Wizards of the Coast is experiencing a tremendous boom period with Dungeons and Dragons print and digital sales. The Player’s Handbook, Dungeons Masters Guide and a handful of other titles have been in the Amazon bestseller list for the past five months. Not only are groups of friends organizing their own campaigns but Twitch has been livestreaming D&D adventures over the last few years and tens of thousands of people are watching at a time. In order to capitalize on the digital aspect, Wizards of the Coast and Curse are teaming up for a new initiative called D&D Beyond.
Dungeons and Dragons Beyond is a new digital platform that will allow you to store your character sheets in the cloud. You will also be able to purchase digital editions of all of the books that WOC currently sells. Dungeon Masters will be able to sell their homebrew adventures to other people, which is very compelling.
Adam from D&D Beyond provided some details on what is going to occur during the beta program and what players can expect when the platform formally launches this summer. “At launch, players will be able to access SRD content and build and view a small number of characters with a free D&D Beyond account.”
“We don’t have exact pricing nailed down, but you will also be able to buy official digital D&D content for all fifth edition products with flexible purchase options. You can pay only for the D&D content you need. If you only play fighters, for example, you’ll be able to just pick up the stuff you need to track swinging that giant two-handed sword.”
“A small monthly subscription will be needed to manage more than a handful of characters and to enable more advanced features, like homebrew content integration. At this time, we don’t know exactly how much the subscription will cost, but please continue to check dndbeyond.com for the most up-to-date announcements and information!”
Dungeon Masters who want to sell their own homebrew adventures will get 50% of all of the sales sold on the D&D Beyond Platform. They will also retain full copyright protection so that nobody will be able to take aspects of their work and publish it in a future sourcebook.
What I like about D&D Beyond is that you will be able to use it on your laptop or smartphone. Instead of constantly using a pencil and eraser to keep track of your hitpoints when it battle or keeping track all of items will be simpler and more robust. On the downside, using an app on your tablet or phone will inevitably lead to distractions. The last thing you want to do while in the heat of battle is to receive a Facebook Message or an email.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
