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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) by ShadowSystems on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:39PM
Given that the D&D Wiki already lets players & DM's access tons of Open Game & Homebrew content, that's a "we've already GOT that!" function.
Given programs like Hero Labs & Hero Machine, we've been able to create our characters, track them, & even make portraits if we like.
Considering that there have been countless fan created Excel spreadsheets, DOS BASIC programs, various databases (MS Access & others), & assorted & sundry submissions for the keeping of records^, we've had no shortage of ways to create, manipulate, track, & trade characters.
^: My favorite was an Excel spreadsheet that included all the source material until 3rd edition.
You typed in your character's name, but nearly *everything else* was a series of drop down menus.
Pick a race from the DDM & it automaticly adjusted the racial ability modifiers accordingly.
All their traits, boosts, limitations, etc were all auto-populated into the right spots, thus saving you the need to look everything up.
All the gear, armor, weapons, variants, spells, you name it, if it was included in any of the core books then the spreadsheet's author had painstakingly entered in the game data into the mix.
It was only made for D&D, you couldn't use it for any other game, but it was basicly what Hero Lab is today minus the fancy GUI.
The file was *HUGE*, it had separate sheets for each of the books, races, equipment lists, etc, so if you had a question about anything it was a simple matter to flip to the right sheet, do a search for the term, & get the answer you needed.
Best of all, you could export JUST the character page as a Character Sheet, complete with all the stats, gear, spells, et al.
Dice rolls were handled by the pseudo random number generator with defaults for if you had rolled a d2, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, or d%.
You could make it do others, but the results were always wonky on the wierd ones.
("I tried to roll a d11 & it told me Divide By Cheese error!")
*Cough*
So WotC offering all this stuff is nice, but it's SERIOUSLY late to the game.
Everything they boast about we've been able to do for decades already, just not officially.
So if the unofficial fan made stuff isn't surpassed by exponential leaps & bounds by what WotC is offering, then WotC's efforts will fail just as badly as 4th edition.
My friends & I are still playing 3.5 (makes comical cat gagging faces at the PathFinder folks) because 4th was such a fustercluck, & we're hesitant about moving to 5th on the "burned once twice shy" principal.
After all the money we've collectively spent on D&D material over the decades, WotC had better make DAMN sure 5th edition doesn't turn out to be just a fresh coat of varnish on an old turd.
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