The D&D thread

bigmark268 said:

So I was watching this video. And the dude goes on to say how wizards thinks DMs are only 20% of their dnd sales for the tabletop portion. And I'm like no way. Try maybe 90 or even 95%. My players don't shit lol. What dot ou guys think of that?

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As J00t said, every group is different. However, my personal experiences mirror your own except for the players that are also DMs. Even then, those DM/players typically only buy/provide stuff they need too.

I very, very rarely have a player ask me if I or the group needs something they can help with. The few times I've had a player offer to help or surprise me with a gift, has been a touching moment.

*sidenote - I've tried listening to his videos before, but his voice is annoyingly feminine and every time he says "aaand" it makes me want to choke him. I know it's petty, but it is what it is.

I love dnd, and am glad to be able to play with friends pretty regularly… but I have to say everything you guys convey about playing with people who ugh aren’t already friends with makes it sound awful. Can’t imagine even wanting to test the waters of random group play.

Szeth said:

I love dnd, and am glad to be able to play with friends pretty regularly… but I have to say everything you guys convey about playing with people who ugh aren’t already friends with makes it sound awful. Can’t imagine even wanting to test the waters of random group play.

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My experiences have been hit and miss. Honestly, most of the time it's just "ok." Every once in awhile it sucks and you play with some pretty fucking weird people and generally just want the session to end. And every once in awhile you find some really cool people and end up playing with them for years. But like I said, most of the time it's just meh

The thing about d&d, if you couldn't tell from reading this thread, is that a lot of people have some pretty cemented ideas about what it should be and what it shouldn't be. Those people get triggered pretty quick if you try something that goes outside the bounds of what their conception of fantasy and D&D is

wt. me bad.

I've played games at gencon where I was a player. But usually those were eoth my friends. But one time we had this guy who wanted to plow through and win. So like he was telling everyone what to do on their turns and was like come on hurry up. He made it miserable. Then it got funny when my one friend just says yo stfu dude. The dm was a kid. So he's like uhhhh uhhhh uhhh. Lol

Another time I was DM at gencon. And it wasn't so bad because they gave us everything to do. So everyone's experience would be the same.

Arden said:

Those people get triggered pretty quick if you try something that goes outside the bounds of what their conception of fantasy and D&D is

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Yeah! Goddamn snowflakes always getting triggered!

I agree with you that there are a lot of viable, even good ways to further monetize the brand, but NFTs are a dumpster fire and don't belong in the TTRPGs. Including them might snag the lowest IQ window lickers or the ultra, super, mega fans that literally buy anything with an ampersand on it, but as a whole, NFTs would go over like a fart in an elevator with most players.

Also, I don't think WotCs plans to cash in have much, if anything, to do with hardbacks. The profit margins on them aren't great. Especially with Amazon selling them for ~40% off on release day. The future of D&D is going to heavily lean into the digital space because there is a tremendous amount of opportunity their and the margins are significantly higher.

I wish they would make better quality minis. Wizkids has gone down the shitter. The old wizards prepainted ones from the early 2000s looked better.

But none of this blind booster pack nonsense. Just sell sets. The old wizards minis were 8 for $10. Now it's 4 for $20.

Wotc bought dndbeyond, didn't they? We use fantasy grounds, which definitely has it's issues but all our money tied into that so we have zero plans to switch over to dndbeyond... But the little bit that I've checked out is nice. They are working on a pretty interesting virtual tabletop program to compete with fantasy grounds and d20.

That will definitely increase their monetization and I THINK they handle it the same as fantasy grounds where one person buys the license and then gives their own "table" permissions to use whatever licenses they have.

Functionally it's the same as a dm buying the hardcopies, but more and more people are interested in digital stuff nowadays. I think that's why they are moving away from quality minis instead. Outside of guys like Matt Mercer and Joe manganiello, no one is buying minis.

Mist said:

No, not in the TTRPGs. I meant making an entirely new digital product, like a digital version of a HeroClix style collectible figure game, but using entirely unique, tradable digital objects.

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NFTs & Dragons

Yeh I've tried to fiddle with using the online stuff. Never liked any of it at all. During covid lockdown I ended up playing with my friends on zoom. And I'd just put my camera onto the map or dungeon I'd make on the tsble next to me. And we'd all roll actual dice. And it was so much better lol

bigmark268 said:

Yeh I've tried to fiddle with using the online stuff. Never liked any of it at all. During covid lockdown I ended up playing with my friends on zoom. And I'd just put my camera onto the map or dungeon I'd make on the tsble next to me. And we'd all roll actual dice. And it was so much better lol

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fantasy grounds has a HUGE learning curve. it is NOT user friendly at all. but we've been using it for going on 6 years now and i'm happy enough with it. it takes a bit of time to figure out how to make it do what you want, but as soon as you understand how it works it's incredibly open on what you can do. it's developed by like 5 programmers in their spare time and it operates exactly how you'd imagine after hearing that, for better or worse.

Yep, I completely agree.

Learning to use FG is a lengthy, frustrating process, but once you get it figured out it works quite well. At this point, my only serious complaint is that lighting, and to a lesser degree, line of sight, causes a lot of lag on maps.

There have been several moments where I have come close to switching to Foundry because it has some incredible tools. Foundry looks amazing with its animated maps, spells, and abilities. It also has the ability to do some things with sound and terrain that FG will likely never match. However, there are two major issues that keep me from pulling the trigger on Foundry:

1. To get the type of experience that I want from the platform requires the DM to install and maintain a huge library of modifications. That alone requires the DM to have some fairly strong knowledge of the code under the hood. Also, none of the mod authors abide by a standardized set of parameters. So, inevitably, there are constant conflicts between mods. Furthermore, as Foundry continues to evolve and the code changes, some mods just blow up and it's not uncommon when one blows up it takes other mods with it because they're precariously layered on top of each other. It's also an issue that some creators simply abandon their mods and they usually stop working after a client update. In sum, keeping Foundry working the way it's 'supposed' to is a huge chore and requires several hours of maintenance each week. I don't think you'll find anyone that can dispute that fact.

2. With a couple of extensions, the automation of FGU is second to none. All the fiddly calculations that bog the game down (particularly in combat) are automatically handled and nothing in Foundry even comes close. It's not perfect and never will be, but given how many complicated variables there are, it does extremely well.

Grabbit Allworth said:

2. With a couple of extensions, the automation of FGU is second to none. All the fiddly calculations that bog the game down (particularly in combat) are automatically handled and nothing in Foundry even comes close. It's not perfect and never will be, but given how many complicated variables there are, it does extremely well.

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We're currently running 2 campaigns alternating each week. In one of them I'm playing a swashbuckler(lvl 6) hexblade (lvl 2), it's super fun but combat can get a little complicated dice-wise but I have it set up to give myself a "buff" for sneak attacks and hex. If I'm eligible for a sneak attack, I press a button and it adds 3d6 to my damage roll and is set to expire after the next roll. Same with hex, I press a different button that adds 1d6 set to expire after my next attack.

Then I also have my weapon doing it's normal attack, but right underneath it in the menu I have the weapon attack with booming blade added to it.

It took a minute or two to set up, much less figure out HOW to do it, but as it is when I attack with hex, sneak attacks and booming blade I just press a couple buttons real quick and like 8 dice fly out and are automatically removed from the creature, barring any resistances. My weapon has an extra d6 of necrotic damage as well as hex, so some of the damage is slashing, some of it necrotic. If the creature has any resistances to either of those it's automatically done so no one has to count out all the dice, then announce which d6's are necrotic.

The table isn't slowed down by math, God forbid I crit and roll twice as many die and sit there for a day while I roll one d6 at a time, you know? Rolling lots of die on an attack is always exciting but this way it stays exciting instead of grinding the table to a halt

Yeh FG looks great when I see videos. But like I sat down at 6pm to set up for a 10pm game. I was like yeh I don't have time for this right now lol. And just never came back to it.

I made a HUUUUUGE score last night when I was checking Miniaturemarket to see if a 3rd party D&D book had been released and I saw single copies of several of the out-of-print books in stock. The real prize was getting an alternate cover of Volo's Guide to Monsters for $37. That book easily sells for $300-$550 (sometimes higher) on Ebay. A couple of the other books are fairly valuable too, but not near Volo's. In my rush, I also picked up a couple that were only minor savings, but I was just piling my cart up with everything that said "Last Chance" hoping I could check out before someone else did because there was only 1 copy of each book.

The only reason I can think of for the books appearing on the site is that MM recently moved to a much larger warehouse and this 'lost' inventory was probably found by someone that wasn't aware of their true value and then scanned them into the system like normal. In the unlikely event that MM was aware that they had listed these gems for a song, it must have been because of a standard company policy or an obscure contractual issue with WotC or a distributer.

I just can't think of another explanation - Either the company has a lot of integrity or the person that listed them had absolutely no idea how valuable they were and made an honest mistake.

I was concerned that the order would get canceled, but I got the confirmation email that it was shipped today.

So the book is 10x the price for just having a different cover? It's not like leather-bound or somthing? I'll never understand things like that lol

bigmark268 said:

So the book is 10x the price for just having a different cover? It's not like leather-bound or somthing? I'll never understand things like that lol

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Yep, it's just cover art. There's absolutely no difference between the books except the cover.

People pay for rarity/exclusivity and these books had a relatively small print run that won't ever be reproduced.

Normally, these kind of things don't interest me, but I understand it. People that play Magic the Gathering will pay $1000+ for a play-set of Beta Lightning Bolts when there are black-bordered copies that do exactly the same thing for $10.