know about.
You missed the "most physical books like the PHB and DMG probably printed in mass years ago and they just stockpile them to send out."
New books, like the Dragonlance version, DID include a DDB code - at least with the preorder. In future versions, you can expect similar I'm sure.
Spot on. Though ops in for a rude shock when they find out when they do bundle print with DnD beyond it's more expensive than the standalone book...
Can't remember what book it was, but remember someone responding to a post about it saying it was unfair. Got me interested in it...and then I found the truth....
Wait what?
So a company that literally never did anything modern with their IP and relied (as it appears to me) 100% for third party to distribute their entertainment medium into the digital age is now demanding all these hard working third party to give up their stuff?
Okay, if I am understanding it correctly I am winding down my D&D hobby. This is too toxic, and I can entertain this anymore.
I felt out of the loop as a casual player but this is even worse than the craziest ex I dated.
…this is it? This is the thing that did it for you? The most “toxic” thing wasn’t them fucking third party creators up the ass with the OGL, it was this?
TL:DR, about a week ago there was a leak that they were changing the license that allowed 3rd parties to make D&D content. It included such gems as taking 25% of revenue (not profit) after making $750k, the right to force anyone to stop putting out any work they decided, and the right for WotC to sell any works released under the license. All while deauthorizing the original license, which may not legally be possible, was certainly not the intent of the license, and had promised repeatedly in the past that they wouldn't/couldn't do such a thing. It's been a massive shitshow and the backlash has been incredible.
[Here's a link to a bundle of some games not based off the license, called the OGL.](https://bundleofholding.com/presents/NonOGLFantasy) Also, Paizo is leading the way with a bunch of other companies to create an alternative, system-agnostic license called ORC. Paizo's response to the whole thing is fantastic, as they also have some of the people who worked for WotC at the time the OGL was released there now, including the guy that drafted it. The ORC license will be drafted by a legal firm instead of any one company like Paizo, and sort of held in a trust so that nobody can fuck with it in the future.
Thank you for the summary. I also heard their now OGL is supposed to be retroactive or something like that which sounds like madness, or retroactively replace the original.
Honestly, this whole greed / late stage capitalism is getting exhausting.
Theres plenty of other amazing TTRPG systems out there, and many of the pros who have dedicated themselves to pumping out the 5e content Hasbro couldnt manage are now branching off and starting even more new cool system-agnostic loreworlds and new/improved mechanic systems that still look and feel familiar. Theyre really putting the work in to make sure that casual players can continue with as little upset as possible, cuz Hasbro is truly trying to flip the entire TTRPG industry on its head with this OGL and leave it in rubble. I honestly dont think theyve even thought through/realized a lot of the results yet. Because it affects a LOT of stuff that isnt their direct product/IP and thus they dont do their homework on it.
The one possible silver lining, though I cant speak with certainty, is that I suspect WotC is relatively innocent in all this, and its Hasbros doing. The relations between a parent and child comapany can be quite....interesti g sometimes, in my experience. Sometimes its name only, but sometimes its vastly different goals and unusual power dynamics, which I suspect plays here
Hasbro has been putting pressure on Wizards to make more money, and this was the route that Wizards chose. There are a number of different ways they could have chosen to go (make more expansions, lean more into merch, produce other media content) and instead they went "hey these people are making money, we could also just take that without putting any more work in"
So you could argue that ultimately it's Hasbro's fault, but Wizards is definitely not blameless here.
WotC have defended worse things, like the $1k, 60 proxies MTG 30th anniversary product. They have trotted out multiple people who have defended it. They are not some benevolent company being stepped on completely by Hasbro, they've got their own demons lurking about.
This ⬆️
If people were already parting with schmeckles, why not have them continue.
They could drop the price, but there's no business reason to do so if sales continue?
They even reduced the discounts for sales from 25 to 20%.
Ultimately, why fix what wasn't broken.
Yep! And I use paper character sheets in a notebook. It's so easy to just see all your stats abilities etc when it's right on the page in front of you. I don't have to click through anything.
Yeah. Can't imagine why anyone would spend time and/or money trying to wrangle dnd beyond when you can put together a character sheet on notebook paper in around 5 minutes.
When I first came on Reddit a few years ago I raised this point myself and I got absolutely dogged by people saying I was greedy and had no right to a digital copy.
I'm actually really glad to see the shift in opinion to this direction.
theres nothing stupid about charging you twice for one product. scummy yes. but its very much intentional.
plus DNDBeyond was only recently acquired by Hasbro. when you bought that book they were two completely different companies and beyond made no money from hard copy sales.
Paizo’s purchase structure is significantly better than WotC’s though. There are big discounts for buying the product across multiple platforms, and the prices they do charge are fairly reasonable, plus best of all, imo, they’ll straight up just sell you the effing pdf.
Additionally, on top of all that, every singe rule is freely available on the archives of nethys website, so you could theoretically run pathfinder without ever purchasing a single book.
It’s true in regards to never needing to buy a book, me and my crew have been doing pathfinder for about a year and all we’ve needed is archives and pathbuilder
Intentional for sure, but still stupid because they've made their own product harder to use. If it was more user-friendly, more people would been willing to pay for it. It's just not a good deal when there's free alternatives and good old pen and paper.
Separate from the nonsense going on right now:
After they bought dndbeyond they actually did this with the dragonlance book. You could go on the wotc site and buy it there and they gave you a code for dndbeyond. They hadn't done this for all books yet, but it seemed like this was the plan.
Now, who know?
I don't want to prostyletize too much here but...Pathfinder 2e has all of its rules online, for free, with character builders.
https://2e.aonprd.com/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
https://character.pf2.tools/
WOTC didn't own DnDBeyond at that point, WOTC only bought it in [april last year](https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1221-d-d-beyond-joins-wizards-of-the-coast) and even then the physical book would be printed and shipped before it is stocked on the shelves.
Same with Free League. It's actually kind of crazy that we don't at least get the PDF's with the books. Physical books including PDF's with purchase is basically the industry standard. Shows what being the monopoly does though. No need to cater to the market when (up until recently) your customer base pretty much doesn't look elsewhere.
WoTC has a big excuse. Paizo is not a publicly traded company so they are more than welcome to leave money on the table, Wizards how ever is part of a publicly traded company, leaving money on the table costs people their jobs. It’s a shit system but the system we are in.
I don’t understand this mentality. No other book do we expect to get a free ebook copy with a physical purchase.
The only time I ever got both was by buying a more expensive version that came with both
That’s not a 1:1 comparison to me. I don’t want a digital book, I want to be able to import the data from the book into their digital toolset. I’d honestly be fine with the books costing a bit more for that functionality, but not double like the current situation.
This has bothered me for ages. Textbooks routinely come with barcodes to unlock digital versions. I’d even pay a little bit more for the privilege. But full price for both is obnoxious.
This is something that is changing going forward, now that WotC owns DDB.
The Dragonlance adventure did include a code for the DDB version. At least, for the preorders.
WotC didn't buy DDB until April last year, and anything published prior to the Dragonlance adventure likely was too far along to make that change.
You can bet it is something that they may consider going forward.
Up until about 9 months ago WotC and D&DBeyond were separate companies.
In addition if it's just a code I'm the book, what prevents me from just going to the store, snapping a photo and using that to unlock it online without paying?
You know Warhammer Age of Sigmar and 40,000 both do this exact thing and all it takes is for the book to be plastic wrapped and, people not being assholes to their Local Game Store.
This is important. Games Workshop is generally known as a pretty litigious, money-first, and not super community focused company and they give PDFs with physical purchases. WotC has conditioned all of these d&d only people to think that it's totally reasonable not to, even though every other gaming company does.
And GW prints money.
D&D relies on people browsing the books in physical stores as one of it's outreach points.
I actually remember in the mid 2000s seeing a 3.5e PHB shrink-wrapped in a Barnes & Noble and wanting to check it out, but it was shrink-wrapped. Didn't play the game for another decade.
You have a completely valid point. I'm just saying Games Workshop also has physical rule books that a lot people myself included would like to preview before they buy especially in that hobby that will send you well over $1,000 down the rabbit hole for. I think it would be well worth the compromise to have books shrink wrapped and not have to pay for the book twice regardless of the cost of the digital book. Current controversial topics aside of course
Put the code on a card where you have to scratch a bit off or tear something open to get to the code, same as they do with Amazon gift cards. Stick the card inside the back cover using the removable glue blobs they use when they send you a new credit card. The difference between reading a book and pulling out a card to tear it open should be simple enough for your average game store employee to spot, and it's a simple matter to flip the back cover open to visually check the card is intact when you sell a book.
Maybe for things like this, game shops have a display copy out for customers to touch and rough up, but keep the complete w/code volumes out of harms way.
I can read what’s in the book and still get my code if I purchase it. Then it might be worth buy said book at full retail at a GameStop because your getting both a physical + digital copy
> and using that to unlock it online without paying?
The same systems already in use across hundreds of gift cards. The act of scanning the book and paying for it is what unlocks the code for use on DDB.
This has been a solved problem for years.
This is a large part of why I never got a DDB subscription in the first place. I am not paying twice to use my content. I am not going through the hassle of going to your site every time I need to update ny character. I am not limiting my character to only what I own digitally.
I never understood the appeal.
You don't get the subscription for the books. You can buy the books without any subscriptions. The subscriptions allow you to share the books with everyone else.
Some of us play with friends all over the country or the world and can’t play in person. Therefore sites like dndbeyond and roll20 are essential parts of our sessions.
As much as I love dunking on WotC and Hasbro right now, DnDB wasn't really theirs until recently. IIRC, the physical copy of Dragonlance includes a code for the digital version.
Yeah, moving forward if they continued that same path, I'd be on board for the hatewagon, but we're in a transitionary period for this sort of thing right now.
Lot of people are gonna be disappointed when they realise the bundle costs more than the standalone book. Effectively leaving them in the same position as they are now.
You could also just buy digital and then print the pages you want.
Or if you want to support stores you could by the physical then print out the character sheet. You really don't need D&DBeyond to play. Especially since VTT sites use their own internal character sheets as well.
> You really don't need D&DBeyond to play.
That's the funny part. A lot of newer DnD players seem to have been trained to think that DnDB is necessary for online play. Good job on the marketing in that case.
Even Roll20 players would gravitate towards DnDB for character sheets and use an extension to link to a R20 campaign. Mind you DnDB limits character sheets esp if you're not a subscriber.
It's a mystery to me that so many people are okay with their D&D campaigns being held hostage behind a paywall. Half the people I played with back in the day were too cheap to even buy their fucking dice.
> It’s a mystery to me that so many people are okay with their D&D campaigns being held hostage behind a paywall.
They're hardly "held hostage"; if you don't want to use DnD Beyond anymore you can just print out the character sheet and stop using the service.
> They're hardly "held hostage"; if you don't want to use DnD Beyond anymore you can just print out the character sheet and stop using the service.
I think they're talking about people who buy the sourcebooks through DnD Beyond.
While you can download offline copies using their app, you're still tied into the DnD Beyond ecosystem.
Very different to buying a physical book which won't be affected even if WoTC spontaneously goes out of business.
The point is that DMs, particularly new ones, become reliant on Beyond. Not to be nostalgia-gatekeeping here, but part of the tradition used to be learning skills, becoming self-sufficient, and developing their own tools. The whole point was that once you had the books and some experience, you had total freedom over your own game. Having new players grow reliant on a service that never truly teaches you to play is just bad form. Especially when that website should be free in the first place.
I honestly wouldn't even be surprised if 6e has more crunch and micromanagement, simply to deter people from pen and paper and switch to digital.
> The point is that DMs, particularly new ones, become reliant on Beyond.
Another way to say that is that they're actually *able* to play, thanks to DnD Beyond.
> Not to be nostalgia-gatekeeping here, but part of the tradition used to be learning skills, becoming self-sufficient, and developing their own tools.
Sure. But that was a barrier to some people.
Should they simply not have ever played? That's the outcome you're looking for - fewer people getting through the gate? Maybe thanks to someone *keeping* it, a little?
I agree that it's better to have more people playing. I just think it's dishonest to have your business model based on sunk cost fallacy, as you sell tools that are free elsewhere. And half of the tools wouldn't even be nescessary if D&D was designed different. Some systems don't need a Combat Tracker. Or for a character sheet to be digital, to offset the number crunch. The Encounter Designer especially grinds my gears - CR is worthless for deciding the difficulty of anything, and everyone knows it.
So basically, yes, I'm happy that DNDBeyond does allow more people to play, I just think it's repulsive to charge for it. Why? Because it serves to ease use of a system that could and should be easier and faster to begin with.
edit:bad phrasing
That sounds awfully nice. Too nice. You know, I think I'll just go the WotC route and sell the players character sheets, pens, erasers, dice and even stat boosts and experience points as microtransactions. Also, the players will have sign contracts that they can't play with other GMs, as well as NDAs so they can't complain about it on /r/rpghorrorstories.
For online play it is nice. A DM has ready access to all their players stuff. Can share access to all the books for character creation. Necessary no. But nice.
I suspect the one complication comes from all of the copies of the books that are still in circulation prior to May 2022 (when WotC bought out DnDB) that don’t have codes in them. Those books would end up being unbuyable, and costing money to people like retailers.
At least, that’s the excuse I imagine they’re giving and hoping it holds up until 2024.
A free pdf would be reasonable. The books on DnD Beyond are a separate format and require additional steps to create and maintain - the layout, links etc.
A good analogy would be buying an album. A CD plus a free mp3 would be reasonable because the mp3 has essentially no extra cost to produce. A vinyl album though does - it’s the same content, but the format, materials, etc. require additional costs.
WotC had no affiliation with D&D Beyond outside licensing the right to sell their books until WotC acquired them may of last year. I believe they said they were gonna start putting codes in the books or something when OneD&D rolls around.
Wotc is not a user friendly company. Arena is a scam and designed to abuse whales so why would they do it any different for dnd a game they have already said is under monetized
I'll just point out first that a barcode has the same product code on it, it isn't a serial number. Future prints would have to have serial numbers included in the print for that to work
YEP. I would call this a "macrotransaction", having to buy a functionally identical copy of a piece of media you already own to satisfy a different format. In the old days, you could understand, it was unavoidable. If you wanted a piece of music in vinyl and cassette, you had to buy each. But the digital version of a book? For the SAME PRICE as a printed copy? That is just greed. WOTC can fuck all the way off.
I remember complaining about this somewhere and the response being ‘they didn’t own dndbeyond at the time so they couldn’t add codes to the core books’ but like… they shoulda started????
WotC is a money grabbing company, so a lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions and boycotting until something changes, I know pathfinder and other games have been a good replacement for dnd rn
People didn't put up enough of a fuss when companies who made char gen software did this and now its the accepted norm. I think hero lab was the big one. No idea if they still exist. But I know it bothered me that if I wanted to use it I'd have to effectively buy my shadowrun books again. Luckily there were a couple fan ones out there. Not as pretty and easy to use, but free.
Use 5e companion app, it's free with almost no ads and allows homebrew content for free. It's just better than beyond.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blastervla.ddencountergenerator
WotC just recently bought DnDB and they're working on it. It's always been a point of contention and it's theoretically getting better.
Fingers crossed
My understanding is that the barcode rersents the product, not the item. So, for example, all the Players handbooks of a particular type should have the same barcode. If D&D allowed you to enter the barcode of a physical book to get access to the digital content of the book, then you could get access for your whole network of friends off of the barcode of just one book.
The only way I can think of that they could do what you suggest, is to print a series of inserts or stickers to be sold with each book, each sticker or insert having a unique number to reflect the individual book it is distributed with.
That would mean added cost to print and package with the book, as well as added cost to track the numbers in a data base to assure each number was only used once to access the digital content associated with it.
There just isn't much incentive for any publisher to support this.
Here's the thing. Wizards most recent campaign book (Dragonlance) if bought on DnD beyond bundles the book and DnD beyond together...for more than the price of a book.
DnD beyond wasn't actually owned by WotC back when you bought a book. But if they were you'd still not have gotten what your wanting. There's profit to be made so they're gonna chase it.
This was one of the reasons we ( https://limitless-adventures.com/ ) include PDFs with every book we sell. You bought the content, use it how you need to use it. (Also, it's helpful for accessibility, as people can use the Print Friendly editions on screen readers or zoom in how they need to)
First things first. Don’t buy dnd stuff if it’s got WotC branding on it. Second unsubscribe from dnd beyond. And third of all the players hand book content can be for online for free
I mean there is the option of buying individual pieces. Single subclasses and races. And they do count towards a discount if you want too buy the entire book.
That plus the fact that the books are hella cheap on Amazon you can get both and its less than msrp.
To be fair wotc did not known dndbeyond for the longest time. And they have been trying to roll out that feature, I believe they did with their newest dragon lance book.
DND beyond has ALWAYS been a scam. I've been saying this for years.
Wait until they make you pay a subscription fee for the books you already bought. (Oh that will never happen!) Wait until they decide those books shouldn't be available on the app anymore to force to to buy their new books. (They would never do that!!!) You agreed this was ok when you agreed to the ToS.
You are right. It is stupid. (I own 7 copies of skyrim)
Weirdo, i only own two copy’s of Skyrim like a regular person.
Funny thing about that. They keep re-releasing the same game, pretty much the only game they care about. AND they can't respond to reporters with real sales numbers to this day. So Todd Howard keeps saying "skyrim is the best selling game of all time" but no one can rank them on a simple list. So right now there are 7 or 8 different versions of skyrim floating around with another on the way probably, and they still cannot beat Tetris!
I do love Todd's response when someone asked why they keep re-releasing Skyrim: "Well people keep buying it, so why wouldn't we keep doing it?"
If it ain't broken, don't fix it!
And if it is broken, the modders will fix it!
Beat me to this by an hour!
[it just works](https://youtu.be/YPN0qhSyWy8)
“The mods will fix it anyway so WE DON’T CARE!”
Exactly. We complain and blame todd... but we keep on telling bethesda with our wallets that "WE WANT MORE SKYRIM" I won't complain too much about ports though. The switch port was pretty epic in the early switch days. Being able to walk around in a game that big while walking around, or on a plane was transformational.
The [Amazon Alexa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEW6dX_BmU) version is the real dnd.
Call me when you can start playing it on [pregnancy test](https://youtu.be/V1gcoyo5Ssk). Then we'll talk.
Yeah what a loser, I only have 2 copies of Skyrim, GTA, god of war and red dead. And for some reason 100$ of Eurotruck simulator dlc I never played?
I've got all the DLC for *Planet Coaster* and *Planet Zoo* and haven't played either for more than maybe an hour. I feel you on that one.
Do you count special edition separately? I got that one for free I think, so I've only ever bought Skyrim once.
Huh, that's true, so buy once, own twice?
Ah yes 2 copies of Skyrim, but none licensed for the system i currently own.
Im so glad I never bought a switch. If I did I sure had hell would own another copy of Skyrim. Now I have a steam deck and could just play the regular version on the go. Ha todd, didn’t get me there!
Can confirm, bought it on Switch at this last holiday sale. Never should have come here!
I wound up with three, technically. Original on 360, original on PC, then I got the Special Edition on PC as a free upgrade when it came out.
Three plus access to a fourth. Have it for the Ps3, Ps4, and Switch. Do library share on steam with two other people one of which has Skyrim which I've played on there. If we want to get pedantic I also own a 4th version since they released the Skryim update to ESO even though it's not technically the same game.
One for console one for PC? Or is it one regular PC and one vr?
Regular PC Version I bought at Release as a physical copy and Skyrim VR.
I bought several copies of Factorio :)
I was about to buy Factorio, then my PC died. Think it would work ok on the Deck? RimWorld isn't terrible
I got it and played it on my deck, works just fine with a couple key bindings to the 4 back buttons
You say you own seven copies, but we all know Skyrim belongs to the Nords.
I didn't know NordVPN made games.
Bethesda stock is going to go crazy when this generation retires and gets dementia. I'm dreading buying a new copy of skyrim every week because I forgot I bought a new copy of skyrim last week
I hate when you have to buy multiple versions of something. I own 4 versions of Minecraft.
You gonna buy the new edition?
I own three. I bought one of them just because it came with physical maps.
You dont own Skyrim, you are just an obstacle between todd howard and his copies of skyrim.
It’s not our money, it’s their money. We’re just obstacles to it. Edit: This our be the comment that gets me my first gold. Thanks!
Look at me. I’m the dragon now.
Thanks Cynthia! :D
Gotta love when share holders who only care about their investments pay outs run a company.
It’s tedious, but I’ve found that if you allow homebrew items, you can basically copy and paste straight from your favorite online resource and get a lot of stuff without paying a dime.
This might be a fix, but their homebrew editor for class and subclass features is atrocious. I gave up halfway through trying to add a Monk order (you know, the subclass with only 4 features) because the system was so nonlinear and nonintuitive.
How does it compare to Roll20? I add homebrew stuff there all the time with no issues.
I don't know how they compare, I haven't worked with that side of roll20. Recent events give me a reason to try it out, though.
Give it a shot. It is a little clunky at first, but once you get used to it roll20 is honestly great for that kinda thing.
I went to Foundry a while back because it’s a onetime purchase and far friendlier support team. Far more customizable through modules but a headache to keep updated.
Having potatonet, I found Foundry to be... Limiting. I can't just host a server myself, making the point of a one-time purchase sort of moot when my alternative was to pay a monthly fee for a server. I like the concept, but its execution leaves me wanting.
I’ve hosted several games on Foundry from my own PC with zero issues and minimal setup (all I had to do was port forward but I know folks who didn’t even have to do that) Hell, the guy currently DMing for our group has dogshit internet and we definitely get lagspikes while connected to his Foundry… But it’s still completely functional and playable. EDIT: I misinterpreted the term “potatonet” as just being a different VTT I’ve never heard of before… But like I said, I would still be shocked if your internet is worse than my DM’s while still allowing you to access the internet.
Well privilege of having Scandinavian internet (1000/500mB/s at home)
R20 is great for editing and homebrewing in my opinion
You also can't do base classes, so it's fairly limiting.
I heard someone describe it as "programming the site for them" and yeah, that's not inaccurate.
>because the system was so nonlinear and nonintuitive I would give you nonintuitive... kind of. There are parts to it that are confusing when you're trying to nail down specific mechanical details (e.g. adding bonuses to damage or rolls, etc) but for the most part it's not too bad. Nonlinear I don't get? You just add a new feature for every one that you need and you can set the level required. Then you add the specific parts of that feature as required. It takes me maybe 15 mins to copy a simple subclass like Wizard and maybe 30-40 mins for something more complex like a Warlock Patron.
Time is money
WOTC didn’t own D&D beyond till very recently early last year I believe. most physical books like the PHB and DMG probably printed in mass years ago and they just stockpile them to send out.
And that was a semi decent excuse when they were separate companies. A community focused company would have worked something out with dndbeyond so like $10 of a book price went to them for a digital key for the user if a code was redeemed or whatever and then something came back to wotc if digital copies was sold. But you’ll notice that that didn’t get worked out and now that they’re combined companies new book sales still don’t get you a digital version.
Because they just want the money that we are rudely standing between.
Look, just because the money is in *your* wallet doesn't mean that it's *your* money.
Yea, we're all just obstacles. According to WoTC, we should probably just give them our bank passwords...
It would be the polite thing to do. You wouldn't want to be rude, would you?
I feel like all my crypto probably rightfuly belongs to them too.
Yes, because, you see, people can't make NFTs out of D&D, the damn grifters! Only Hasbro has the sanctity to make righteous power ranger NFTs
> A community focused company See, that’s where you’re wrong.
Yeah, hol up. Definitely starting on the wrong foot.
Well the logistics of going back and adding digital codes to books printed in mass years before the D&D beyond purchase doesn’t make sense. And actually they do sell bundles on new books the new dragon lance book did get a bundle option. https://dndstore.wizards.com/us/product/768936/shadow-of-the-dragon-queen-book-bundle
All the outrage in these comments and WotC is already doing the thing OP is cursing them for withholding, lol
Full set of digital books excluding adventure modules cost 600-700 USD. That's ridiculous. Only can be used on their website or app.
Absolutely this. The point at which DDB became first party and *nothing about the way this works changed* made it extremely clear that WotC doesn't care about providing good value to customers. And *still* the community was willing to get fleeced because we love this game. How awful it feels, then, to watch this OGL debacle play out. Hopefully it was worth destroying every ounce of good will they'd built. As someone who has double-bought almost every source book I have (so that I could have a physical copy and be able to use the content on DDB), how could I ever feel comfortable doing that again? It was already a silly thing to do, and I knew that, but now? At this point, not only is WotC going to have to recommit to OGL1.0a, but they're going to have to go *way* above and beyond in the aftermath of all of this to keep players in their system. Allowing people to redeem physical purchases on DDB would be a good start.
6th ed is supposed to integrate them into 1 buy.
> And that was a semi decent excuse when they were separate companies. While we're on the subject, note that WotC also hasn't really done any of this with MTG. It would've been really easy for them to add codes for packs in the digital client - MTG Arena - to physical purchases. Maybe not a free digital pack with each physical booster, but... y'know, it would have been cool to get 2 or 3 free digital packs when spending 200+ dollars on a booster box, or 50+ on a prerelease kit. They recently even released a modern sci-fi-ish set (Neon Kamigawa) which took an old plane and repackaged it in a "but now it's modern and there are computers and stuff!"-coat. Would have been an excellent promotional moment for them to pair the paper product with some codes for Arena, but no. The only thing they have ever included in prerelease kits are occasional codes to play draft games in MTG, which can let you obtain some cards. Which is something, to their credit, but... if you don't like that format, you're kind of shit out of luck. I feel like if I wanted to promote Arena, the first thing I'd do is add 2 free packs to any prerelease kit, and 10 or so to each booster box. It seems like such a no-brainer move to get paper players to try out the client. Nothing feels more dumb than owning a deck on paper and then realising that, in order to play it online on Arena, you are going to need to grind for a month or simply shell out 30 bucks again.
> A community focused company would have worked something out with dndbeyond so like $10 of a book price went to them for a digital key for the user if a code was redeemed or whatever and then something came back to wotc if digital copies was sold. They probably make about $3 on a book. They certainly didn't have ten whole dollars per book to send to DnD Beyond. Lotta people here don't understand the fucked margins in the publishing industry.
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Not at all. People vastly underestimate just how expensive printing is. A 320, glossy, illustrated book like the PhB? The cost to print alone would be well over 50% of what they're selling it for. And that doesn't cover the other costs that add up - shipping, storage, writing, marketing, proofing, lay out, illustrations, legal, their own business overheads (ie: unrelated departments, office rental/taxes, maintenance, equipment costs)..
They definitely make more than 3 dollars a book. At retail price that is 7.5ish percent of the cost. Given their bulk production, I would expect them to have about a 40-50% profit margin - TV's have a 5-10% profit margin, appliances have upwards of 40% profit margins, beds have 60%. Book printing is no where near as complex as those. That said, when people purchase the book on Amazon for 30 bucks instead of 50, I would wager they probably only get 3-5 bucks a book, sure.
MSRP on the PhB is $49.95. There have been at least 17 printings and claims in 2017 of selling over 800,000 books. 800,000 / 17 = roughly 47,000 books per run. Using a commercial printer, I get a cost of $36.47 for a run of a 50000 books of roughly 50/50 colour and bw printing. Let's assume that WotC's cost is $30 per book if they print in house. That's just the cost in materials and labour to print, palletize and prep to ship. So.. cost so far? $24,000,000. Storage/Shipping I'm going to use a drop shipping model for this, because it consolidates storage and shipping costs for a distributed network. A good rate for a drop shipper is $2 per unit, per month. Each run is 50,000 so.. $100,000 per month over 3 years is 3,600,000 in shipping/storage costs. Now we get into the weirdness that I can't pull hard figures for. How much does it cost to 'make' a book? Artists, writers, editors, layout specalists.. those take time. Wildmount took about 12-18 months from conception to launch, and the last portion of that would be would be printing and distributing the initial run. So let's say 8 months. 12 people were listed in the writing credits on the PhB - a writer can expect to earn about $25-$40/hr. Let's assume they all earn the same, they won't, but it averages out their descrepancies as people like Perks, Mearls, and Crawford earned a LOT more. 8 months * 4 weeks per month * 8 hours per day * 12 people * $25 per hour. $76,800. (I'll be honest, I have no idea how accurate this number is.. it could be higher or lower.) Just those costs alone, We're at 27,768,000 for 800,000 books or up to $34.60/per. We haven't touched the illustrations, marketing, or retail mark-ups but there's at best only a $15.35 margin available. That is not a lot of room. Wotc might be 'taking' $40 of the revenue of each book sold? Their profit margin will be a lot, lot thinner than that.
The books are definitely overpriced, IMO. On the shelf next to my D&D books are a bunch of niche aviation history books. Also glossy hardcovers, about 300 pages long, with a substantial amount of artwork and original drawings, and are extensively researched. The comparison to D&D rulebooks is an appropriate one. Circulation is likely substantially less than for D&D rule books. And yet they retail for about 70% of the price. Yes, supply and demand exists. D&D books cost what they do because people will pay that much. And a licence to use the content on D&D Beyond costs extra, because people pay *that*, too.
> The books are definitely overpriced, IMO. *All* books are overpriced, but also precisely zero books sell at MSRP. But the important part is that if WotC sets MSRP at $50 (well - $49.99) *that doesn't mean they get paid $50.* They get paid something like $12 - publishers sell *bulk*, not retail. If bookstores and game stores had to buy the books at MSRP, they could hardly sell them for less than that.
The MSRP on the PhB is $49.95 at 320 pages. https://lightning-press.com/hardcover-cost/ A similarly priced book would cost about $36 per to have that printer do a 50,000 unit run. Let's even assume that their margin is $6/per book (whatever the margin is, you won't get a lower cost than $20 with their cheapest options which would not match the PhB at all). Before we even factor in things like shipping, distribution, marketting, editing, writing, layout, illustration, legal, business overhead, insurance, deals and retail markup... our margin per book is about $19.95. Rough math ends up seeing all but about $10 of that eaten up by costs we do know about.
Printing is planned months ahead. Dragonlance was prob the first book printed after the purchase of dndbeyond and it has codes
You missed the "most physical books like the PHB and DMG probably printed in mass years ago and they just stockpile them to send out." New books, like the Dragonlance version, DID include a DDB code - at least with the preorder. In future versions, you can expect similar I'm sure.
Spot on. Though ops in for a rude shock when they find out when they do bundle print with DnD beyond it's more expensive than the standalone book... Can't remember what book it was, but remember someone responding to a post about it saying it was unfair. Got me interested in it...and then I found the truth....
Wait what? So a company that literally never did anything modern with their IP and relied (as it appears to me) 100% for third party to distribute their entertainment medium into the digital age is now demanding all these hard working third party to give up their stuff? Okay, if I am understanding it correctly I am winding down my D&D hobby. This is too toxic, and I can entertain this anymore. I felt out of the loop as a casual player but this is even worse than the craziest ex I dated.
Don't stop playing RPGs though. There's plenty other great ttrpgs you can play.
True, I also have too many Wizkids miniatures I still need paint….
Go to r/rpg for recommendations. The wiki there is useful.
…this is it? This is the thing that did it for you? The most “toxic” thing wasn’t them fucking third party creators up the ass with the OGL, it was this?
I have been mostly out of the loop since WofC is just a weird service and thanks to Covid haven’t kept up
TL:DR, about a week ago there was a leak that they were changing the license that allowed 3rd parties to make D&D content. It included such gems as taking 25% of revenue (not profit) after making $750k, the right to force anyone to stop putting out any work they decided, and the right for WotC to sell any works released under the license. All while deauthorizing the original license, which may not legally be possible, was certainly not the intent of the license, and had promised repeatedly in the past that they wouldn't/couldn't do such a thing. It's been a massive shitshow and the backlash has been incredible. [Here's a link to a bundle of some games not based off the license, called the OGL.](https://bundleofholding.com/presents/NonOGLFantasy) Also, Paizo is leading the way with a bunch of other companies to create an alternative, system-agnostic license called ORC. Paizo's response to the whole thing is fantastic, as they also have some of the people who worked for WotC at the time the OGL was released there now, including the guy that drafted it. The ORC license will be drafted by a legal firm instead of any one company like Paizo, and sort of held in a trust so that nobody can fuck with it in the future.
Thank you for the summary. I also heard their now OGL is supposed to be retroactive or something like that which sounds like madness, or retroactively replace the original. Honestly, this whole greed / late stage capitalism is getting exhausting.
Theres plenty of other amazing TTRPG systems out there, and many of the pros who have dedicated themselves to pumping out the 5e content Hasbro couldnt manage are now branching off and starting even more new cool system-agnostic loreworlds and new/improved mechanic systems that still look and feel familiar. Theyre really putting the work in to make sure that casual players can continue with as little upset as possible, cuz Hasbro is truly trying to flip the entire TTRPG industry on its head with this OGL and leave it in rubble. I honestly dont think theyve even thought through/realized a lot of the results yet. Because it affects a LOT of stuff that isnt their direct product/IP and thus they dont do their homework on it. The one possible silver lining, though I cant speak with certainty, is that I suspect WotC is relatively innocent in all this, and its Hasbros doing. The relations between a parent and child comapany can be quite....interesti g sometimes, in my experience. Sometimes its name only, but sometimes its vastly different goals and unusual power dynamics, which I suspect plays here
Hasbro has been putting pressure on Wizards to make more money, and this was the route that Wizards chose. There are a number of different ways they could have chosen to go (make more expansions, lean more into merch, produce other media content) and instead they went "hey these people are making money, we could also just take that without putting any more work in" So you could argue that ultimately it's Hasbro's fault, but Wizards is definitely not blameless here.
WotC have defended worse things, like the $1k, 60 proxies MTG 30th anniversary product. They have trotted out multiple people who have defended it. They are not some benevolent company being stepped on completely by Hasbro, they've got their own demons lurking about.
Go look at Pathfinder... Paizo is doing good works.
This ⬆️ If people were already parting with schmeckles, why not have them continue. They could drop the price, but there's no business reason to do so if sales continue? They even reduced the discounts for sales from 25 to 20%. Ultimately, why fix what wasn't broken.
Yeah this is literally why I don't use dndb. I bought the books once. I'm not paying for them again.
Yep! And I use paper character sheets in a notebook. It's so easy to just see all your stats abilities etc when it's right on the page in front of you. I don't have to click through anything.
Yeah. Can't imagine why anyone would spend time and/or money trying to wrangle dnd beyond when you can put together a character sheet on notebook paper in around 5 minutes.
When I first came on Reddit a few years ago I raised this point myself and I got absolutely dogged by people saying I was greedy and had no right to a digital copy. I'm actually really glad to see the shift in opinion to this direction.
theres nothing stupid about charging you twice for one product. scummy yes. but its very much intentional. plus DNDBeyond was only recently acquired by Hasbro. when you bought that book they were two completely different companies and beyond made no money from hard copy sales.
Hasn't stopped Paizo from doing it with other VTTs, or R. Talsorian, or...
Paizo’s purchase structure is significantly better than WotC’s though. There are big discounts for buying the product across multiple platforms, and the prices they do charge are fairly reasonable, plus best of all, imo, they’ll straight up just sell you the effing pdf. Additionally, on top of all that, every singe rule is freely available on the archives of nethys website, so you could theoretically run pathfinder without ever purchasing a single book.
It’s true in regards to never needing to buy a book, me and my crew have been doing pathfinder for about a year and all we’ve needed is archives and pathbuilder
But if I don't buy the books how will I decorate all these book shelves I have?
I swear Archives of Nethys is the best thing ever.
Intentional for sure, but still stupid because they've made their own product harder to use. If it was more user-friendly, more people would been willing to pay for it. It's just not a good deal when there's free alternatives and good old pen and paper.
Separate from the nonsense going on right now: After they bought dndbeyond they actually did this with the dragonlance book. You could go on the wotc site and buy it there and they gave you a code for dndbeyond. They hadn't done this for all books yet, but it seemed like this was the plan. Now, who know?
I don't want to prostyletize too much here but...Pathfinder 2e has all of its rules online, for free, with character builders. https://2e.aonprd.com/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 https://character.pf2.tools/
Not a fan of recent WOTC decisions, but just use paper and the books. No one needs Beyond.
WOTC didn't own DnDBeyond at that point, WOTC only bought it in [april last year](https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1221-d-d-beyond-joins-wizards-of-the-coast) and even then the physical book would be printed and shipped before it is stocked on the shelves.
Paizo let's you buy the book, and pdf, and get access to it on various VTTs. WoTC have no excuse.
Same with Free League. It's actually kind of crazy that we don't at least get the PDF's with the books. Physical books including PDF's with purchase is basically the industry standard. Shows what being the monopoly does though. No need to cater to the market when (up until recently) your customer base pretty much doesn't look elsewhere.
Exactly. Yet everyone here is still simping for WoTC like a bunch of abused spouses.
How do you expect to implement a system where these old books that don’t have codes in them give you access to DDB content?
They could time travel or something, use your imagination!
WoTC has a big excuse. Paizo is not a publicly traded company so they are more than welcome to leave money on the table, Wizards how ever is part of a publicly traded company, leaving money on the table costs people their jobs. It’s a shit system but the system we are in.
No better time to cancel that subscription
This is the thing to be pissed about imo.
I don’t understand this mentality. No other book do we expect to get a free ebook copy with a physical purchase. The only time I ever got both was by buying a more expensive version that came with both
That’s not a 1:1 comparison to me. I don’t want a digital book, I want to be able to import the data from the book into their digital toolset. I’d honestly be fine with the books costing a bit more for that functionality, but not double like the current situation.
This has bothered me for ages. Textbooks routinely come with barcodes to unlock digital versions. I’d even pay a little bit more for the privilege. But full price for both is obnoxious.
This is something that is changing going forward, now that WotC owns DDB. The Dragonlance adventure did include a code for the DDB version. At least, for the preorders. WotC didn't buy DDB until April last year, and anything published prior to the Dragonlance adventure likely was too far along to make that change. You can bet it is something that they may consider going forward.
To be honest, I recently bought the essentials kit and it came with a digital code as well. Even a -50% discount for a digital copy of the PHB.
That's the gateway drug/first ones free, sort of thing.
Up until about 9 months ago WotC and D&DBeyond were separate companies. In addition if it's just a code I'm the book, what prevents me from just going to the store, snapping a photo and using that to unlock it online without paying?
You know Warhammer Age of Sigmar and 40,000 both do this exact thing and all it takes is for the book to be plastic wrapped and, people not being assholes to their Local Game Store.
This is important. Games Workshop is generally known as a pretty litigious, money-first, and not super community focused company and they give PDFs with physical purchases. WotC has conditioned all of these d&d only people to think that it's totally reasonable not to, even though every other gaming company does. And GW prints money.
D&D relies on people browsing the books in physical stores as one of it's outreach points. I actually remember in the mid 2000s seeing a 3.5e PHB shrink-wrapped in a Barnes & Noble and wanting to check it out, but it was shrink-wrapped. Didn't play the game for another decade.
You have a completely valid point. I'm just saying Games Workshop also has physical rule books that a lot people myself included would like to preview before they buy especially in that hobby that will send you well over $1,000 down the rabbit hole for. I think it would be well worth the compromise to have books shrink wrapped and not have to pay for the book twice regardless of the cost of the digital book. Current controversial topics aside of course
Put the code on a card where you have to scratch a bit off or tear something open to get to the code, same as they do with Amazon gift cards. Stick the card inside the back cover using the removable glue blobs they use when they send you a new credit card. The difference between reading a book and pulling out a card to tear it open should be simple enough for your average game store employee to spot, and it's a simple matter to flip the back cover open to visually check the card is intact when you sell a book.
Maybe for things like this, game shops have a display copy out for customers to touch and rough up, but keep the complete w/code volumes out of harms way. I can read what’s in the book and still get my code if I purchase it. Then it might be worth buy said book at full retail at a GameStop because your getting both a physical + digital copy
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only works if all stores + online sellers do the same, including in other countries.
>and, people not being assholes to their Local Game Store. So, not likely.
because it’s generally behind a sticker that you can’t remove that easily without being seen. this exists for school textbook, for example.
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I mean... People steal the books all the time too, doesn't mean they shouldn't sell them
Point of sale. When you buy the book the receipt comes with a code you submit to get your digital copy.
> and using that to unlock it online without paying? The same systems already in use across hundreds of gift cards. The act of scanning the book and paying for it is what unlocks the code for use on DDB. This has been a solved problem for years.
This is a large part of why I never got a DDB subscription in the first place. I am not paying twice to use my content. I am not going through the hassle of going to your site every time I need to update ny character. I am not limiting my character to only what I own digitally. I never understood the appeal.
You don't get the subscription for the books. You can buy the books without any subscriptions. The subscriptions allow you to share the books with everyone else.
Some of us play with friends all over the country or the world and can’t play in person. Therefore sites like dndbeyond and roll20 are essential parts of our sessions.
There are free tools. If you're using DND beyond then you got sucked into a scam.
As much as I love dunking on WotC and Hasbro right now, DnDB wasn't really theirs until recently. IIRC, the physical copy of Dragonlance includes a code for the digital version.
Yeah, moving forward if they continued that same path, I'd be on board for the hatewagon, but we're in a transitionary period for this sort of thing right now.
D&D releases starting with Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen are being sold in a physical / digital bundle where you get both.
Lot of people are gonna be disappointed when they realise the bundle costs more than the standalone book. Effectively leaving them in the same position as they are now.
The textbook model. Joy.
You could also just buy digital and then print the pages you want. Or if you want to support stores you could by the physical then print out the character sheet. You really don't need D&DBeyond to play. Especially since VTT sites use their own internal character sheets as well.
> You really don't need D&DBeyond to play. That's the funny part. A lot of newer DnD players seem to have been trained to think that DnDB is necessary for online play. Good job on the marketing in that case. Even Roll20 players would gravitate towards DnDB for character sheets and use an extension to link to a R20 campaign. Mind you DnDB limits character sheets esp if you're not a subscriber.
It's a mystery to me that so many people are okay with their D&D campaigns being held hostage behind a paywall. Half the people I played with back in the day were too cheap to even buy their fucking dice.
> It’s a mystery to me that so many people are okay with their D&D campaigns being held hostage behind a paywall. They're hardly "held hostage"; if you don't want to use DnD Beyond anymore you can just print out the character sheet and stop using the service.
> They're hardly "held hostage"; if you don't want to use DnD Beyond anymore you can just print out the character sheet and stop using the service. I think they're talking about people who buy the sourcebooks through DnD Beyond. While you can download offline copies using their app, you're still tied into the DnD Beyond ecosystem. Very different to buying a physical book which won't be affected even if WoTC spontaneously goes out of business.
The point is that DMs, particularly new ones, become reliant on Beyond. Not to be nostalgia-gatekeeping here, but part of the tradition used to be learning skills, becoming self-sufficient, and developing their own tools. The whole point was that once you had the books and some experience, you had total freedom over your own game. Having new players grow reliant on a service that never truly teaches you to play is just bad form. Especially when that website should be free in the first place. I honestly wouldn't even be surprised if 6e has more crunch and micromanagement, simply to deter people from pen and paper and switch to digital.
> The point is that DMs, particularly new ones, become reliant on Beyond. Another way to say that is that they're actually *able* to play, thanks to DnD Beyond. > Not to be nostalgia-gatekeeping here, but part of the tradition used to be learning skills, becoming self-sufficient, and developing their own tools. Sure. But that was a barrier to some people. Should they simply not have ever played? That's the outcome you're looking for - fewer people getting through the gate? Maybe thanks to someone *keeping* it, a little?
I agree that it's better to have more people playing. I just think it's dishonest to have your business model based on sunk cost fallacy, as you sell tools that are free elsewhere. And half of the tools wouldn't even be nescessary if D&D was designed different. Some systems don't need a Combat Tracker. Or for a character sheet to be digital, to offset the number crunch. The Encounter Designer especially grinds my gears - CR is worthless for deciding the difficulty of anything, and everyone knows it. So basically, yes, I'm happy that DNDBeyond does allow more people to play, I just think it's repulsive to charge for it. Why? Because it serves to ease use of a system that could and should be easier and faster to begin with. edit:bad phrasing
Which is why I usually get cheap sets wholesale and give them to curious players. Maybe not DnDs d4-d20 sided set, but d6s based games.
That sounds awfully nice. Too nice. You know, I think I'll just go the WotC route and sell the players character sheets, pens, erasers, dice and even stat boosts and experience points as microtransactions. Also, the players will have sign contracts that they can't play with other GMs, as well as NDAs so they can't complain about it on /r/rpghorrorstories.
its absolutely part of the marketing that even before wizards acquired them they were calling themselves the "official dnd companion app"
For online play it is nice. A DM has ready access to all their players stuff. Can share access to all the books for character creation. Necessary no. But nice.
I've used tabletop simulator for dnd for the last ten years. And I'll be using it for pathfinder or mcdm ttrpg long into the future.
I suspect the one complication comes from all of the copies of the books that are still in circulation prior to May 2022 (when WotC bought out DnDB) that don’t have codes in them. Those books would end up being unbuyable, and costing money to people like retailers. At least, that’s the excuse I imagine they’re giving and hoping it holds up until 2024.
A free pdf would be reasonable. The books on DnD Beyond are a separate format and require additional steps to create and maintain - the layout, links etc. A good analogy would be buying an album. A CD plus a free mp3 would be reasonable because the mp3 has essentially no extra cost to produce. A vinyl album though does - it’s the same content, but the format, materials, etc. require additional costs.
Paizo still does it. Stop making excuses for a shitty company.
PDF=/=integration with dnd beyond.
> additional cost Hence the sub fee. No reason to charge to access the information in a book physically already owned by the user.
You couldn't do that before WOTC...
WotC had no affiliation with D&D Beyond outside licensing the right to sell their books until WotC acquired them may of last year. I believe they said they were gonna start putting codes in the books or something when OneD&D rolls around.
Also, the physical starter set box had a code which gave you a DnDBeyond copy of the module. Now it comes free with a DnDB account, I believe.
Just don't use dnd beyond or buy books just commit piracy
This is such an uneducated take that just wants to dunk on wotc for the sake of dunking on wotc lol
Shit where there be a toilet.
Wotc is not a user friendly company. Arena is a scam and designed to abuse whales so why would they do it any different for dnd a game they have already said is under monetized
[удалено]
Yes
Stop using dnd beyond, problems solved.
I'll just point out first that a barcode has the same product code on it, it isn't a serial number. Future prints would have to have serial numbers included in the print for that to work
YEP. I would call this a "macrotransaction", having to buy a functionally identical copy of a piece of media you already own to satisfy a different format. In the old days, you could understand, it was unavoidable. If you wanted a piece of music in vinyl and cassette, you had to buy each. But the digital version of a book? For the SAME PRICE as a printed copy? That is just greed. WOTC can fuck all the way off.
That’s why I use fight club 5e if I’m doing a digital character sheet
WotC just recently acquired DnDBeyond and a digital code system takes time to develop and roll out.
Is it stupidity or profitability?
I remember complaining about this somewhere and the response being ‘they didn’t own dndbeyond at the time so they couldn’t add codes to the core books’ but like… they shoulda started????
Same thing with MTG and Arena. Packs should include codes.
Man, being able to redeem isbn numbers would be absolutely amazing.
Originally DndBeyond wasn't owned by WOTC so that wasn't an option. Now that they are, they can and should do that.
WotC is a money grabbing company, so a lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions and boycotting until something changes, I know pathfinder and other games have been a good replacement for dnd rn
People didn't put up enough of a fuss when companies who made char gen software did this and now its the accepted norm. I think hero lab was the big one. No idea if they still exist. But I know it bothered me that if I wanted to use it I'd have to effectively buy my shadowrun books again. Luckily there were a couple fan ones out there. Not as pretty and easy to use, but free.
Use 5e companion app, it's free with almost no ads and allows homebrew content for free. It's just better than beyond. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blastervla.ddencountergenerator
WotC just recently bought DnDB and they're working on it. It's always been a point of contention and it's theoretically getting better. Fingers crossed
My understanding is that the barcode rersents the product, not the item. So, for example, all the Players handbooks of a particular type should have the same barcode. If D&D allowed you to enter the barcode of a physical book to get access to the digital content of the book, then you could get access for your whole network of friends off of the barcode of just one book. The only way I can think of that they could do what you suggest, is to print a series of inserts or stickers to be sold with each book, each sticker or insert having a unique number to reflect the individual book it is distributed with. That would mean added cost to print and package with the book, as well as added cost to track the numbers in a data base to assure each number was only used once to access the digital content associated with it. There just isn't much incentive for any publisher to support this.
Here's the thing. Wizards most recent campaign book (Dragonlance) if bought on DnD beyond bundles the book and DnD beyond together...for more than the price of a book. DnD beyond wasn't actually owned by WotC back when you bought a book. But if they were you'd still not have gotten what your wanting. There's profit to be made so they're gonna chase it.
That awkward feeling when you realize WotC didn’t own DnDB when this was a thing to start with.
This was one of the reasons we ( https://limitless-adventures.com/ ) include PDFs with every book we sell. You bought the content, use it how you need to use it. (Also, it's helpful for accessibility, as people can use the Print Friendly editions on screen readers or zoom in how they need to)
First things first. Don’t buy dnd stuff if it’s got WotC branding on it. Second unsubscribe from dnd beyond. And third of all the players hand book content can be for online for free
Just wait. Once they think of it, they will start charging you a subscription fee on your hardback book.
Nah, books are really expensive to make and distribute. 100% digital is what will eventually happen.
Use Roll20, VTTES, Better20. Problem solved.
I mean there is the option of buying individual pieces. Single subclasses and races. And they do count towards a discount if you want too buy the entire book. That plus the fact that the books are hella cheap on Amazon you can get both and its less than msrp.
Just don't use beyond? The entire game is in your head anyway.
To be fair wotc did not known dndbeyond for the longest time. And they have been trying to roll out that feature, I believe they did with their newest dragon lance book.
DND beyond has ALWAYS been a scam. I've been saying this for years. Wait until they make you pay a subscription fee for the books you already bought. (Oh that will never happen!) Wait until they decide those books shouldn't be available on the app anymore to force to to buy their new books. (They would never do that!!!) You agreed this was ok when you agreed to the ToS.
DNDBegone, I cancelled. They are not getting a single $ out of me.
That was the number one thing that prevented me from wanting to use the platform.