Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 17, 2023, 04:22:18 PM

You will NOT get a PDF.  A PDF can't be censored when they decide that all character art needs to be black men in dress and they need to put a forward on the PDF decrying whiteness and promising to help punish all white children they can find.  It will be a subscription, you won't own any of it.  Hell they will probably negotiate a deal with the browser partners and Apple and Microsoft to prevent printing of the manuals as well.

Yeah.  You won't own the content you buy on the VTT.  Like D&D Beyond, you will actually be buying a license to view the content on their servers.  They will also be able to cancel that license whenever they want without reimbursing you like they can on D&D Beyond.  If they decide that content you have purchased in "problematic" they will be able to alter it or remove it and there won't be a thing you can do about it.  You won't actually own any of it.

Quote from: GhostNinja on December 17, 2023, 04:12:36 PM
From what I am hearing WOTC is sending their physical product to discount places to get rid of it and from what it sounds whatever the next D&D is, its going to be .pdfs, and digital through the VTT.

It doesn't even sound like they are going to print books.  We have been hearing rumors about this and it has been talked about a great deal.  I guess we won't know for sure until the next D&D is released.

I'll be surprised, if they don't at least offer some deluxe printed editions via a boxed set.

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 18, 2023, 05:24:22 AM

Quote from: GhostNinja on December 17, 2023, 04:12:36 PM
From what I am hearing WOTC is sending their physical product to discount places to get rid of it and from what it sounds whatever the next D&D is, its going to be .pdfs, and digital through the VTT.

It doesn't even sound like they are going to print books.  We have been hearing rumors about this and it has been talked about a great deal.  I guess we won't know for sure until the next D&D is released.

I'll be surprised, if they don't at least offer some deluxe printed editions via a boxed set.

For what the 3 people who will be playing 6E?  I run multiple 5E games, fairly heavily modded with my own campaign world and older 1E-3.5E modules updated to 5E.  I have zero need to upgrade to 5E.  There were enough supplements for 5E I haven't bought yet that can act as extensions to 5E for at least 5 more years. 

WotC is going after millenials, and I wish them good luck with that as they continue to go bankrupt.  The millenials that are wroking, well they don't go to Disney movies and they don't buy Disney toys.  The same thing applies to poorly written woke trash that 5E keeps putting out.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 13, 2023, 08:56:51 AM
Also, MtG and D&D are some of the only things still making them any money (D&D only because of BG3 royalties, but still more coming in than going out from that vector.

Prior to BG3 D&D was making a surprising amount of money for wotc which was then being funneled into Hasbro. That realization was what sparked a years worth of more stupid than usual stupid from wotc.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 13, 2023, 08:18:44 AM
Hasbro is declining in large part because toy sales in general are declining. Gen Z and A grew up addicted to phones and don't buy physical toys anymore. The only people who buy toys now are collectors and Hasbro isn't interested in them.

It's a real pity, because they have a lot of IP they could monetize. Instead we got a Paramount+ show where Optimus and Megatron are buds with no explanation.

Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics on December 18, 2023, 09:39:44 AM
Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

ahem...

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics on December 18, 2023, 09:39:44 AM
Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

  No, but the series mentioned does have a nonbinary Transformer asserting 'they/them' pronouns ...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 18, 2023, 10:18:00 AM

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics on December 18, 2023, 09:39:44 AM
Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

  No, but the series mentioned does have a nonbinary Transformer asserting 'they/them' pronouns ...

The whole non-binary they/them thing has replaced trans as the fashionable identity flavor of the month.

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 18, 2023, 10:55:03 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 18, 2023, 10:18:00 AM

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics on December 18, 2023, 09:39:44 AM
Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

  No, but the series mentioned does have a nonbinary Transformer asserting 'they/them' pronouns ...

The whole non-binary they/them thing has replaced trans as the fashionable identity flavor of the month.

Well, the transformers are all machines and have no genitalia one way or the other but using they/them to refer to an individual is still a terrible misuse of English and fucking stupid to boot.

Quote from: RPGPundit on December 17, 2023, 06:35:06 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on December 17, 2023, 04:12:36 PM

It doesn't even sound like they are going to print books.  We have been hearing rumors about this and it has been talked about a great deal.  I guess we won't know for sure until the next D&D is released.

Hmm, I wonder who it was who first predicted that, and has been saying it for over a year now? Three core books maybe, and perhaps one annual "special collector product", and the rest is all-in on the VTT.

It was the Youtuber DnD Shorts. And others have been carrying that tune ever since.

3:50 in:


People give him some static because some of his inside sources told him that the D&D dev team didn't really read the playtest survey contents, and then Wotc came out full-court-press saying: "Untrue!". Which meant that he was WRONG! So disregard everything else he leaked! Please ignore everything! He's discredited! Like, totally!

Because obviously, Wotzi employee's would never lie to the precious player base. Like, 'Duh.


Now will they move to books being a 'special edition' thing right away? I think not. Although I do think that it is a natural progression of their desire to make D&D digital.

In my opinion; It will more likely be something that they transition to over time, depending on how many DnDBeyond subscribers that they are able to flip over to the VTT. Once they feel that they have reached a certain critical mass, it is not a stretch to imagine that they will start to cut back on the less profitable print side of "D&D"...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 18, 2023, 10:18:00 AM

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics on December 18, 2023, 09:39:44 AM
Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

  No, but the series mentioned does have a nonbinary Transformer asserting 'they/them' pronouns ...

Yep. The culture was has seeped into the Transformers. Like everything else.
Transformers are heavily anthropomorphized. They have human faces and general body layouts (2 arms, 2 legs, head, hands, feet, etc) and very human personalities. It's easy to put some culture war crap into the franchise.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 18, 2023, 05:53:57 AM
For what the 3 people who will be playing 6E?  I run multiple 5E games, fairly heavily modded with my own campaign world and older 1E-3.5E modules updated to 5E.  I have zero need to upgrade to 5E.  There were enough supplements for 5E I haven't bought yet that can act as extensions to 5E for at least 5 more years. 

I hope you're correct, but the only version upgrade that failed was to 4.0, and that was because it was totally and completely disruptive (on purpose, possibly to be as incompatible with OGL stuff as they could). The version featured name squatting like a "pick N targets" ability being named lightning bolt in a game with no line aoe at all, and pretty much all iconic D&D names being shoehorned into wacky grid-based tactical things.  4e, while honestly a very good game, wasn't D&D, and that version mostly failed, with a lot of players splitting off to Pathfinder and the initial book sales being followed by a much larger sales dropoff than normal.

But when 3.5 and Pathfinder DMs said stuff just like what you're saying now- that they had their worlds, their houserules, everything was great- many still ended up being pulled over to 5e because that's what their friends play.

Will 5.5 end up like that, dragging you kicking and screaming?  I kinda bet it will (well maybe not YOU, but a LOT of people).  Here's how:

1a- 5.0 has an increasingly strange game starting at about 11th level but really being in full swing by 13th.  While every version of D&D has issues at the top end, and 5e is totally able to be hammered into shape just as every other version was, it's kind of out of tone, with economic exploits in several high level spells and an apparent lack of ability progression.  This is because 5e is designed to be "linear everyone", with the power scaling from 4th to 5th being intended to be the same as between 16th and 17th, but it clearly is not.  Martial classes are meant to get little powerups around 11th level, but all pale compared to the fighter, and mere six spell slots wizards gain over around 10 levels provide a lot more distortion to the game than you'd think, especially when you remember how gutted these spells really are compared to 3.X and AD&D.
1b- 5.5 will fix this.  You probably fixed this already if you ran a game to 14th or higher level, but 5.5 will address this in the book a lot. This means your work will (possibly) appear amateurish to some others, and you definitely won't be able to discuss it with other players of the current version, who will all assume the 5.5 version of the classes and rules. 

2a- 5.0 has a bunch of really odd options that 5.5 is going to fix.  These will be looked at the same way that 3.0's weapon master prestige class or mercurial greatsword, or bladed guantlets were viewed in 3.5- something from the older version.  The stuff you allow from 5.0 will look like an AD&D 2e game with a 1e monk running around- it will feel like a very big houserule, far enough removed to not be able to be discussed.
2b- This social pressure will encourage you to port your 5.0 stuff to 5.5. 

Again, maybe not YOU, but people who are in your position, will get bullied into 5.5.  Was 5e enough of an upgrade over Pathfinder and 3.5, objectively speaking, to convert?  Probably not, but once a huge inswell of 5.0 players joined, it was enough of a motivation for enough of people.

Now maybe I'm wrong and 5.5's attempted fixes will be poorly received, or maybe the big blast of players that moved in during 5.0 but not during 5.5 will create islands of 5.0-derived content.  I sure could be wrong here.  I just think you shouldn't dismiss it instantly.

I think he makes some good points about players moving GMs to the VTT and the "evergreen rules" when they go digital.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 18, 2023, 01:16:21 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 18, 2023, 10:18:00 AM

Quote from: Rod's Duo Narcotics on December 18, 2023, 09:39:44 AM
Whistling by the graveyard, possibly, but at least the Transformers haven't been turned into homosexuals.

  No, but the series mentioned does have a nonbinary Transformer asserting 'they/them' pronouns ...

Yep. The culture was has seeped into the Transformers. Like everything else.
Transformers are heavily anthropomorphized. They have human faces and general body layouts (2 arms, 2 legs, head, hands, feet, etc) and very human personalities. It's easy to put some culture war crap into the franchise.

I actually don't think this is culture "seeping" anywhere.
In the original incarnation, all the transformers appeared to not have a sex, and indeed, in a couple episodes they just flat out created adult transformers out of stuff.  They didn't waste much time introducing female transformers though, and one of their longest lived lores had the idea that some of their progenitors were female and most were male and everyone kind of descended from one of those when their sparks were made or whatever.

So that was different enough, and alien enough, and didn't pose any complex questions about robot sex or made up crap like "gender".  No problems here, because it was offtopic!

But once the top down order came to inject ideology into all products, the transformers line simply had to retcon to make this happen.  Suddenly, we have the most famous and first female transformer, Arcee, having had a "female spark" that for some reason manifested a "male body", or something, and then sought out sex reassignment surgery from some mad scientist to become the lady robot we all know.  This was later retconned a bit, but Arcee is still in the current canon a transwoman. 
Here's the thing- this is a top down excuse, changing tons of established stuff, to shoehorn a transgender story into a robot story.  It's not culture seeping in, it's the art equivalent of unprovoked violence.

Quote from: daft on December 18, 2023, 01:48:53 PM
I think he makes some good points about players moving GMs to the VTT and the "evergreen rules" when they go digital.

This is a really good video, and it absolutely shows a pretty big risk- once D&D Beyond has a top tier VTT with full integration with absolutely everything, there will be an audience of players and DMs who want nothing else, because it will be official, real, and fast.  Over the last fifteen years players who never cared before now care about "immersion", and these are not young people- these are players who were there over a plastic battlemat and even no stupid map at all!  It's a reasonable assumption that many players will start with a slick presentation and of that, some number will decide that that's all that they want, and they won't mess with other options.