A lot of other TTRPG games do exactly that.
There’s also those that are part of the Brick and mortar organisation, where if you purchase a physical game, they give you a code to this website with access to PDF version.
Yep, sounds like a move to a subscription based model. My group is currently considering buying into DnD Beyond as it works well, and we want more options than the base options.
Hasbro’s CEO Chris Cocks and Wizards of the Coast’s CEO Cynthia Williams spoke at an investor seminar about the future of D&D. Williams started by dropping this gem:
“D&D has never been more popular, and we have really great fans and engagement, but the brand is really under monetized."
Then both Cocks and Williams addressed how they’re going to use D&D Beyond and D&D One to increase revenue.
The executives are less worried about design than installing more on-ramps for players to spend their money. Williams mentioned that while dungeon masters comprise roughly 20% of the D&D player base, they make up “the largest share of our paying players”. An investment in digital, she posits, will allow Wizards of the Coast to “unlock the type of recurrent spending you see in digital games”.
Cocks described a plan to shift D&D into a “4-quadrant brand” similar to Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.
As you might imagine, the TTRPG community has gone into overdrive on that.
My group moved from DND 3.5 to Pathfinder, and haven’t looked back.
This was mostly because 4th edition looked like a completely different game than what anyone was used to. But we didn’t go to 5th ed either. I still don’t love how simplified a lot of the mechanics are, as it will often lead players to trying to create very broken solutions to problems they face. There is a fine line between too many rules and too few, and I think that 5th ed pulled back just a little too far.
This is a bit of an issue with Pathfinder 2.0, as it has simplified quite a lot from 1.0, which got into such rules-lawyer territory it felt like each combat was a cross examination between the players and GM with the rule-book as the judge. There was such little wiggle room in PF1 for any sort of “flying dwarf” action that players didn’t even think to try and bring stuff like that up. This is a good thing, but also is limiting to role-play quite significantly. It also leads people towards just min-maxing character builds rather than building a character for role-playing reasons.
But, that being said, the lack of a great online character builder software really kind of stinks. This is one area where Paizo is way behind WOTC on.
Those comments on monetization seem unreal. They are saying exactly what players joked about the company being like. I mean, the CEO has a point, people are really interested in D&D, but nobody is buying anything. This is the situation of every TTRPG, where players often share books and notes. The DM ends up spending all of the money.
Sweet, horse armor, but for your D&D character.
The article doesn’t directly cover it, but one of things the CEOs talked about was a shortage of dungeon masters holding back revenue potential. Basically, during the pandemic, players and DMs were all over the place on Zoom, Roll20, Twitch, etc but now that things have opened back up, its harder to get people willing to be DMs for D&D because it’s not an easy job. Since DMs contribute the lion’s share of revenue, WotC wants to get that number up.
D&D One is supposed to partly address that by making the rules more DM-friendly. Good luck with that, especially if they hold true to One not being a significant change from the current ruleset. I don’t think it’s possible to make the rules easier to DM without drastically changing the system.
The second way WotC wants to encourage gamemastering is by offloading a lot of the effort onto the digital tools they want to sell. As a recurring subscription with DLC. And spread that cost over all the players in the group instead of making the DM pony up for all of it.
Pathfinder really is 3.5 on steroids. Pathfinder 2 includes a lot of D&D 5.0 (I would like to think the "carefully curated parts). D&D 4.0 was widely frowned upon; it’s trash. On the other hand, 5.0 has grown to become pretty darn good now that plenty of splat books are out there. D&D “One” (or whatever) is going to need some time in the oven, but it has some interesting concepts.
I like aspects of both Pathfinder 2.0 and D&D 5th ed. My complaints with both is that they’re pretty intense to DM and they’re both actually quasi-fantasy superhero games. Neither game is what I’d choose to play for low-fantasy fast encounter gaming.
Oh, definitely not for low fantasy, I would agree. I mean, a person CAN run low fantasy in them, but neither is really designed for it.
This has been my feeling on the system so far, running with it for most of 2022. I started my campaign on PF2, and it has been great. Though, I did envision a more low-fantasy world, I have written in some story bits that limit some of the high fantasy elements a bit.
I actually really dug the small bit of Swords and Wizardy our group tried out, it is probably way more well suited to a low fantasy setting than PF2 or D&D5
Do CEO’s not realise that these comments can be widely shared, or do they just not care? I feel like I hear a story along these lines about once a month.
I find it’s sort of the latter with many execs; they often seem to have a hard time understanding consumer mindsets outside of how they can best exploit them for financial gain and therefore don’t get why certain statements can cause problems. From their perspective, maximizing profit is why they have the job, so only the irrational would complain, right?
I feel like understanding your customer’s perspectives would help a CEO, but I guess they spend all their time with investors. Seem’s like it wouldn’t be too hard to talk about “delivering more value to the D&D community” - something investors would correctly understand as $$$.
Ive wanted a robust digital toolset to help me DM since I bought Unlimited Adventures for my Packard Bell PC back in the 90s. They’re all too damn complicated. Probably because they don’t invest in UI/UX, and they’re designed and built by devs. Us devs suck at making intuitive tools.
If WotC puts a proper investment into this it will be a godsend. If I can drop $70 on a fully featured Curse of Strahd digital tabletop suite, run it online with my friends (or around a table with tablets), I couldn’t give them my money fast enough. I’d want maps for all encounter areas, monster minis, equipment, props, and coding around special interactions. Combine that with digital minis with equippable gear, a la Roblox, and they’ll print money.
WotC hired over 300 folks earlier this year just to work on Beyond and whatever other digital toolset they’re rolling out. They’re definitely serious about moving as many people to become digital subscribers as possible.
WOTC’s acquisition happened a long time ago now, but nevertheless I see this as basically the same story as what Activision did to Blizzard, just slower. Hasbro sees the popularity of D&D as an opportunity for massive growth and is going to focus on things like monetization. If they push it too hard–and they will because now they have to pay hundreds of new salaries apparently–it will be detrimental to the game and the buyers’ experience and people will go elsewhere. It’s not like there aren’t a lot of options that don’t make any of these demands on you once you’re into the world of TTRPGs.
I mean, any OGL system based around d20 rolls is pretty easy to swap to.
It is really disappointing to see how these companies, Paizo included, are moving towards monetization.
I understand the need to make money, but I really don’t like the subscription systems they have built. Particularly how Paizo does it, and how hero-lab has switched over to.
I loved herolab, it was a great tool for character management etc, but for PF 2.0 they have moved to a web only version which costs a monthly fee AND requires you to purchase the books seperately on that platform.
It just kind of blows. I am paying a monthly fee to access the books I have already bought? C’mon.
At the very least the hard copy books should come with a code for a PDF version or a demiplane version too. Why would I want to buy the same book 2 times?
Anyway, it is a stupidly expensive hobby already, hearing CEO’s talking about finding more ways to extract money from me does not feel great.
I’ve been asking for this for years. Mainly to my local game store employee who can’t do anything about it! When you buy a physical book, give me the online version too. With D&D it was a no-brainer, push adoption of D&D Beyond while you sell books. But, they didn’t.
At least plenty of indie titles feature Bits and Mortar, which does exactly that!
It is really puzzling too, as I thought I remembered back in PF1.0 days Paizo gave you the pdf for free if you bought the hard copy from their site directly. Maybe that was a limited sale thing, but either way, it was nice to have.
How they don’t have something like a 15-20$ a month subscription that includes all books is crazy to me. I play 4 times a month, 5 bucks a session to have good tools I don’t have to fuss about much with with full support doesn’t seem too much to ask.