Dungeon Master Assistance

I haven’t posted much on D&D lately. If you follow this blog you know that after the OGL mess this January I have said that, depending on the Wizards of the Coast’s (WotC) behaviour between now and the time the next version of D&D is released in 2024, and my opinion of that version, I will not be buying any Wizard’s of the Coast products. Here are my latest thoughts regarding this.

I’m still not giving Hasbro [WotC is a subsidiary or Hasbro] any of my money at least until after they release the 2024 version of D&D, if then.

As a side note – they have said that they will not be calling it a new edition but will be referring to the current edition as the 2014 edition of Dungeons & Dragons and the new version as the 2024 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I agree that, based on the most current play-test, it does look more like a rules update than a new game. For now, I will be referring to it as D&D v5.5

At the current time I like the proposed changes to 5e, but I also like the new game rules that Kobold Press is proposing for their Tales of the Valiant (ToV). The two games will be different from each other, but they will both be based on the current version of D&D with revisions, changes, updates, and new content. They both insist that they will be backward comparable with existing 5e content. So, when the new books come out next year, I have several options.
1) I could ignore both and continue playing 5e.
2) I could believe WotC was censer when they apologized for the Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License fiasco, and start using the new v5.5 rule books.
3) I could switch from D&D to ToV or some other RPG (I am leaning toward ToV over the alternatives).

Here are my thoughts:

I am a long time supporter of WotC and I would hate to give up on them by switching to a different gaming company. Hashro’s purchase of them in 1999 didn’t seam to have much effect on WotC until after Chris Cocks became CEO of Hasbro on February 25, 2022. The changes were subtle at first, but they came to a head January this year with the OGL thing.

Hasbro has made it clear that their goal is to get more money from D&D players. They realize that DMs spend much more on WotC products than the players do and they want to get more of the players money. Their plan appears to make D&D primarily an on-line game with the v5.5 Virtual Tabletop (VTT) that they are developing, coupled with D&D Beyond. That way they can charge a monthly fee for each player and offer a lot of customizing options, each of which you can get for a small fee. Even if they make it free for the players to join a game, WotC will still make a lot of money on the micro transactions. And they can offer even more things for the DM to buy, such as 3D objects and tools to create custom 3D dungeons along with animations, special effects, furniture, commoners and monsters.

When I first saw their VTT preview I was excited. It looked great. I thought it would be wonderful to play. But now I am not sure how well that will work for me as a Dungeon Master. First of all I may have to upgrade my PC or get a new one to handle the real time 3D at a decent rate. Perhaps if I stick to playing on-line with adventures that are published by WotC that include all of the 3D maps and monsters, that would work. Especially if it were something like a dungeon crawl where the PCs couldn’t go anywhere off the map. But for me to use it for a home grown campaign or to play one of the many 5e adventures I currently have as a PDF or in a print, the VTT would need to have a 2D ability to draw the encounter map and to import 2D JPG files, something like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20. But if I use their new VTT it will need to be a lot better than the Fantasy Grounds, that I am currently using.

For one thing, I bought a copy of Fantasy Grounds including a copy of the 5e version of the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide and the Monster Manuel a couple of years ago. This was a one-time purchase which they say will allow me to continue playing with it as long as I want to. With it, for example, I am currently running the “The Age of Worms” adventure path that was published over twelve instalments from July 2005 through June 2006 in Dungeon magazine. I am importing 2D maps that others have drawn and made available on the internet. If the WotC new VTT won’t allow me to do that, I won’t be interested. Also, if there is a monthly fee along with a requirement to link to D&D Beyond with a requirement for another monthly fee for that, those will be strikes against it.

If I decide to not use the new VTT and continue using Fantasy Grounds, I will be surprised if WotC makes a Fantasy Grounds version of the new PHB and MM available for purchase. They seem to be intent on forcing everyone onto their platform.

And, what if I just buy the new D&D 5.5 books, and don’t play on-line or take the time to revise all the rules on my copy of Fantasy Grounds? Up until now, WotC has published Errata for the PHB and others from time to time with corrections and revisions, and include those in the next release of the book. Will they continue to do this? I think that the temptation will to be to make those changes to the on-line versions of those books that you access through the VTT or D&D Beyond and forget about the errata updates. It appears that they are looking at the physical books as only something that collectors will purchase. If they do that, you will only know if you are using the latest rules if you are using Wizards’ VTT, or at least D&D Beyond. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they combine their new VTT with D&D Beyond at some point.

Another thing – when you “buy” a book on D&D Beyond you are not actually buying anything. What you are doing is paying for a “license” to access a copy of that book when you log onto their web platform. If the site goes down, or the company goes out of business, or they simply decide to change the wording of the conditions that you accepted when you clicked on at the bottom of the pages of text that you never read when you “bought” the book, then you will no longer have access to it. If you think that could never happen, look at what they tried to do with the OGL. There is no reason to think that everything that you “buy” on their VTT will be any different.
As an example of what they could do instead: A copy of the Fantasy Grounds program exists on my hard drive. When I run it, it links to their on-line site, but it would run even if I were disconnected from the internet. When I purchased Fantasy Ground versions of the D&D books, I downloaded copies of them onto my hard drive. These are similar to PDF files, except they can only be opened with the Fantasy Grounds program, and all the rules, monsters, NPCs, etc. that they contain are available for me to use in Fantasy Grounds. I regularly backup the folder that they are in. Whenever I update Fantasy Grounds, it checks to see if anything else that I have purchased has been updated and will replace them with the newer versions. If Fantasy Grounds were to disappear from the internet, for any reason, I could still link to others site-to-site and continue to play with everything I have purchased. WotC could do something similar if they chose to.

So what am I going to do?

Well, it depends.
⚫ If either v5.5 or ToV becomes obviously head and solders better than the other, I will probably use that one. (I will post a side-by-side comparison once they are both published.)
⚫ If the v5.5 books are not available for Fantasy Grounds, I will probably switch to ToV. I have already supported their Kickstarter and included purchase of the Fantasy Grounds versions of the books.

Stay tuned.