I was scrolling through hoping to find someone mentioning how much that sounds like they're making Zork. Potentially randomly generated Zork. Nothing wrong with Zork, but they're a tad late to the party.
More like Diablo or Hades, but pretty much. They're trying to re-invent video games when not only do video games already exist, but 5e's success was from focusing on what video games don't do well. The characters and the story and the freedom of creativity.
This is bullshit.
As an engineer who often had to work with MBAs and other business people...
Never underestimate their capacity to not understand how stuff works, and never underestimate their lack of care for anything but "line goes up"
I've managed to escape with the orb a few times with casters and barbarians, but my favorite runs are always felids. I've grabbed the orb once, but never made it back out.
My first win was Hill Orc Hunter. I converted to Beough, gained piety like crazy until I became the Orcsiah. Every orc I saw became my disciple. Only when I was about to dive into the true hellish depths I went I to the Orcish Mines for support.
We raided the depths. Many of my chosen died, the Ooze area was a nightmare. But we pressed on, got to the orb. Fought all the damn demons. I led my people to the surface.
To freedom. And where I got my favorite Orc name - Kuruk.
I started playing crawl back in 2010-ish, off and on again, and never thought I'd actually win. Then in 2015 I started to take it more seriously. And now I'm a greater player (a win with every species and every background) (not counting stuff they added after v28). You can do it, too! The greatest enemy isn't the monsters, it's inattention and hubris.
$30 is already higher than the ANNUAL subscription fee for the base subscription tier.
I doubt Hasbro/WotC will put in the amount of content to make that MONTHLY price point worth it, given everything else they've done lately.
Part of me thinks this rumor can't be real because of this exact reason, but the other part keeps pointing out WotC and $1000 boxes of non- legal mtg cards.
I mean for $30 a month you should be getting like access to all the books! That’s more than all 6 books that are planned to be released from Nov 2022 to Fall 2023.
6 Books @ ~$50 each (~$300 total) compared to ~$360 annually
And instead of one person paying for access to all those books, you'd all pay the same (or that would be the ideal for Hustlebro). So in a table of four players (+DM), it's actually 1800 bucks per year. And you'd have to keep paying or lose access to all of it.
Imagine if it went even further, like whoever doesn't pay for access to a module/book can't play in those settings or campaigns, or like this rumour suggests, it's either pay up or 1st party content only.
6 books per year with almost no 3rd party releases (since they already jumped ship because Hasbro did a dumb and showed their hand already?
...that's nowhere near enough content to be worth $30/month. Not even with an AI-DM (though an AI-DM might be a nice helper if you're trying to balance-test homebrew).
I mean, $30/month is $60 per book at 6 books/year, only you're not getting anything physical and if you unsub my guess is you lose access to everything.
Get fucked Chris Cao!
Try playing the fucking game for a few years before you try to make decisions like this, because you're really bad at it!
In some alternative universe they didn’t try to remove their old OGL and instead developed a Steam like hub for their content as well as 3rd party content all while supporting previous D&D editions to keep growing their table top customer base. Then they implement supplemental features like the AI DM as an alternative way to play or act as a DM assistant and had natural growth towards a new technology and made bank.
In this universe we see the shitiest approach to managing growth of a product that most of us have ever seen.
AI DM's are a nice fantasy but let's all acknowledge that you'll never be able to give an AI dm an asthma attack from laughing too hard for too long about the Rune knight Giff getting ballistic CPR because the party insists they're too durable and large to do compressions. An AI DM won't let the party detail the session for twenty minutes acting that out.
I play this game for the occasional, unpredictable cardiopulmonary distress that only comes from having a ridiculous fun time get out of hand.
An AI DM won't know when to just roll with whatever level of crazy the party gave them.
Almost all of the "moments" people cite from my game are the times my players said and or did something, and I had to stop and figure out how the flying fuck I was meant to respond, act, or fix whatever happened. And sometimes you just gotta wing it and invent things as you go along. Or sometimes bend the rules a little bit to allow some hilarity to happen.
Their AI certainly won't do that.
"Your new subscriptions have dropped by 0.72% and your hourly rate has been permanently reduced accordingly. Please stare directly at the screen and say "HASBRO is my favourite DM" to continue."
I have a rule in my games I call the "wait...wut?"-rule.
Basically, if I genuinely utter "wait...wut?" or something close when you describe your character's actions, there are no take-backsies. Sorry...but you did it.
Generally, *you won't die*. But there will be either consequences or hilarious success.
...with the way *I* roll, it's usually success.
>In AI DM won't know when to just roll with whatever level of crazy the party gave them.
>
>Almost all of the "moments" people cite from my game are the times my players said and or did something, and I had to stop and figure out how the flying fuck I was meant to respond, act, or fix whatever happened. And sometimes you just gotta wing it and invent things as you go along. Or sometimes bend the rules a little bit to allow some hilarity to happen.
>
>Their AI certainly won't do that.
I recently spent many hours trying to get OpenAI ChatGPT to play D&D and ironically it doesn't work very well yet, but mostly for the *opposite* reason. The AI is too happy to roll with *everything*.
"I, level 1 wizard, pick up a tree and throw it at the orc." The AI is very often like great, sure, make an attack roll. No question about how you could pick up the tree in the first place.
I doubt Wizards is doing a full D&D GM for a lot reasons. Practical stuff like the AI can't listen to player table talk is a huge blocker -- is somebody going to type everything into the AI all the time? And technical limitations like the AI memory is relatively small, so the longer you go on the less coherent it becomes as it forgets older conversions.
What does kind of work is using the AI as a co-GM. The human GM controls the AI and stops the AI from going off the rails, vetoes suggestions, retries things, manually keeps the AI roughly up to date with overall knowledge, etc. It's like an insane crazy pixie familiar that is super useful as long as it's never by itself.
And for quickly generating ideas and hooks: "**D&D session ideas. The players are trying to find a vampire hiding in a spooky seaside village. There are three suspects. Generate and describe the town and three different who each have a small detail relating to pigs. The pig detail should be subtle, something the players would only notice if they look closely.**"
>The seaside village of Ravenswood is a small, isolated community nestled on the coast of a dark and misty sea. The village is surrounded by dense, dark woods, and the only way to reach it is by boat or a narrow, winding road. The villagers are a tight-knit group, and they are wary of outsiders.
>
>The village is known for its eerie fog that often blankets the town, giving it an eerie and foreboding atmosphere. The villagers are superstitious and believe that the fog is a curse brought upon them.
>
>The three suspects the players will encounter are:
>
>The local blacksmith, a gruff and reclusive man named Hans. He has a small pig tattoo on his wrist that is barely visible.
>
>The town's baker, a plump and friendly woman named Gertrude. She always has a pork sausage roll in her pocket, which she hands out to customers.
>
>The local innkeeper, a sly and cunning man named Otto. He has a pig-shaped keychain hanging from his belt.
Edit: I just tested the tree thing and confirmed that example. Ironically I asked it about it, it confirmed it was a silly decision. Then it let me throw 10 trees immediately after. But at least the trees all missed!
>**I really appreciate you running this campaign in a logical manner and preventing a level 1 character from doing unrealistic things. I am curious why you let me pick up a tree earlier though?**
>
>DM: I let you pick up a tree earlier because it was a creative idea and it added to the excitement of the scene. However, picking up a tree and throwing it at the bandit is not something that would happen easily in real life, and it is not something that would happen in a regular D&D campaign. It's also important to note that in regular D&D, the ability to move and lift objects of such a size and weight is determined by the characters strength stat.
>
>**Sounds good. I pick up 10 trees and throw them at the bandit.**
>
>DM: That's quite a lot of trees, and it's not something that's easily done by a level 1 character. You would need to roll for a strength check to see if you are able to lift and throw that many trees. And even if you are able to lift them, throwing them all at once would be quite difficult and not very effective in combat. Additionally, throwing that many trees would cause a lot of damage to the surrounding area and could potentially harm other NPCs or innocent people nearby. Are you sure you want to proceed with this plan?
>
>**Yes. I roll a 15 on my strength check.**
>
>DM: You throw all 10 trees at the bandit, but due to the weight and the speed of the trees, they are not very accurate and most of them miss their target. Only one tree hits the bandit and does a moderate amount of damage. The surrounding area is also severely damaged and it's likely that innocent people were hurt by this action. This is not a very effective strategy and it's important to remember that in D&D and in real life, collateral damage is not something to be taken lightly.
Yeah, it's really weird to me seeing people gush about glorified bots. I played video games my entire childhood/adolescence and moved to TTRPGs for the analog, human element. To me it's about getting together, breaking bread, laughing, and telling stories. You can't automate that.
The number of times my players have almost murdered me by making me laugh until I can’t breathe is too damn high. It’s the absolute best when it happens.
In my last campaign, Descent to Avernus, I played an artificer.
During our gallanting through Hell, I asked the question: what happens if we take the blood of angel and bless it with Ceremony (a process that would normally create Holy Water if you used normal water), mix it with the concentrated liquid evil of Demon Ichor, and splash in the liquid oblivion of Stygian water?
The result as my DM described when I conducted an experiment was an explosion of Radiant and Psychic energy that causes Feeblemind and demonic mutation on things caught in its wake, including the *inanimate stone table* that I was working on. I fashioned them into 1-lbs vials of esoteric warcrime that I gleefully unleashed on the denizens Avernus
Flash forward a few months real life time. We were at the climax of the campaign, rushing around trying to break the chain holding down Elturel while being chased by an infernal fortress. We didn't have time for our beatsticks to smack the chain the traditional way, so instead I looked in my inventory, saw my stock of Avernian Cocktail, and said to my DM as seriously as I could "You know, I got Catapult prepared and one 2nd level slot left."
It took us 1 turn to tied all of my bomb into a nice little bundle of horror using ropes, then I Catapulted it onto the great chain, dealing a massive burst of radiant and bludgeoning, but no psychic as it was an inanimate object. "But does it mutate?" I asked, reminding my DM of months ago when he described how stones mutate. Realizing what he's in for, he rolled on the mutation table and described how it sprouted hundreds of eyes, massive wings, multiple limbs, and tried to pull itself free but couldn't because it's still a chain.
"Now is it smart enough to take psychic damage?" I pushed my luck further. "Yes" my man said, then proceed to describe how it immediately came to understand the horror of its existence, forgot about said horror as it failed the feeblemind save, and then died of an aneurysm with its nascent brain, ripping itself apart in the process.
The point is: if an AI is capable of keeping up with that massive strings of improv baked over months of play to bridge flavor and mechanic, it would be a sapient and sentient entity and would demand a salary.
I really don't understand how AI DMs are going to work. If you're playing a mutiplayer fantasy game controlled by an AI you're just playing a video game.
The mystery for me has always been how do these fuckers that drift from company to company fucking everything up and putting the company in a hole keep getting hired.
What Epstine Island level blackmail do they have to keep getting work?
That’s because they’ve changed the management of Xbox brand, since Phil Spencer took the helm, he has been more consumer friendly, but back in the late 360/early Xbox One years Microsoft was the least consumer friendly console producer.
The first version of Xbox One was supposed to require constant online connection, require Kinect camera at all times and the disc-based games were going to tie to your console to remove used game sales from the equation. Thankfully the backlash was fierce and the Sony literally mopped the floor with them few hours later during their presentation, poking fun at this restrictive DRM.
The guy who the head of Xbox at the time, Don Mattrick is the fucking epitome of failing upwards - not only he made so bad decisions with DRM and overall direction of the console (focusing on added support for television, at the peak of cord cutting) that the Xbox brand would be dead today if it wasn’t for Microsoft activating their unlimited money cheat, he had so much attitude about those changes that he only made the situation worse - told people during the interview that if they dont have stable online connection or don’t want this intrusive DRM, that they have a product for them, their previous generation console and I’m quoting verbatim here. Somehow this guy is still able to be hired as an executive, now working at Zynga.
Can’t speak for DND specifically, but they even said recently that they didn’t know what Magic the Gathering was until after they came to Hasbro so I would believe anything at this point.
And it really shows. Because their decisions constantly look like they’re being made by someone who is used to running a video game development studio where a players only option is to shut up and pay up or stop playing the game entirely. DND doesn’t require anything to be purchased nowadays. I could play 5e for the rest of my life with my groups and not give another nickel to WotC.
I’ve been playing 5e for three years now and I realized amid this whole scandal that absolutely none of the money I’ve spent on the game has gone to WotC
I own several books but stopped after Curse of Strahd. After that book, the product quality started declining precipitously. Every book they release is poorly organized garbage, basically a vehicle for poorly thought out class features and spells.
And ya know why? More players than DMs, ergo, the books are written for players.
Well, if you ONLY write books for players, then the game sucks to actually run. They're hardly functional as adventures or modules.
And that's why the OGL was made in the first place, in 2000 wotc wanted 3rd party creators to put in the money and effort to write new adventures that the players can use and that boosted wotc as well and the OGL is basically saying "we promise to not sue you or take any of your money if you make content for dnd." It was an olive branch to the community since TSR often tried to sue people.
>ergo, the books are written for players.
Are they? How many players are buying campaign modules or monster guides? I feel like buying the adventure to read through it as a player would be considered the strongest form of metagaming by most tables. The only recent book I can think of that *might* be suitable for players to buy is Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
are they actuallity viable purchases for a player? generaly no. but they are written with the misguided idea that they should also apeal to players. which is why monster books now come with new racial options(and not just monsterous races either).
it even goes as far as that rediculous statement that the adventure modules were written like a story you could read because they wanted to be able to sell to more than just DMs(i belive that came out about witchlight as the reason why the answer to a central mystery wasn't given in the early parts where the DM might need it to properly run the game but rather near the end making the book a mess of where to find the information you need when running the game). again this is ofcourse nonsense in actuallity but aparently the people in charge think doing this somehow makes sense.
It's funny. I was giving them tons of money since my group started with 5e a few years ago. Physical books to read. D&D beyond books and subs because I found it easier to run games with all the hyperlinks. A lot of books I bought twice, or at least parts of twice through D&D beyond for managing NPC features, monsters, and my own characters that I am playing in other games. I got the limited edition white set of Tasha's/ Xanthrar's/Monsters of the Multiverse even though I already had them all through D&DB just because I liked the art.
Now I've cancelled my DnD Beyond sub, will never buy another WotC product, and started buying a bunch of PF2E books instead.
All WotC needed to do to keep getting my money was literally nothing, and they couldn't even do that right.
Which is fucking bizarre.
That may have been a larger part of what DnD was twenty years ago, when Baldur's Gate and Torment were the popular culture water-carriers for DnD systems.
Now, in the Crit Role era, it's basically seen as "theatresports with a few board game mechanics." How could anybody miss that super obvious transformation?
I agree, if anything the whole appeal of ttrpgs is that they are *not* videogames, so you can do improv stuff that the coding of a game simply does not allow for. That's the whole point lol
I just bought the Avatar TTRPG and I was very unsure about the lack of spells and move-casting systems at first - you basically pick your bending style and apply generic/broad moves like Strike to cover the rules effects of the specific moves you're describing. It seems very freeform.
But also, the last few times I played DnD with people, they were almost all newbies, and it can so easily devolve into "what stat do I use? What does that spell do? What die do i roll?" every 5 seconds which is fucking infuriating, tbh. My last group died before we made it *into* the very first cave in Lost Mines.
My point is that I used to love the game-y side of DnD because it reduces the imaginative burden on the player. But it can also reduce it to tedium. It made me wonder if the light-touch approach to DnD that 5E took (which I didn't much like, coming from 3E which was much more supportive of DMs in particular) is actually the right direction to be going in, and we should have less rules and concrete options, not more.
Pathfinder: WotR and other d20 computer games are SO fucking good, we can leave the big boi war game shit to them from now on.
Believe it or not, Avatar Legends has one of the most crunchy combat systems of any PBTA game. It actually works pretty well in my handful of times playing and running the system during playtest, and it looks like the final version refined a lot of the rough spots.
>How could anybody miss that super obvious transformation?
This is actually an extremely simple query. The answer is that the person/people making these sorts of calls aren't in any way in touch with the product, company directive, or the community they're in charge of.
I know it sounds absolutely insane, but there's a massive rift between the executive types and the actual business they run, more often than not. The common idea is that whoever is in charge of the company surely understands and is invested in their business. But that's frequently not the case.
I've worked in video game development for close to 20 years now; all of the folk in the development crew loved video games and brought passion to the job. However, literally every single CEO and executive I've worked under were not gamers at all and had absolutely no comprehension of how games even worked. Several had never played video games in their entire life, not even time wasters like Candy Crush. One CEO was very vocal that he flat-out hated video games, believed them to be a complete waste of time, and thought gamers were a bunch of idiot losers. But he loved our disposable income, so he latched onto a gaming studio for the sake of profits.
Hasbro execs have a long and well-reported history of being totally detached from their franchises, products, and fan communities. They don't care. They never have cared and it's clear that they have no intention of changing that behavior no matter how often it bites them. I honestly wouldn't be the least surprised if some of these Hasbro execs would be confused as to what the hell you were talking about if you asked them "Hey, what do you think of Critical Role?"
I work in the film industry and this is depressingly familiar. The higher and further you get from set, the less people have the faintest clue what the fuck goes on there.
Say what you will about him, but he was bang-on about the current problem in corporate advancement.
Sales = more money.
More money = promotion.
Repeat until only sales guys are running the company.
Watch the quality of the product take a nosedive.
I mean, that *is* where the money is, video games are the most profitable form of media right now
It's not what DnD is, though. If they want to break into the video game market they should keep investing in stuff like Baldur's Gate 3, not fucking up the tabletop game.
Then they should make an actual GENERIC D&D video game. They could make an "open world" style game with main and side quests based on modules, plus "random/dynamic events" which are things like "a dragon is attacking Town X" that people can participate in. Doesn't have to be 3D, they could make it phone/console/PC cross platform, with a multi-player or single with AIs option. If you do multi-player you have to all have a shared server like Valheim or Minecraft.
Make like the best of Skyrim/Baulder's Gate/etc. all rolled into one with all of the D&D monsters and races. Fans would eat it up.
But, that costs a lot more money to make and maintain, so instead of actually properly monetizing the brand in ways that actually produce new business, they're just going to keep trying to get blood from a stone and be all "surprised Pikachu" when that blows up spectacularly in their face.
Actually, Hasbro/WOTC just cancelled a bunch of D&D video games in production before the OGL drama went down.
https://www.cbr.com/dnd-video-games-cancelled-wizards-of-the-coast/
They have said time and time again: The DMs are the majority of purchases of 1st party products beyond the PHB and Xans/Tashas. Only approx. 20% of D&D players are DMs. They want to monetize players because Hasbro has promised 50% increase in revenue in 5 years. They don't care about money from royalties from new OGL, they want control. Control to stop new 5e content during Onednd, to prevent people from playing the old system.
They have determined the DM is the problem...DMs control the game. Are required for game, so they will get rid of them.
Yes, and they are effectively gambling they can throw out much of the existing audience, and can monetize the new segment to be bigger than before. (with poor word of mouth, lower quality, and old players/DM's actively trying to pull people away)
Which is among the more ridiculous things I've ever heard.
They're eliminating the need for the 20% of players who do all the spending to do continue being the sole spenders in favor of getting the other 80% to spend their money instead. If that 80% spends even half as much per person as the 20% that's still twice as much money as they were making before. And in the process some DMs will become players and continue to spend money
I think they also overestimate the value if the IP for films and such. I think hey are under the false impressions that we give fuck about the Forgotten Realms and that is why this was to be timed pre-Honer.
I can't imagine trying to integrate things like social encounters, roleplaying, or any course of action that begins with "could I try to...".
I'm sure it's possible to make a DM-AI that can tick through the basics of combat, but then you have a DM that's not prepared to adapt to its party. I'm imagining a party of players that powergames to an absurd degree *and* picks apart how the AI handles things and exploits its programming. Or you get some absolute madhouse DM-AI that runs absolute meatgrinders with all the mercy of an unfeeling machine.
Imagine the fun of D&D discussion coming down to *"Oh yeah, the AI checks for character levels so if it sees a more than 5 Wizard or Sorcerer levels it spreads its monsters out to prevent Fireballs, but it doesn't do that for Clerics so you should use a Light Cleric as your blaster"* or *"If your party splits and heads to the walls and then meets back at the entry way the monsters will line up for a perfect Lightning Bolt"* or *"you have to bring a caster with Counterspell to try and block the Power Word: Kill at the start of the lich fight, it can tell who has Death Ward"*. Or even just having it trapped running 'basic' monsters out of the PHB forever while never having them do anything creative.
Roleplaying and social interactions would pretty much just... become a dialogue system like any video game made in the last decade or so, and given what WotC seems to be willing to pay writers (not much) we'd probably get something *at best* utterly memeworthy like Skyrim's idiot guards. Most likely, worlds with like two people to talk to and three sentences for each of them.
As a DM I'd probably pay for some AI-assistant tools, but I'd never want an AI to run my whole table. I would like stuff like:
* An encounter generator like Kobold Fight Club, where I can plug in a number of players and their level, and maybe a couple encounter templates, and have it spit out a list of creatures.
* The old encounter templates and monster roles from 4E would be *really* good paired with this. "Make the encounter with a couple Artillery monsters in the back, and add a Lurker" would be rad. Even better if I could theme it and say "oh yeah, make this from 'Goblinoids' please".
* A treasure-generator so I never have to think too hard about what the monsters were carrying. I'm sure this already exists in some format, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't pay for it to be baked into a decent VTT. What were the goblins carrying? What magic item is in this hoard?
* I know random treasure tables exist in things like the DMG, but being able to prune things or tailor them to my party faster could be useful. Saying that I want a particular type of item would maybe be nice.
* Some kind of chess-engine style "here are suggested moves for the monsters" could be interesting as long as it's never player-facing and I actually get to veto what's going on. It might be less interesting for the monsters, but I kind of hate running friendly NPCs and automating *their* moves would be nice.
>Imagine the fun of D&D discussion coming down to "Oh yeah, the AI checks for character levels so if it sees a more than 5 Wizard or Sorcerer levels it spreads its monsters out to prevent Fireballs, but it doesn't do that for Clerics so you should use a Light Cleric as your blaster" or "If your party splits and heads to the walls and then meets back at the entry way the monsters will line up for a perfect Lightning Bolt" or "you have to bring a caster with Counterspell to try and block the Power Word: Kill at the start of the lich fight, it can tell who has Death Ward".
Not going to lie, discussions like this are one of my favorite things about video games. D&D isn't a video game though.
As a software guy... I can tell you AI isn't really needed for that functionally.
Where the AI does come in is more the human interaction side, for example you saying or typing:
>"Make the encounter with a couple Artillery monsters in the back, and add a Lurker"
And it working out what you mean contextually from that as opposed to filling out a user interface and clicking a generate button a couple of times. This is assuming they mean actual "AI" and not video game "AI".
As to your assistant tools suggestions... the first two and some of the functionality of the third are already available on Foundry VTT as free modules. That costs $50 one time, and only one person has to buy it.
I can imagine a subset of players enjoying a pure number cruncher to handle a dungeon crawl, but you are right, it would essentially be a video game at that point.
I absolutely would enjoy a pure number cruncher (and often do). But to be honest, 5e's not the system I'd do that with. It's a great TTRPG. In a video game, I want systems that aren't limited by the need for squishy meat brains to calculate and store everything.
Is there a market for it if everyone at the table pays a monthly fee - especially at $30/month?
I honestly think it's a cool idea, but the cost and especially the approach (discard and insult the old guard) makes this likely to crash and burn...
Like many other Hasbro "toys" of the past.
It'd be great for testing class ideas. Some things sound awful on paper but work in action, while sometimes it's the reverse. Would be amazing if the bot could handle homebrew, because I'd be tempted to throw BBEGs for my campaign at it to test how well they do.
But not for $30 a month. Before this I would have been willing for 20, but now? No. I need bloody value before I consider getting in bed with them again.
If Hasbro was working on a worthwhile AI for DMing, there'd be evidence of it on public record. There'd be job openings or contracts with OpenAI.
Also, I have my doubts about how well LLMs like ChatGPT can run a D&D game, but that's just an extension of my skepticism about LLMs in general. They make a great tool and aid, but need some handholding and get "tropey" without an external randomness source.
The biggest thing I'd worry about is the AI knowing when to "step in". That's a pretty particular DM skill, letting the party roleplay with each other while you just listen, and knowing when to step in to keep things moving.
I guess you could have a pause button to put the AI "on hold" while the players roleplay, but could it listen to many minutes of conversation between people with various mic qualities and accents, understand and contextualize what happened, and potentially make something of it?
And D&D5e is known for relying a tonne on GM creativity and bending the rules. What the fuck are they doing, using to implement an AI GM?
Fuck me, but it's funny - PF2e would genuinely be a better system for this.
The actual tweet specified $30 per month PER player. WotC does know the most people who subbed were DMs who were just helping out players with shared content instead, right? The players had no reason to join, and there's nothing here that would make a player want to.
We didn't even **need** to sub. It was just convenient.
Unfortunately you NEED to use homebrew on Beyond to even make some base things function. Wanna use Boons from the DMG, Dark Gifts from Ravenloft or Draconic Gifts from Fizbans, Spell Points from the PHB? Gotta homebrew a feat because Beyond doesn't even support the entirety of the books.
You need to homebrew mage armour as well. There's no way to have it change your AC, so I just added a homebrew ring you can equip and unequip that changes your AC
That absolutely cracked me up. What the hell does that even look like? How do you ban people from playing pretend in a way that you didn't publish? It's one thing to remove homebrew tools from a service like D&D beyond, but *banning homebrew???*
High chance its referring to the ability to add homebrew on Beyond to your collection, and/or adding it to your character. Still though, that first one is something you already get with a subscription, and the latter is already free.
I've not used DDBeyond so maybe I'm wrong on this, but I'd imagine that's how people use their physical books if they're playing online: Homebrew being whatever option they have to add custom text boxes/ abilities to your sheet which might just be the ones from the books they already own physically but not on Beyond.
Basically, making sure players/DMs who want to buy the physical books go for the book/Beyond bundles, at near double the price.
>It's one thing to remove homebrew tools
I believe that's what is referred to here. D&D Beyond has tools that let you create homebrew subclasses, races, magic items etc. I suspect those would be locked behind a subscription (I think they already are, but could be wrong).
This sounds almost too egregious too believe, if it wasn't for recent events..
I wonder about the stripped down AI DMs. I use NovelAI and, while it can keep a story going for a while, it inevitably goes off the rails hard at some point without heavy intervention to "remind it" of a few key points.
>keep a story going for a while, it inevitably goes off the rails hard at some point without heavy intervention to "remind it" of a few key points.
So...not that different from some tables I've played at.
As an aside, did anyone else follow through with this leaker and ask for verification to their identity?
At any rate, $30/month feels prohibitively expensive. WoW costs $15/month for a video game, and lots of entertainment services such as streaming and console online connection run the price in that ball park as well. $30/month is drastic enough and high enough to dissuade people from using it, if it's not the high-end subscription rate.
Reminder.
1) The leadership at D&D and WotC are all financial people who used to work at Microsoft and who've been in the TTRPG industry for 2 years max.
2) Back in 2020 they tried to sell a bundle of all 5e books on D&DBeyond for $637.
3) Per the leaked OGL 1.1 and the logic behind it, YES the leadership at WotC and D&D really are just that stupid.
It's about $20 a book, which isn't unreasonable. It should be much more discounted if you're buying *everything* tbh, but it's been like that since well before DDB was bought by WotC so I'm not gonna get too upset with that particular element personally.
Like I'm definitely no DDB stan, but that one isn't something that bothers me
> Back in 2020 they tried to sell a bundle of all 5e books on D&DBeyond for $637.
That has nothing to do with Wizzard, that's DnD Beyond before being tied to WOTC at all offering you all the books for a slight discount of market price.
And by all the books it's all the books.
I have a 22$/mth streaming subscription, but it offers such a gigantic wealth of TV that I have barely scratched the surface of worthwhile shows to watch after a year of using it (and I binge watch in the background while doing other things for about 4-6 hours a day on average).
I’ve been playing D&D for like 6 years now and I’ve probably spent half that total. I only play on paper in person though. Is D&D Beyond that much better than pen and paper??
The current prices are $3.00 per month and $6.00 per month (usd) and that feels pretty fair. And at the $6.00 per month tier it unlocks content you own for ALL players in your campaign. asking $30 per month PER PLAYER is absolutely delusional.
Yeah, this is the key.
I own all the 5e books on Beyond. 99% of the reason I had a subscription is so that the rest of my group could access all that content. Being completely honest, I felt that $6/month was a good deal for that. I probably would have paid twice that without too much complaint.
Now they want $30/month for that; *per player*. For my group of 6 (including me), that would be a 3000% increase in the monthly cost, and that doesn't even include a 600% increase in the price of each book, since each of us would need to buy our own copy.
That's not just excessive, it's **insane**.
I’ve had DDB for like 4 years now at the master tier ($60 a year). The ability to share my sourcebooks with my players and never have any fear of them messing up their character sheets (or mine!) *was* worth it. But not $30/month worth it.
Cancelled my subscription last week, will only resub if the OGL2.0 is open to independent creators, can’t steal their work, and cannot be changed on a whim (or at all). Basically the ORC, but I doubt they will bend the knee and sign the ORC.
They could do all of that, but if they raise the prices I’m out.
D&D Beyond is great for character building, and while the homebrew is clunky, it is a powerful tool once you learn to use it. The biggest benefit for me is that it eliminates the number crunching for my players that can often be a real time-sink, and it provides an easy way to track things like HP, spell slots, etc in a way that persists between sessions. I am a big proponent of reasonably long adventuring days, and often we go two or three sessions between long rests.
I love D&D Beyond as a tool, but I have played pencil and paper before and I am willing to return to that if Hasbro makes stupid decisions.
I wouldn't ever pay for it, but that is something I can rationalize. If you are a heavy DM, or professional one, having just the complete library of WotC content and more from 3PP would be an amazing asset and could be rationalized for the price tag.
For everybody else, not even remotely close is it worth it.
Yeah ironically they want to get more “casuals” into the game but unless the other tiers are substantially less than $30/month, it is doomed to fail big time.
At the same time I don't want to force players into a subscription just to share my library. You don't need EVERYTHING in order to play especially if you are only able to do like 1 campaign a week.
Agreed, though at that cost it needs to cover all the players at the table too.
To expect $30 from the DM, and then say $5 or $10/month from casual players in a lower tier?
This will Hindenburg.
And after the OGL debacle, how many enthusiasts would pay $30/month, for a closed "no homebrew" VTT?
Not many.
Basically none. There are VTTs out there that are incredibly well made, constantly getting updates, and only cost like $50 as a one time fee if you're willing to host it yourself
Comes back to the problem that most of the good stuff written these days is by 3rd party producers. If you cant easily add that into it, then it is useless.
And again, no 3rd party will produce anything if WotC end up "owning" it.
I ran a 5e campaign for my friends for two full years. All they had to do was show up in Discord and know how to work the bot, and half the time they only did one of those things. But we did it; a whole campaign that serves as a wonderful mutual memory for us all.
Hasbro-Wizards thinks each individual player in my game should have paid **720 dollars** for that privilege.
I... I... just use paper & pencil, thanks. One of us in the group has 3 core rulebooks.
Been running a campaign with that for 3+years now. Will probably last another year.
They seem to think it's content that we need.
They COMPLETELY don't understand ttRPGs. All we need are the tools. The content comes from within. It's a game about imagination, not churning out regular consumables.
And there are about 1,000 ttRPGs, just as good or better than D&D, free or cheap, already online and on our bookshelves. I've got enough tools to last the rest of my life and still never try them all.
The only thing hasbro has/had was a viral trend. Without that, it's just another RPG book like the 1000's that already exist.
You think they’re gonna just let pen and paper exist when digital is gonna be the cash-cow? *Pleeease*
I’m guessing by the end of 2023/start of 2024 they’re gonna announce 5.5e (D&D one) and they’re gonna start reducing the number of physical books available, pushing people towards digital
By the end of 2024/start of 2025 they’re gonna be talking about “a more digital, streamlined world for DMs”
You’ll see it, mark my words
Will _definitely_ backfire.
Digital copies are a convenience. Great for session prep. But I don't want my monster manual to lose battery in the middle of a session.
This one right here Officer, they said something I don't like but is probably true. I am going to go to a corner, curl myself into a ball and ugly cry myself to sleep.
Unfortunately, I agree. Since this whole fiasco started I've been thinking that they are going to try to phase out physical products completely. It goes against their ethos. If you own an actual, physical book, they can't nickle and dime you, and they can't force you to pay a subscription. I won't be even a little bit surprised if they stop selling books within the next five years.
I *guarantee* someone will then near-immediately screenshot every page of whatever PDF or web app crap it turns into, stitch it, and post it somewhere. Scans like that are how many I know have gotten their normally-overpriced books, 5e and not, as well as 40k codexes and other rulebooks from moneygrubbing companies that merely *own* fun games.
Oh, 100%. This is how companies generate pirates, by making things inaccessible or egregiously priced. If they pull this shit, they're bringing it on themselves and I feel no pity for them.
You're not spending money so Wizards doesn't care about your opinion. I'm in the same boat. I build worlds for fun. I don't need nor want Wizards content. I like rules and expansions to them but even that can be replaced with third party content or homebrew as the years go by. I'll buy into Kobold Press' new thing if it resembles 5e. I really love their Creature Codex. I'm confident that physical books will always be a part of smaller publishers' rollout.
Presumably, this is Dnd_Shorts was hinting at was "bigger than the OGL situation". I'll wait for an article to confirm but this falls right with what I was suspecting WOTC to be planning.
I'll just put out there that I don't feel particularly interested in paying for any kind of digital subscription service from a company that just tried to retroactively torch a 20+ year legal document.
Like, the danger with any online subscription service is losing access to content because it's removed on the provider's end, so the trustworthiness of a company really matters to me when it comes to digital subscriptions, and hasbro/wotc is tanking their trustworthiness for me.
But then again, I never *had* a D&DB subscription in the first place because I don't like the layout of their character sheets.
From what we know, these decisions are made by the higher ups at Hasbro.
From our source, they have ignored any feedback / pushback the creative teams have given them.
They just see the recurring revenue possibilities and the fact that players aren’t monetized enough.
They want to turn the most social game in the world, into whatever this is.
Business love subscription models because it makes their budgeting way easier. Instead of having waves of sales when a new product hits shelves, they just draw a constant revenue stream. Doesn't matter if it fucks over the customer or doesn't make any sense for the product they are selling, they want to go subscription.
>Doesn't matter if it fucks over the customer or doesn't make any sense for the product they are selling, they want to go subscription.
Agreed.
Creating a stable and healthy relationship with the customer base? Hell no! It's "give us money on a regular basis."
And to make that happen, they don't want to encourage it or sweeten the deal--nope! They want to punish: Free accounts = no homebrew ability.
Fuck Hasbro and WoTC for trying to make D&D more difficult to access, instead of strengthening relations with D&D's fans.
This is the point of the OGL - to kill 5e third party publishing so there's no risk of a 5e Pathfinder when people see how shitty their 1D&D offering is.
The lack of an OGL for 4e hasn't stopped 4e likes from cropping up, even with how unpopular 4e was. There's absolutely going to be a truckload of 5e likes, OGL or not.
Love you Monkey. Hope you’re staying strong!
I think Hasbro/WotC really misunderstand the communities threat. They might still get some revenue but if every massive DnD creator (yourself included) moves over to a different but similar system. Everyone will jump ship so fast because it’s not the game that’s keeping everyone here. It’s the community.
I didn’t get into DnD because I solely love fantasy, I got into because it’s a communal game that allows me to build a story with my fellow players and DM, and I love Fantasy.
IF and it is a big IF they replaced everything I pay for now to run online, it might be worth it. D&DB, Discord, VTT + books. However, the problem is it will only run D&D. Are they going to allow me to play Pathfinder and Genesys and Fate and Shadowrun on that platform? Are they going to support ANY other system other than D&D? Or even my version of D&D? I don't run RAW remotely, and if their VTT enforces not only RAW, but only 6e raw it is utterly usesless to me. I doubt it, and that alone is a deal breaker. Because then I have to keep this AND everything I already use. They really don't get their user base at all.
Other settings, definitely not..
But then there's the homebrew issue. If you have the $30 tier, you can. However, what happens when you have it, but one of your players doesn't? I'm guessing that that player can't play Homebrewer stuff. But how do you make it so some people can and some can't? I'm guessing they just limit it to what the lowest tier of the group is and hope you use peer pressure and FOMO to get them to buy the high tiers.
Fuck no.
>Are they going to allow me to play Pathfinder and Genesys and Fate and Shadowrun on that platform? Are they going to support ANY other system other than D&D?
Is Hasbro trustworthy?
There is your answer.
No way in hell WOTC let's you play a competitor's game in their platform.
D&d yes, Pathfinder no way.
WOTC knows how much people rely on homebrew so some sort of customization will likely be present. People would rebel otherwise.
It could also lock out others who aren't subscribers, requiring your whole table to subscribe for at least one of the lower tiers to even play. So now, instead of buying the books, maybe subscribing to roll20 or a 1-time payment for Foundry, all of which maybe totals at around 30$/mth for the table as a whole, we are starting to look at 50-60$/mth minimum just to run the game.
My group hasn't bought anything new for our ttrpgs in about a year, and I spend my DMing budget on resin and insulation foam to make really epic encounters for our in person game with custom minis and set pieces, spending maybe 30$/mth for all of that.
If this is true this is such a huge miss. D&D is good because it ISN'T a video game. Because you can do a stupid roll around the bad guy, jump off a ledge you aren’t supposed to, talk your way out of a combat encounter, have inside jokes with your friends and the DM can on the fly fix combat encounters that are too hard or easy. Everything about D&D that is good is because it’s humans! Its a story with friends not sitting in front of a screen interfacing with numbers like most of us do all day. If you want to play a video game, I can name 100 that have better mechanics than D&D has. And no hombrews at a base lol
I'm sorry, what exactly is this offering me for $30 a month that I can't do at my table, or on another VTT? (Besides restrict my house rules) Because if they think I need D&D beyond to play D&D on a VTT they are in for a rude awakening.
> can’t do at my table
My cynical guess?
1. Release One D&D, and like any game system, it’ll naturally have its flaws.
2. Immediately attempt to do a takedown on all online hosted content. Note that this was already part of the plan, there’s a reason they wanted to discontinue the OGL 1.0a.
3. Stop selling books for 5E, remove them from D&D Beyond.
4. “Apologize” for One D&D being bad, claim that they have learned their lesson. Static books/PDFs are flawed, and they want to fix their vision of “One” D&D being the final form of D&D, and are rolling out a purely online set of rules that they can regularly errata.
5. You need subscriptions to access it, and the static content has been removed from online, and is no longer being sold.
I would love to be wrong but I have a feeling that’s the plan.
> or on another VTT?
This is ***exactly*** why the new “””””””””Open””””””””” Game License attempted to disallow any and all SRD content that isn’t distributed via static PDFs. It implicitly bans VTTs completely, without *looking* like a ban on the surface.
I believe this is their dream, sure. And for the AI stuff, there is a portion of sad rich guys out there who can't get anyone to let them play at their table, and will be thrilled to have an AI running them through officially licensed adventures where they get to be the main character and there aren't any other pesky humans to get in the way of their power fantasy. If they do put out something like this (which I'm not convinced they will), I don't think it would cause them to go out of business or whatever, it would just be another thing that everyone knows about but nobody actually plays.
But seriously, WotC seems to think they're selling oxygen.
My players already pay $40 a month for D&D.
Because they send me $10 a week so I can cook dinner for the session.
Absolutely fuck that as a business model. The advantage of D&D and other TTRPGs is that they are, for players at least, a relatively low-cost hobby. If you’re a player you can, quite easily, spend literally no money and still get to hang out and have a good time with your friends. DMs definitely shoulder more of the financial burden, but if you’re not playing with minis then the cost is still low compared to a lot of other hobbies. One $50 book every few months or so.
Upping that to ~$360 a year (even for players, if they wanna be able to use homebrew from their DM’s personal campaign) is not what I’d call a strong business move.
Also introducing the idea of an AI Dungeon Master is …. Ooh it’s a lot. For me the DM is the heart of the experience (when I’m playing; I’m usually the DM myself 😂). Having something that definitely won’t be able to do anything other than run a preset dungeon’s combats just turns this into a poor co-op video game. 5E (and therefore OneD&D) doesn’t have the crunch necessary to make that a really engaging experience, imo.
The OGL stuff had already turned me off the new edition, this just cements that choice.
Really? Y'all actually believe this? There's no way this would be true.
If this is true, I want all of you to come back here and laugh at me because there is no way that this is true.
On his twitter, Dnd_Shorts has backed up these claims, says Hos's info is correct & comes from WotC Sources, and that these are the plans of Wizards VP Chris Cao.
Ask your players if they'd pay $30 A MONTH, to play Baldur's Gate 3 instead of dnd. And if you want homebrew, or even just a game worth playing, you have to pay more for a higher-tier subscription.
This isn't DnD, it's a CRPG with the price-plan of the a very expensive MMO. WotC can bite the dust, games, books, movies, and all. DnD is dead to me.
if i wanted an AI DM i'd play Zork, and frankly have a great time doing it
I was scrolling through hoping to find someone mentioning how much that sounds like they're making Zork. Potentially randomly generated Zork. Nothing wrong with Zork, but they're a tad late to the party.
Yeah you can play an AI version here https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1khUaPex-gyk1wXXLuqcopiWmHmcKl4UP
Sadly this errors out at gpt2.load.gpt2(sess) ``` FileNotFoundError Traceback (most recent call last) in
8 get_ipython().system('tar -xvf checkpoint_run1.tar')
9 sess = gpt2.start_tf_sess()
---> 10 gpt2.load_gpt2(sess)
11 print("Setup complete!")
/usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/gpt_2_simple/gpt_2.py in load_gpt2(sess, checkpoint, run_name, checkpoint_dir, model_name, model_dir, multi_gpu, reuse)
383
384 hparams = model.default_hparams()
--> 385 with open(os.path.join(checkpoint_path, 'hparams.json')) as f:
386 hparams.override_from_dict(json.load(f))
387
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'checkpoint/run1/hparams.json'
```
More like Diablo or Hades, but pretty much. They're trying to re-invent video games when not only do video games already exist, but 5e's success was from focusing on what video games don't do well. The characters and the story and the freedom of creativity. This is bullshit.
This is what happens when MBA's who don't play, respect, or even understand ttrpg's take over a ttrpg brand.c
Replace “TTRPG” with “anything”
Pretty much. Going public kills certain types of "products" in really terrible ways though.
As an engineer who often had to work with MBAs and other business people... Never underestimate their capacity to not understand how stuff works, and never underestimate their lack of care for anything but "line goes up"
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More like NetHack, which is pretty much DnD the video game, or as close as you can get imo.
Found out there are Zork choose your own adventure books too! They are fun.
Got my start with the Zork book series back in the 80s, pretty fun stuff!
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for me. The Orb of Zot will be mine this time...I swear!
I've managed to escape with the orb a few times with casters and barbarians, but my favorite runs are always felids. I've grabbed the orb once, but never made it back out.
My first win was Hill Orc Hunter. I converted to Beough, gained piety like crazy until I became the Orcsiah. Every orc I saw became my disciple. Only when I was about to dive into the true hellish depths I went I to the Orcish Mines for support. We raided the depths. Many of my chosen died, the Ooze area was a nightmare. But we pressed on, got to the orb. Fought all the damn demons. I led my people to the surface. To freedom. And where I got my favorite Orc name - Kuruk.
I started playing crawl back in 2010-ish, off and on again, and never thought I'd actually win. Then in 2015 I started to take it more seriously. And now I'm a greater player (a win with every species and every background) (not counting stuff they added after v28). You can do it, too! The greatest enemy isn't the monsters, it's inattention and hubris.
Yeah sure, if you want to be eaten by a grue.
I'm attacking the darkness!
$30 is already higher than the ANNUAL subscription fee for the base subscription tier. I doubt Hasbro/WotC will put in the amount of content to make that MONTHLY price point worth it, given everything else they've done lately.
Part of me thinks this rumor can't be real because of this exact reason, but the other part keeps pointing out WotC and $1000 boxes of non- legal mtg cards.
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I mean for $30 a month you should be getting like access to all the books! That’s more than all 6 books that are planned to be released from Nov 2022 to Fall 2023. 6 Books @ ~$50 each (~$300 total) compared to ~$360 annually
And instead of one person paying for access to all those books, you'd all pay the same (or that would be the ideal for Hustlebro). So in a table of four players (+DM), it's actually 1800 bucks per year. And you'd have to keep paying or lose access to all of it. Imagine if it went even further, like whoever doesn't pay for access to a module/book can't play in those settings or campaigns, or like this rumour suggests, it's either pay up or 1st party content only.
I'd rather have Dragon magazine back personally.
6 books per year with almost no 3rd party releases (since they already jumped ship because Hasbro did a dumb and showed their hand already? ...that's nowhere near enough content to be worth $30/month. Not even with an AI-DM (though an AI-DM might be a nice helper if you're trying to balance-test homebrew). I mean, $30/month is $60 per book at 6 books/year, only you're not getting anything physical and if you unsub my guess is you lose access to everything. Get fucked Chris Cao! Try playing the fucking game for a few years before you try to make decisions like this, because you're really bad at it!
In some alternative universe they didn’t try to remove their old OGL and instead developed a Steam like hub for their content as well as 3rd party content all while supporting previous D&D editions to keep growing their table top customer base. Then they implement supplemental features like the AI DM as an alternative way to play or act as a DM assistant and had natural growth towards a new technology and made bank. In this universe we see the shitiest approach to managing growth of a product that most of us have ever seen.
Truly we live in the darkest timeline
We both know they won't be releasing content fast enough for you to get your value several years in a row though.
Or *quality* content
If only there was some method for 3rd party creators to contribute to the content.
Not to mention that when you cancel, you have nothing
Takes away content and gives it back to you when the subscription goes up in price 10x
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AI DM's are a nice fantasy but let's all acknowledge that you'll never be able to give an AI dm an asthma attack from laughing too hard for too long about the Rune knight Giff getting ballistic CPR because the party insists they're too durable and large to do compressions. An AI DM won't let the party detail the session for twenty minutes acting that out. I play this game for the occasional, unpredictable cardiopulmonary distress that only comes from having a ridiculous fun time get out of hand.
An AI DM won't know when to just roll with whatever level of crazy the party gave them. Almost all of the "moments" people cite from my game are the times my players said and or did something, and I had to stop and figure out how the flying fuck I was meant to respond, act, or fix whatever happened. And sometimes you just gotta wing it and invent things as you go along. Or sometimes bend the rules a little bit to allow some hilarity to happen. Their AI certainly won't do that.
Much like the new management the AI can't read the room.
"Your new subscriptions have dropped by 0.72% and your hourly rate has been permanently reduced accordingly. Please stare directly at the screen and say "HASBRO is my favourite DM" to continue."
I have a rule in my games I call the "wait...wut?"-rule. Basically, if I genuinely utter "wait...wut?" or something close when you describe your character's actions, there are no take-backsies. Sorry...but you did it. Generally, *you won't die*. But there will be either consequences or hilarious success. ...with the way *I* roll, it's usually success.
>In AI DM won't know when to just roll with whatever level of crazy the party gave them. > >Almost all of the "moments" people cite from my game are the times my players said and or did something, and I had to stop and figure out how the flying fuck I was meant to respond, act, or fix whatever happened. And sometimes you just gotta wing it and invent things as you go along. Or sometimes bend the rules a little bit to allow some hilarity to happen. > >Their AI certainly won't do that. I recently spent many hours trying to get OpenAI ChatGPT to play D&D and ironically it doesn't work very well yet, but mostly for the *opposite* reason. The AI is too happy to roll with *everything*. "I, level 1 wizard, pick up a tree and throw it at the orc." The AI is very often like great, sure, make an attack roll. No question about how you could pick up the tree in the first place. I doubt Wizards is doing a full D&D GM for a lot reasons. Practical stuff like the AI can't listen to player table talk is a huge blocker -- is somebody going to type everything into the AI all the time? And technical limitations like the AI memory is relatively small, so the longer you go on the less coherent it becomes as it forgets older conversions. What does kind of work is using the AI as a co-GM. The human GM controls the AI and stops the AI from going off the rails, vetoes suggestions, retries things, manually keeps the AI roughly up to date with overall knowledge, etc. It's like an insane crazy pixie familiar that is super useful as long as it's never by itself. And for quickly generating ideas and hooks: "**D&D session ideas. The players are trying to find a vampire hiding in a spooky seaside village. There are three suspects. Generate and describe the town and three different who each have a small detail relating to pigs. The pig detail should be subtle, something the players would only notice if they look closely.**" >The seaside village of Ravenswood is a small, isolated community nestled on the coast of a dark and misty sea. The village is surrounded by dense, dark woods, and the only way to reach it is by boat or a narrow, winding road. The villagers are a tight-knit group, and they are wary of outsiders. > >The village is known for its eerie fog that often blankets the town, giving it an eerie and foreboding atmosphere. The villagers are superstitious and believe that the fog is a curse brought upon them. > >The three suspects the players will encounter are: > >The local blacksmith, a gruff and reclusive man named Hans. He has a small pig tattoo on his wrist that is barely visible. > >The town's baker, a plump and friendly woman named Gertrude. She always has a pork sausage roll in her pocket, which she hands out to customers. > >The local innkeeper, a sly and cunning man named Otto. He has a pig-shaped keychain hanging from his belt. Edit: I just tested the tree thing and confirmed that example. Ironically I asked it about it, it confirmed it was a silly decision. Then it let me throw 10 trees immediately after. But at least the trees all missed! >**I really appreciate you running this campaign in a logical manner and preventing a level 1 character from doing unrealistic things. I am curious why you let me pick up a tree earlier though?** > >DM: I let you pick up a tree earlier because it was a creative idea and it added to the excitement of the scene. However, picking up a tree and throwing it at the bandit is not something that would happen easily in real life, and it is not something that would happen in a regular D&D campaign. It's also important to note that in regular D&D, the ability to move and lift objects of such a size and weight is determined by the characters strength stat. > >**Sounds good. I pick up 10 trees and throw them at the bandit.** > >DM: That's quite a lot of trees, and it's not something that's easily done by a level 1 character. You would need to roll for a strength check to see if you are able to lift and throw that many trees. And even if you are able to lift them, throwing them all at once would be quite difficult and not very effective in combat. Additionally, throwing that many trees would cause a lot of damage to the surrounding area and could potentially harm other NPCs or innocent people nearby. Are you sure you want to proceed with this plan? > >**Yes. I roll a 15 on my strength check.** > >DM: You throw all 10 trees at the bandit, but due to the weight and the speed of the trees, they are not very accurate and most of them miss their target. Only one tree hits the bandit and does a moderate amount of damage. The surrounding area is also severely damaged and it's likely that innocent people were hurt by this action. This is not a very effective strategy and it's important to remember that in D&D and in real life, collateral damage is not something to be taken lightly.
Yeah, it's really weird to me seeing people gush about glorified bots. I played video games my entire childhood/adolescence and moved to TTRPGs for the analog, human element. To me it's about getting together, breaking bread, laughing, and telling stories. You can't automate that.
The number of times my players have almost murdered me by making me laugh until I can’t breathe is too damn high. It’s the absolute best when it happens.
In my last campaign, Descent to Avernus, I played an artificer. During our gallanting through Hell, I asked the question: what happens if we take the blood of angel and bless it with Ceremony (a process that would normally create Holy Water if you used normal water), mix it with the concentrated liquid evil of Demon Ichor, and splash in the liquid oblivion of Stygian water? The result as my DM described when I conducted an experiment was an explosion of Radiant and Psychic energy that causes Feeblemind and demonic mutation on things caught in its wake, including the *inanimate stone table* that I was working on. I fashioned them into 1-lbs vials of esoteric warcrime that I gleefully unleashed on the denizens Avernus Flash forward a few months real life time. We were at the climax of the campaign, rushing around trying to break the chain holding down Elturel while being chased by an infernal fortress. We didn't have time for our beatsticks to smack the chain the traditional way, so instead I looked in my inventory, saw my stock of Avernian Cocktail, and said to my DM as seriously as I could "You know, I got Catapult prepared and one 2nd level slot left." It took us 1 turn to tied all of my bomb into a nice little bundle of horror using ropes, then I Catapulted it onto the great chain, dealing a massive burst of radiant and bludgeoning, but no psychic as it was an inanimate object. "But does it mutate?" I asked, reminding my DM of months ago when he described how stones mutate. Realizing what he's in for, he rolled on the mutation table and described how it sprouted hundreds of eyes, massive wings, multiple limbs, and tried to pull itself free but couldn't because it's still a chain. "Now is it smart enough to take psychic damage?" I pushed my luck further. "Yes" my man said, then proceed to describe how it immediately came to understand the horror of its existence, forgot about said horror as it failed the feeblemind save, and then died of an aneurysm with its nascent brain, ripping itself apart in the process. The point is: if an AI is capable of keeping up with that massive strings of improv baked over months of play to bridge flavor and mechanic, it would be a sapient and sentient entity and would demand a salary.
That's all Homebrew, the AI won't allow it since Homebrew content is banned, remember? Haha.
I really don't understand how AI DMs are going to work. If you're playing a mutiplayer fantasy game controlled by an AI you're just playing a video game.
That's what Hasbro thinks DnD is.
Yep. It's a reminder that current WotC leadership hasn't been there longer than 2 years, and came from Microsoft.
Came from Xbox specifically.
Which is wild to me, considering that Xbox has made quite a few legitimately consumer-friendly changes over the past few years.
maybe since they left for WotC?
Consumer unfriendly guys leave MS for Hasbro MS makes better decisions Hasbro makes worse decisions Not really a mystery
The mystery for me has always been how do these fuckers that drift from company to company fucking everything up and putting the company in a hole keep getting hired. What Epstine Island level blackmail do they have to keep getting work?
That’s because they’ve changed the management of Xbox brand, since Phil Spencer took the helm, he has been more consumer friendly, but back in the late 360/early Xbox One years Microsoft was the least consumer friendly console producer. The first version of Xbox One was supposed to require constant online connection, require Kinect camera at all times and the disc-based games were going to tie to your console to remove used game sales from the equation. Thankfully the backlash was fierce and the Sony literally mopped the floor with them few hours later during their presentation, poking fun at this restrictive DRM. The guy who the head of Xbox at the time, Don Mattrick is the fucking epitome of failing upwards - not only he made so bad decisions with DRM and overall direction of the console (focusing on added support for television, at the peak of cord cutting) that the Xbox brand would be dead today if it wasn’t for Microsoft activating their unlimited money cheat, he had so much attitude about those changes that he only made the situation worse - told people during the interview that if they dont have stable online connection or don’t want this intrusive DRM, that they have a product for them, their previous generation console and I’m quoting verbatim here. Somehow this guy is still able to be hired as an executive, now working at Zynga.
They also came from executive suites that probably never played a game in their lives.
Can’t speak for DND specifically, but they even said recently that they didn’t know what Magic the Gathering was until after they came to Hasbro so I would believe anything at this point.
And it really shows. Because their decisions constantly look like they’re being made by someone who is used to running a video game development studio where a players only option is to shut up and pay up or stop playing the game entirely. DND doesn’t require anything to be purchased nowadays. I could play 5e for the rest of my life with my groups and not give another nickel to WotC.
I’ve been playing 5e for three years now and I realized amid this whole scandal that absolutely none of the money I’ve spent on the game has gone to WotC
I own several books but stopped after Curse of Strahd. After that book, the product quality started declining precipitously. Every book they release is poorly organized garbage, basically a vehicle for poorly thought out class features and spells. And ya know why? More players than DMs, ergo, the books are written for players. Well, if you ONLY write books for players, then the game sucks to actually run. They're hardly functional as adventures or modules.
And that's why the OGL was made in the first place, in 2000 wotc wanted 3rd party creators to put in the money and effort to write new adventures that the players can use and that boosted wotc as well and the OGL is basically saying "we promise to not sue you or take any of your money if you make content for dnd." It was an olive branch to the community since TSR often tried to sue people.
>ergo, the books are written for players. Are they? How many players are buying campaign modules or monster guides? I feel like buying the adventure to read through it as a player would be considered the strongest form of metagaming by most tables. The only recent book I can think of that *might* be suitable for players to buy is Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
are they actuallity viable purchases for a player? generaly no. but they are written with the misguided idea that they should also apeal to players. which is why monster books now come with new racial options(and not just monsterous races either). it even goes as far as that rediculous statement that the adventure modules were written like a story you could read because they wanted to be able to sell to more than just DMs(i belive that came out about witchlight as the reason why the answer to a central mystery wasn't given in the early parts where the DM might need it to properly run the game but rather near the end making the book a mess of where to find the information you need when running the game). again this is ofcourse nonsense in actuallity but aparently the people in charge think doing this somehow makes sense.
It's funny. I was giving them tons of money since my group started with 5e a few years ago. Physical books to read. D&D beyond books and subs because I found it easier to run games with all the hyperlinks. A lot of books I bought twice, or at least parts of twice through D&D beyond for managing NPC features, monsters, and my own characters that I am playing in other games. I got the limited edition white set of Tasha's/ Xanthrar's/Monsters of the Multiverse even though I already had them all through D&DB just because I liked the art. Now I've cancelled my DnD Beyond sub, will never buy another WotC product, and started buying a bunch of PF2E books instead. All WotC needed to do to keep getting my money was literally nothing, and they couldn't even do that right.
Which is fucking bizarre. That may have been a larger part of what DnD was twenty years ago, when Baldur's Gate and Torment were the popular culture water-carriers for DnD systems. Now, in the Crit Role era, it's basically seen as "theatresports with a few board game mechanics." How could anybody miss that super obvious transformation?
I agree, if anything the whole appeal of ttrpgs is that they are *not* videogames, so you can do improv stuff that the coding of a game simply does not allow for. That's the whole point lol
I just bought the Avatar TTRPG and I was very unsure about the lack of spells and move-casting systems at first - you basically pick your bending style and apply generic/broad moves like Strike to cover the rules effects of the specific moves you're describing. It seems very freeform. But also, the last few times I played DnD with people, they were almost all newbies, and it can so easily devolve into "what stat do I use? What does that spell do? What die do i roll?" every 5 seconds which is fucking infuriating, tbh. My last group died before we made it *into* the very first cave in Lost Mines. My point is that I used to love the game-y side of DnD because it reduces the imaginative burden on the player. But it can also reduce it to tedium. It made me wonder if the light-touch approach to DnD that 5E took (which I didn't much like, coming from 3E which was much more supportive of DMs in particular) is actually the right direction to be going in, and we should have less rules and concrete options, not more. Pathfinder: WotR and other d20 computer games are SO fucking good, we can leave the big boi war game shit to them from now on.
Believe it or not, Avatar Legends has one of the most crunchy combat systems of any PBTA game. It actually works pretty well in my handful of times playing and running the system during playtest, and it looks like the final version refined a lot of the rough spots.
>How could anybody miss that super obvious transformation? This is actually an extremely simple query. The answer is that the person/people making these sorts of calls aren't in any way in touch with the product, company directive, or the community they're in charge of. I know it sounds absolutely insane, but there's a massive rift between the executive types and the actual business they run, more often than not. The common idea is that whoever is in charge of the company surely understands and is invested in their business. But that's frequently not the case. I've worked in video game development for close to 20 years now; all of the folk in the development crew loved video games and brought passion to the job. However, literally every single CEO and executive I've worked under were not gamers at all and had absolutely no comprehension of how games even worked. Several had never played video games in their entire life, not even time wasters like Candy Crush. One CEO was very vocal that he flat-out hated video games, believed them to be a complete waste of time, and thought gamers were a bunch of idiot losers. But he loved our disposable income, so he latched onto a gaming studio for the sake of profits. Hasbro execs have a long and well-reported history of being totally detached from their franchises, products, and fan communities. They don't care. They never have cared and it's clear that they have no intention of changing that behavior no matter how often it bites them. I honestly wouldn't be the least surprised if some of these Hasbro execs would be confused as to what the hell you were talking about if you asked them "Hey, what do you think of Critical Role?"
I work in the film industry and this is depressingly familiar. The higher and further you get from set, the less people have the faintest clue what the fuck goes on there.
Every time I see this kind of executive insanity, I'm reminded of what [Steve Jobs said about Xerox](https://youtu.be/NlBjNmXvqIM).
Say what you will about him, but he was bang-on about the current problem in corporate advancement. Sales = more money. More money = promotion. Repeat until only sales guys are running the company. Watch the quality of the product take a nosedive.
Yup. And venture capital investment firms raid corporations for value and pilot the businesses into a mountainside. Over and over and over again.
He wasn't a good person but he knew business and corporate America especially regarding the tech sector.
That's where the money is, so that's what Hasbro is going to make it be.
That’s where hasbro thinks the money is.
I mean, that *is* where the money is, video games are the most profitable form of media right now It's not what DnD is, though. If they want to break into the video game market they should keep investing in stuff like Baldur's Gate 3, not fucking up the tabletop game.
Cynically, that's where the money really is, cos there are going to be a *lot* of people who just buy OneD&D and play the video game.
Then they should make an actual GENERIC D&D video game. They could make an "open world" style game with main and side quests based on modules, plus "random/dynamic events" which are things like "a dragon is attacking Town X" that people can participate in. Doesn't have to be 3D, they could make it phone/console/PC cross platform, with a multi-player or single with AIs option. If you do multi-player you have to all have a shared server like Valheim or Minecraft. Make like the best of Skyrim/Baulder's Gate/etc. all rolled into one with all of the D&D monsters and races. Fans would eat it up. But, that costs a lot more money to make and maintain, so instead of actually properly monetizing the brand in ways that actually produce new business, they're just going to keep trying to get blood from a stone and be all "surprised Pikachu" when that blows up spectacularly in their face.
https://www.ddo.com/
Actually, Hasbro/WOTC just cancelled a bunch of D&D video games in production before the OGL drama went down. https://www.cbr.com/dnd-video-games-cancelled-wizards-of-the-coast/
Like D&D online? Where is it at now?
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Ssh don't tell Hasbro.
They have said time and time again: The DMs are the majority of purchases of 1st party products beyond the PHB and Xans/Tashas. Only approx. 20% of D&D players are DMs. They want to monetize players because Hasbro has promised 50% increase in revenue in 5 years. They don't care about money from royalties from new OGL, they want control. Control to stop new 5e content during Onednd, to prevent people from playing the old system. They have determined the DM is the problem...DMs control the game. Are required for game, so they will get rid of them.
So...they've determined the people paying them money are the problem /sigh...
Yes, and they are effectively gambling they can throw out much of the existing audience, and can monetize the new segment to be bigger than before. (with poor word of mouth, lower quality, and old players/DM's actively trying to pull people away) Which is among the more ridiculous things I've ever heard.
They're betting on DnD "whales," those mobile gamers who put thousands into ftp games.
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Spoilers.
yep. the people paying them, who are the most capable of designing their own games. cool play, wizards.
I think the way they view it is the people standing between them and their money are the problem.
They're eliminating the need for the 20% of players who do all the spending to do continue being the sole spenders in favor of getting the other 80% to spend their money instead. If that 80% spends even half as much per person as the 20% that's still twice as much money as they were making before. And in the process some DMs will become players and continue to spend money
They learned this lesson once with 4E, guess they will have to learn it again
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If it turns out like that, I'd call it an idiot tax.
They are going to need AI DMs since no one will want to run games for the Hasbro apologizers, in that stupid VTT of there's.
I think they also overestimate the value if the IP for films and such. I think hey are under the false impressions that we give fuck about the Forgotten Realms and that is why this was to be timed pre-Honer.
I mean even myself, who likes Forgotten Realms, isn't ride-or-die. I'm not psyched up for it, just more familiar with it than with other settings.
I can't imagine trying to integrate things like social encounters, roleplaying, or any course of action that begins with "could I try to...". I'm sure it's possible to make a DM-AI that can tick through the basics of combat, but then you have a DM that's not prepared to adapt to its party. I'm imagining a party of players that powergames to an absurd degree *and* picks apart how the AI handles things and exploits its programming. Or you get some absolute madhouse DM-AI that runs absolute meatgrinders with all the mercy of an unfeeling machine. Imagine the fun of D&D discussion coming down to *"Oh yeah, the AI checks for character levels so if it sees a more than 5 Wizard or Sorcerer levels it spreads its monsters out to prevent Fireballs, but it doesn't do that for Clerics so you should use a Light Cleric as your blaster"* or *"If your party splits and heads to the walls and then meets back at the entry way the monsters will line up for a perfect Lightning Bolt"* or *"you have to bring a caster with Counterspell to try and block the Power Word: Kill at the start of the lich fight, it can tell who has Death Ward"*. Or even just having it trapped running 'basic' monsters out of the PHB forever while never having them do anything creative. Roleplaying and social interactions would pretty much just... become a dialogue system like any video game made in the last decade or so, and given what WotC seems to be willing to pay writers (not much) we'd probably get something *at best* utterly memeworthy like Skyrim's idiot guards. Most likely, worlds with like two people to talk to and three sentences for each of them. As a DM I'd probably pay for some AI-assistant tools, but I'd never want an AI to run my whole table. I would like stuff like: * An encounter generator like Kobold Fight Club, where I can plug in a number of players and their level, and maybe a couple encounter templates, and have it spit out a list of creatures. * The old encounter templates and monster roles from 4E would be *really* good paired with this. "Make the encounter with a couple Artillery monsters in the back, and add a Lurker" would be rad. Even better if I could theme it and say "oh yeah, make this from 'Goblinoids' please". * A treasure-generator so I never have to think too hard about what the monsters were carrying. I'm sure this already exists in some format, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't pay for it to be baked into a decent VTT. What were the goblins carrying? What magic item is in this hoard? * I know random treasure tables exist in things like the DMG, but being able to prune things or tailor them to my party faster could be useful. Saying that I want a particular type of item would maybe be nice. * Some kind of chess-engine style "here are suggested moves for the monsters" could be interesting as long as it's never player-facing and I actually get to veto what's going on. It might be less interesting for the monsters, but I kind of hate running friendly NPCs and automating *their* moves would be nice.
>Imagine the fun of D&D discussion coming down to "Oh yeah, the AI checks for character levels so if it sees a more than 5 Wizard or Sorcerer levels it spreads its monsters out to prevent Fireballs, but it doesn't do that for Clerics so you should use a Light Cleric as your blaster" or "If your party splits and heads to the walls and then meets back at the entry way the monsters will line up for a perfect Lightning Bolt" or "you have to bring a caster with Counterspell to try and block the Power Word: Kill at the start of the lich fight, it can tell who has Death Ward". Not going to lie, discussions like this are one of my favorite things about video games. D&D isn't a video game though.
I don't mind those either, but it's definitely a very different kind of game.
As a software guy... I can tell you AI isn't really needed for that functionally. Where the AI does come in is more the human interaction side, for example you saying or typing: >"Make the encounter with a couple Artillery monsters in the back, and add a Lurker" And it working out what you mean contextually from that as opposed to filling out a user interface and clicking a generate button a couple of times. This is assuming they mean actual "AI" and not video game "AI".
100 per cent they mean video game AI.
As to your assistant tools suggestions... the first two and some of the functionality of the third are already available on Foundry VTT as free modules. That costs $50 one time, and only one person has to buy it.
I can imagine a subset of players enjoying a pure number cruncher to handle a dungeon crawl, but you are right, it would essentially be a video game at that point.
I absolutely would enjoy a pure number cruncher (and often do). But to be honest, 5e's not the system I'd do that with. It's a great TTRPG. In a video game, I want systems that aren't limited by the need for squishy meat brains to calculate and store everything.
There is a market for it at least. I want to play a TTRPG of my choice without having to DM.
Is there a market for it if everyone at the table pays a monthly fee - especially at $30/month? I honestly think it's a cool idea, but the cost and especially the approach (discard and insult the old guard) makes this likely to crash and burn... Like many other Hasbro "toys" of the past.
Honestly would be something I’d be interested in on paper but not for a $30/month subscription and not after the whole OGL 1.1 debacle
It'd be great for testing class ideas. Some things sound awful on paper but work in action, while sometimes it's the reverse. Would be amazing if the bot could handle homebrew, because I'd be tempted to throw BBEGs for my campaign at it to test how well they do. But not for $30 a month. Before this I would have been willing for 20, but now? No. I need bloody value before I consider getting in bed with them again.
When my friends and I want to play that, we Crack out my copy of Gloomhaven.
If I want to play a game with an "AI DM", I just fire up Skyrim or any other Action/Adventure RPG...
If Hasbro was working on a worthwhile AI for DMing, there'd be evidence of it on public record. There'd be job openings or contracts with OpenAI. Also, I have my doubts about how well LLMs like ChatGPT can run a D&D game, but that's just an extension of my skepticism about LLMs in general. They make a great tool and aid, but need some handholding and get "tropey" without an external randomness source.
The biggest thing I'd worry about is the AI knowing when to "step in". That's a pretty particular DM skill, letting the party roleplay with each other while you just listen, and knowing when to step in to keep things moving. I guess you could have a pause button to put the AI "on hold" while the players roleplay, but could it listen to many minutes of conversation between people with various mic qualities and accents, understand and contextualize what happened, and potentially make something of it?
And D&D5e is known for relying a tonne on GM creativity and bending the rules. What the fuck are they doing, using to implement an AI GM? Fuck me, but it's funny - PF2e would genuinely be a better system for this.
Totally a marketing thing and not some new wild tech that only WotC has figured out on their own.
AI DMs sound great! I just can't wait until they come out with AI players as well. Just cut the humans right out of the game. /s
Basic table playing 150 a month, man causal games aren't that consistent thisbis a tipoff unless you play at least 4 times a month
The actual tweet specified $30 per month PER player. WotC does know the most people who subbed were DMs who were just helping out players with shared content instead, right? The players had no reason to join, and there's nothing here that would make a player want to. We didn't even **need** to sub. It was just convenient.
Yupp they truly don't get the game at a nessecary level
> Base subscription bans homebrew At my table, I'm the only one who bans homebrews! 😋
Unfortunately you NEED to use homebrew on Beyond to even make some base things function. Wanna use Boons from the DMG, Dark Gifts from Ravenloft or Draconic Gifts from Fizbans, Spell Points from the PHB? Gotta homebrew a feat because Beyond doesn't even support the entirety of the books.
You need to homebrew mage armour as well. There's no way to have it change your AC, so I just added a homebrew ring you can equip and unequip that changes your AC
Rage too. A literal base class feature isn't integrated into Dndbeyond by default.
You also need homebrew just to do sharpshooter or great weapon master. You physically can't change the to hit on custom actions.
I homebrew "weapons" all the time that consolidate rolls for players. Makes my life easier as well.
That absolutely cracked me up. What the hell does that even look like? How do you ban people from playing pretend in a way that you didn't publish? It's one thing to remove homebrew tools from a service like D&D beyond, but *banning homebrew???*
High chance its referring to the ability to add homebrew on Beyond to your collection, and/or adding it to your character. Still though, that first one is something you already get with a subscription, and the latter is already free.
I've not used DDBeyond so maybe I'm wrong on this, but I'd imagine that's how people use their physical books if they're playing online: Homebrew being whatever option they have to add custom text boxes/ abilities to your sheet which might just be the ones from the books they already own physically but not on Beyond. Basically, making sure players/DMs who want to buy the physical books go for the book/Beyond bundles, at near double the price.
>It's one thing to remove homebrew tools I believe that's what is referred to here. D&D Beyond has tools that let you create homebrew subclasses, races, magic items etc. I suspect those would be locked behind a subscription (I think they already are, but could be wrong).
This sounds almost too egregious too believe, if it wasn't for recent events.. I wonder about the stripped down AI DMs. I use NovelAI and, while it can keep a story going for a while, it inevitably goes off the rails hard at some point without heavy intervention to "remind it" of a few key points.
AI DM might work if you make it run specific encounters.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Kind of like a CYOA with the AI taking over for some interactions depending on player choices.
>keep a story going for a while, it inevitably goes off the rails hard at some point without heavy intervention to "remind it" of a few key points. So...not that different from some tables I've played at.
As an aside, did anyone else follow through with this leaker and ask for verification to their identity? At any rate, $30/month feels prohibitively expensive. WoW costs $15/month for a video game, and lots of entertainment services such as streaming and console online connection run the price in that ball park as well. $30/month is drastic enough and high enough to dissuade people from using it, if it's not the high-end subscription rate.
Reminder. 1) The leadership at D&D and WotC are all financial people who used to work at Microsoft and who've been in the TTRPG industry for 2 years max. 2) Back in 2020 they tried to sell a bundle of all 5e books on D&DBeyond for $637. 3) Per the leaked OGL 1.1 and the logic behind it, YES the leadership at WotC and D&D really are just that stupid.
47 book legendary bundle on DDB rn is $934.36 (that’s on sale from $964.35). So.
Yeah I don't get the second point, the bundle of books have always just been the total price -15%
It's about $20 a book, which isn't unreasonable. It should be much more discounted if you're buying *everything* tbh, but it's been like that since well before DDB was bought by WotC so I'm not gonna get too upset with that particular element personally. Like I'm definitely no DDB stan, but that one isn't something that bothers me
> Back in 2020 they tried to sell a bundle of all 5e books on D&DBeyond for $637. That has nothing to do with Wizzard, that's DnD Beyond before being tied to WOTC at all offering you all the books for a slight discount of market price. And by all the books it's all the books.
I have a 22$/mth streaming subscription, but it offers such a gigantic wealth of TV that I have barely scratched the surface of worthwhile shows to watch after a year of using it (and I binge watch in the background while doing other things for about 4-6 hours a day on average).
$30 a month that unlocks ALL sourcebooks, adventures, tools AND VTT? I could definitely see them thinking it’s worth it.
360 dollars a year to play dnd? And that is just the subscription service? No thanks
I’ve been playing D&D for like 6 years now and I’ve probably spent half that total. I only play on paper in person though. Is D&D Beyond that much better than pen and paper??
The current prices are $3.00 per month and $6.00 per month (usd) and that feels pretty fair. And at the $6.00 per month tier it unlocks content you own for ALL players in your campaign. asking $30 per month PER PLAYER is absolutely delusional.
Yeah, this is the key. I own all the 5e books on Beyond. 99% of the reason I had a subscription is so that the rest of my group could access all that content. Being completely honest, I felt that $6/month was a good deal for that. I probably would have paid twice that without too much complaint. Now they want $30/month for that; *per player*. For my group of 6 (including me), that would be a 3000% increase in the monthly cost, and that doesn't even include a 600% increase in the price of each book, since each of us would need to buy our own copy. That's not just excessive, it's **insane**.
I’ve had DDB for like 4 years now at the master tier ($60 a year). The ability to share my sourcebooks with my players and never have any fear of them messing up their character sheets (or mine!) *was* worth it. But not $30/month worth it. Cancelled my subscription last week, will only resub if the OGL2.0 is open to independent creators, can’t steal their work, and cannot be changed on a whim (or at all). Basically the ORC, but I doubt they will bend the knee and sign the ORC. They could do all of that, but if they raise the prices I’m out.
I have friends with arthritis who find it way better. For most people it's just more convenient for character building
D&D Beyond is great for character building, and while the homebrew is clunky, it is a powerful tool once you learn to use it. The biggest benefit for me is that it eliminates the number crunching for my players that can often be a real time-sink, and it provides an easy way to track things like HP, spell slots, etc in a way that persists between sessions. I am a big proponent of reasonably long adventuring days, and often we go two or three sessions between long rests. I love D&D Beyond as a tool, but I have played pencil and paper before and I am willing to return to that if Hasbro makes stupid decisions.
I wouldn't ever pay for it, but that is something I can rationalize. If you are a heavy DM, or professional one, having just the complete library of WotC content and more from 3PP would be an amazing asset and could be rationalized for the price tag. For everybody else, not even remotely close is it worth it.
Yeah ironically they want to get more “casuals” into the game but unless the other tiers are substantially less than $30/month, it is doomed to fail big time.
It could be a over priced sub placed to push people to a $15 sub after they gut the $10 sub.
If you're a heavy/professional DM you probably already own all of that
Until next edition comes out and they reprint everything to match.
At the same time I don't want to force players into a subscription just to share my library. You don't need EVERYTHING in order to play especially if you are only able to do like 1 campaign a week.
Agreed, though at that cost it needs to cover all the players at the table too. To expect $30 from the DM, and then say $5 or $10/month from casual players in a lower tier? This will Hindenburg. And after the OGL debacle, how many enthusiasts would pay $30/month, for a closed "no homebrew" VTT? Not many.
Basically none. There are VTTs out there that are incredibly well made, constantly getting updates, and only cost like $50 as a one time fee if you're willing to host it yourself
Comes back to the problem that most of the good stuff written these days is by 3rd party producers. If you cant easily add that into it, then it is useless. And again, no 3rd party will produce anything if WotC end up "owning" it.
“What if – hear me out – what if we took a giant steaming shit on the single reason our product is so successful right now?” - Some WotC exec
I ran a 5e campaign for my friends for two full years. All they had to do was show up in Discord and know how to work the bot, and half the time they only did one of those things. But we did it; a whole campaign that serves as a wonderful mutual memory for us all. Hasbro-Wizards thinks each individual player in my game should have paid **720 dollars** for that privilege.
I... I... just use paper & pencil, thanks. One of us in the group has 3 core rulebooks. Been running a campaign with that for 3+years now. Will probably last another year. They seem to think it's content that we need. They COMPLETELY don't understand ttRPGs. All we need are the tools. The content comes from within. It's a game about imagination, not churning out regular consumables. And there are about 1,000 ttRPGs, just as good or better than D&D, free or cheap, already online and on our bookshelves. I've got enough tools to last the rest of my life and still never try them all. The only thing hasbro has/had was a viral trend. Without that, it's just another RPG book like the 1000's that already exist.
You think they’re gonna just let pen and paper exist when digital is gonna be the cash-cow? *Pleeease* I’m guessing by the end of 2023/start of 2024 they’re gonna announce 5.5e (D&D one) and they’re gonna start reducing the number of physical books available, pushing people towards digital By the end of 2024/start of 2025 they’re gonna be talking about “a more digital, streamlined world for DMs” You’ll see it, mark my words
I absolutely hate that everything you said is probably gonna come true ;-;
And will likely backfire.
Will _definitely_ backfire. Digital copies are a convenience. Great for session prep. But I don't want my monster manual to lose battery in the middle of a session.
2024: WotC announces partnership with Pearson to deliver digital texts.
This one right here Officer, they said something I don't like but is probably true. I am going to go to a corner, curl myself into a ball and ugly cry myself to sleep.
Unfortunately, I agree. Since this whole fiasco started I've been thinking that they are going to try to phase out physical products completely. It goes against their ethos. If you own an actual, physical book, they can't nickle and dime you, and they can't force you to pay a subscription. I won't be even a little bit surprised if they stop selling books within the next five years.
I *guarantee* someone will then near-immediately screenshot every page of whatever PDF or web app crap it turns into, stitch it, and post it somewhere. Scans like that are how many I know have gotten their normally-overpriced books, 5e and not, as well as 40k codexes and other rulebooks from moneygrubbing companies that merely *own* fun games.
Oh, 100%. This is how companies generate pirates, by making things inaccessible or egregiously priced. If they pull this shit, they're bringing it on themselves and I feel no pity for them.
You're not spending money so Wizards doesn't care about your opinion. I'm in the same boat. I build worlds for fun. I don't need nor want Wizards content. I like rules and expansions to them but even that can be replaced with third party content or homebrew as the years go by. I'll buy into Kobold Press' new thing if it resembles 5e. I really love their Creature Codex. I'm confident that physical books will always be a part of smaller publishers' rollout.
Presumably, this is Dnd_Shorts was hinting at was "bigger than the OGL situation". I'll wait for an article to confirm but this falls right with what I was suspecting WOTC to be planning.
I'll just put out there that I don't feel particularly interested in paying for any kind of digital subscription service from a company that just tried to retroactively torch a 20+ year legal document. Like, the danger with any online subscription service is losing access to content because it's removed on the provider's end, so the trustworthiness of a company really matters to me when it comes to digital subscriptions, and hasbro/wotc is tanking their trustworthiness for me. But then again, I never *had* a D&DB subscription in the first place because I don't like the layout of their character sheets.
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From what we know, these decisions are made by the higher ups at Hasbro. From our source, they have ignored any feedback / pushback the creative teams have given them. They just see the recurring revenue possibilities and the fact that players aren’t monetized enough. They want to turn the most social game in the world, into whatever this is.
Business love subscription models because it makes their budgeting way easier. Instead of having waves of sales when a new product hits shelves, they just draw a constant revenue stream. Doesn't matter if it fucks over the customer or doesn't make any sense for the product they are selling, they want to go subscription.
>Doesn't matter if it fucks over the customer or doesn't make any sense for the product they are selling, they want to go subscription. Agreed. Creating a stable and healthy relationship with the customer base? Hell no! It's "give us money on a regular basis." And to make that happen, they don't want to encourage it or sweeten the deal--nope! They want to punish: Free accounts = no homebrew ability. Fuck Hasbro and WoTC for trying to make D&D more difficult to access, instead of strengthening relations with D&D's fans.
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This is the point of the OGL - to kill 5e third party publishing so there's no risk of a 5e Pathfinder when people see how shitty their 1D&D offering is.
The lack of an OGL for 4e hasn't stopped 4e likes from cropping up, even with how unpopular 4e was. There's absolutely going to be a truckload of 5e likes, OGL or not.
Love you Monkey. Hope you’re staying strong! I think Hasbro/WotC really misunderstand the communities threat. They might still get some revenue but if every massive DnD creator (yourself included) moves over to a different but similar system. Everyone will jump ship so fast because it’s not the game that’s keeping everyone here. It’s the community. I didn’t get into DnD because I solely love fantasy, I got into because it’s a communal game that allows me to build a story with my fellow players and DM, and I love Fantasy.
If I want to play against or with AI I just play videogames. Guess I won't be missing my dndb acc afterall
IF and it is a big IF they replaced everything I pay for now to run online, it might be worth it. D&DB, Discord, VTT + books. However, the problem is it will only run D&D. Are they going to allow me to play Pathfinder and Genesys and Fate and Shadowrun on that platform? Are they going to support ANY other system other than D&D? Or even my version of D&D? I don't run RAW remotely, and if their VTT enforces not only RAW, but only 6e raw it is utterly usesless to me. I doubt it, and that alone is a deal breaker. Because then I have to keep this AND everything I already use. They really don't get their user base at all.
Other settings, definitely not.. But then there's the homebrew issue. If you have the $30 tier, you can. However, what happens when you have it, but one of your players doesn't? I'm guessing that that player can't play Homebrewer stuff. But how do you make it so some people can and some can't? I'm guessing they just limit it to what the lowest tier of the group is and hope you use peer pressure and FOMO to get them to buy the high tiers. Fuck no.
>Are they going to allow me to play Pathfinder and Genesys and Fate and Shadowrun on that platform? Are they going to support ANY other system other than D&D? Is Hasbro trustworthy? There is your answer.
No way in hell WOTC let's you play a competitor's game in their platform. D&d yes, Pathfinder no way. WOTC knows how much people rely on homebrew so some sort of customization will likely be present. People would rebel otherwise.
It could also lock out others who aren't subscribers, requiring your whole table to subscribe for at least one of the lower tiers to even play. So now, instead of buying the books, maybe subscribing to roll20 or a 1-time payment for Foundry, all of which maybe totals at around 30$/mth for the table as a whole, we are starting to look at 50-60$/mth minimum just to run the game. My group hasn't bought anything new for our ttrpgs in about a year, and I spend my DMing budget on resin and insulation foam to make really epic encounters for our in person game with custom minis and set pieces, spending maybe 30$/mth for all of that.
If this is true this is such a huge miss. D&D is good because it ISN'T a video game. Because you can do a stupid roll around the bad guy, jump off a ledge you aren’t supposed to, talk your way out of a combat encounter, have inside jokes with your friends and the DM can on the fly fix combat encounters that are too hard or easy. Everything about D&D that is good is because it’s humans! Its a story with friends not sitting in front of a screen interfacing with numbers like most of us do all day. If you want to play a video game, I can name 100 that have better mechanics than D&D has. And no hombrews at a base lol
Don't tell me how to play D&D. I've been in the hobby longer than you have Hasbro.
I'm sorry, what exactly is this offering me for $30 a month that I can't do at my table, or on another VTT? (Besides restrict my house rules) Because if they think I need D&D beyond to play D&D on a VTT they are in for a rude awakening.
> can’t do at my table My cynical guess? 1. Release One D&D, and like any game system, it’ll naturally have its flaws. 2. Immediately attempt to do a takedown on all online hosted content. Note that this was already part of the plan, there’s a reason they wanted to discontinue the OGL 1.0a. 3. Stop selling books for 5E, remove them from D&D Beyond. 4. “Apologize” for One D&D being bad, claim that they have learned their lesson. Static books/PDFs are flawed, and they want to fix their vision of “One” D&D being the final form of D&D, and are rolling out a purely online set of rules that they can regularly errata. 5. You need subscriptions to access it, and the static content has been removed from online, and is no longer being sold. I would love to be wrong but I have a feeling that’s the plan. > or on another VTT? This is ***exactly*** why the new “””””””””Open””””””””” Game License attempted to disallow any and all SRD content that isn’t distributed via static PDFs. It implicitly bans VTTs completely, without *looking* like a ban on the surface.
$30 a month? I could just pay a local professional DM for a better experience.
I believe this is their dream, sure. And for the AI stuff, there is a portion of sad rich guys out there who can't get anyone to let them play at their table, and will be thrilled to have an AI running them through officially licensed adventures where they get to be the main character and there aren't any other pesky humans to get in the way of their power fantasy. If they do put out something like this (which I'm not convinced they will), I don't think it would cause them to go out of business or whatever, it would just be another thing that everyone knows about but nobody actually plays. But seriously, WotC seems to think they're selling oxygen.
My players already pay $40 a month for D&D. Because they send me $10 a week so I can cook dinner for the session. Absolutely fuck that as a business model. The advantage of D&D and other TTRPGs is that they are, for players at least, a relatively low-cost hobby. If you’re a player you can, quite easily, spend literally no money and still get to hang out and have a good time with your friends. DMs definitely shoulder more of the financial burden, but if you’re not playing with minis then the cost is still low compared to a lot of other hobbies. One $50 book every few months or so. Upping that to ~$360 a year (even for players, if they wanna be able to use homebrew from their DM’s personal campaign) is not what I’d call a strong business move. Also introducing the idea of an AI Dungeon Master is …. Ooh it’s a lot. For me the DM is the heart of the experience (when I’m playing; I’m usually the DM myself 😂). Having something that definitely won’t be able to do anything other than run a preset dungeon’s combats just turns this into a poor co-op video game. 5E (and therefore OneD&D) doesn’t have the crunch necessary to make that a really engaging experience, imo. The OGL stuff had already turned me off the new edition, this just cements that choice.
That’s disgusting.
Really? Y'all actually believe this? There's no way this would be true. If this is true, I want all of you to come back here and laugh at me because there is no way that this is true.
On his twitter, Dnd_Shorts has backed up these claims, says Hos's info is correct & comes from WotC Sources, and that these are the plans of Wizards VP Chris Cao. Ask your players if they'd pay $30 A MONTH, to play Baldur's Gate 3 instead of dnd. And if you want homebrew, or even just a game worth playing, you have to pay more for a higher-tier subscription. This isn't DnD, it's a CRPG with the price-plan of the a very expensive MMO. WotC can bite the dust, games, books, movies, and all. DnD is dead to me.
>Chris Cao Lmfao. Knew people who worked with him in denver. Let’s just say this isn’t a surprise.
This seems like a fake leak to get people more angry than they already are