SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Seminal role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons looks to be going digital.
The game's publisher, Wizards of the Coast, calls its new effort "D&D Beyond", describes it as "a digital toolset for use with the Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rules" and has given the service the tagline "Play with advantage".
Wizards' canned statement says the service will "take D&D players beyond pen and paper, providing a rules compendium, character builder, digital character sheets, and more—all populated with official D&D content." We're also told the service "aims to make game management easier for both players and Dungeon Masters by providing high-quality tools available on any device."
Details of just what's on offer are thin, but the beta signup site for the service says subscribers will get the following features:
- A "D&D Compendium with Official Content"
- The ability to "Create, Browse, & Use Homebrew Content"
- The ability to "Manage Characters - Build, Progress, & Play"
- D&D News, Articles, Forums, & More
- Anywhere, anytime, access on any device
It will never work: psionics only travel through paper. Impotent mind flayers make god cry.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @01:22PM (2 children)
They'll certainly have to be competing with the folks over at roll20.net [roll20.net] who have been at the SaaS side of PnP gaming for years now with some pretty sweet features such as infinite card decks, builtin webcam conferencing, etc. I'm sure this will get some adoption but they sure did wait awhile to bother with it.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Saturday March 18 2017, @04:57PM
I've used Roll20 to play both ICONS and Mutants & Masterminds (both super-hero tabletop RPGs), with a group of friends for three years now. It works really, really well. Roll20 is SaaS, but it's worth the money IMO.
Still, I don't think that they're quite competition for D&D Beyond. D&D Beyond seems to be aiming to help people play Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition at the tabletop, enhance it. Not replace it, like Roll20 does. There's some overlap but that may be enough especially for people who just play Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, (which seems to be at least half of all tabletop role-players at the moment).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 18 2017, @07:50PM
Yeah, I'm a pretty big Roll20.net fan myself, as well as Fantasy Grounds (they actively support running the client under wine). Fantasy Grounds even allows for eternal purchases and exporting of your data.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.