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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, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @01:48PM
This is just a tired rehash/rebrand of their lame, failed D&D Insider program, updated to 5th edition.
Anyone who was around for the 4th edition debacle should remember the abysmal failure of WotC's digital initiative for that release. They went to GenCon and demo'd digital products that didn't exist, promising they would be available the same day 4th edition shipped. Well, that didn't happen and it was months (years?) before they produced any digital tools for 4th edition, at all. Even then the results were lackluster and disappointing. Gamers were promised a character builder, a character visualizer, a virtual tabletop, and other native apps that were all supposed to be integrated, taking you from character design to online play. Instead we got some lame web tools and (a long time later) a half-baked character creator that required a subscription fee. And throughout the whole thing, WotC lied to their customers repeatedly about what was going on.
I jumped ship to Paizo about a year into 4th and never looked back. 5th D&D edition might be the greatest game ever, but I will never give WotC another dollar.