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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: 2) by looorg on Saturday March 18 2017, @03:24PM (2 children)
Character sheets might be one of those things that work good as a digital replacement. We all know that after a while of erasing and writing you have to transfer it all to a new paper. Problem comes as you mention when you have various householdrules or modifications to the game aspects of the sheet becomes obsolete or doesn't work like you want it to. Sure it could also be great to quickly find rules and stuff in books by the search function. This isn't usually a big deal in my mind since after a while you start to know all the rules, or your version of the rules, and even if you have to look things up you kind of have an idea where to look and you can usually find it quite fast.
But for example Mansions of Madness 2nd edition really bothers me. It's quite an expensive game - just the main box is about $100 and it requires the app. Without the app the game can't be played. If for whatever reason one day the app stops working you are left with an unplayable game and just a really nice box with cardboard tiles and plastic figures. But utterly useless as a game. I'm sure someone will come up with some flowchart at that time and make rules for implementing and using the 1st edition Keeper cards but it will still be really weird. Plus sometimes it's fun to the be the evil force and try to murder all your friends -- that aspect is now gone and no longer an option. You can't create your own little adventures for a setup like that either - you can buy the stuff from FFG and like it or not play at all. With the 1st edition you had options in that regard.
(Score: 1) by helel on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:36PM
If your players can be trusted to read and remember the powers their characters have their a might bit better then mine, at least in that regard...
Mansions of Madness requiring the app is doubly disappointing to me because I'd much rather see them work on expanding customization to make the game a better one-shot rpg where you can easily run your own adventure for the night. The mechanics of the first game (haven't played the second) offer so much promise for a simple but very hands on rpg.
(Score: 2) by ShadowSystems on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:01PM
My friends & I found a great way to reduce the wear & tear on our sheets, dispite all the corrections & updates you make during a session.
Fill the sheet out in pencil, slip into a plastic "sheet protector" like what you would use for a high school book report, & then mark on the plastic with wet erase markers.
HP changes get done in the marker, then the sheet updated *once* at the end.
Repeat this for everything that changes frequently, so you only ever do the erase & rewrite bit once per session.
We even used different color markers to represent different values, like bright red for the HP, green for the GP, black for the XP, brown for temporary bonus/penalty modifiers, etc.
It turned the sheet into "rainbow barf", but it meant the character sheets lasted far, far longer than before.
You just have to be careful not to accidently smudge/erase something with a swipe of the hand, since the wet erase markers are designed to come off easily.
Hope that helps!