The first catch with the unique code in each book is that unethical people will go into a bookstore, do what is necessary (remove shrinkwrap, rip open envelope, etc.) to get access to that code, copy it, and put the book back on the shelf. Then go home and use the code as if they had bought the book.
Hey, there's a big issue now with people doing the same thing with gift cards. Copy the code from a card, and then regularly attempt to use it online so they can jump in between the time that some unsuspecting customer actually puts money on the card and the time that the intended recipient gets it - and drain it dry.
The second catch is that you've so far offered no provision at all for people who, for their own reasons, want the content but will not buy the paper book.
People will always find a way to steal things. there is the option to treat it much like a gift card and make it so the code isn't activated until the book is bought. Another trick would be to have it work much like the release of video games that come with codes. Have the code print with the reciept that comes with the book. The last thing I can think of for getting around the code scammers is to have the codes on a card that vendors keep at their sales desk when you buy the book they throw the card into it. I am in favor of the former option where the books need to be activated by the vendor for the code to work. The recipt codes pose the issue that someone may recieve a book as a gift and have the reciept discarded by someone that doesn't know what is going on. That cards at checkout option runs the problem of forgetful counter workers or possibly confused counter workers throwing the wrong card in the book you just bought.
Now, for the second catch. If you mean people that wish to buy a digital copy of the book. That is easy enough and hardly even needs to be discussed. If you mean people that want content and rules without buying a book at all I would have to say this shouldn't happen. If it were my choice I would tie the book codes to the data your allowed to access via the WOTC online tools. Just as a business model being able to get all the data concerning 4E from one DDI account was a poor choice. After about the first year my gaming group stopped buying books almost entirely because we could find all the rules and stat blocks on DDI. Up until late last year we had one DDI account that we all used to get the information we needed. Now we have about 3 DDI accounts for the 6 of us in my group just because we needed to make more characters for all the games we are running but still we buy no books. I say make it so you can't get at the rules or stats you haven't paid for. I would say that with this change they should lower the DnD insider price but in reality with the increas of complexity of the data system and the fact that your paying for the magazine's at the same time 6 bucks a month doesn't seem to bad. maybe make that the base monthly cost though and make ordering a year long sub cost 5 bucks. Or you can take the example of the edition it's self and both follow my model and allow people to pay even more for a special sub that gives you access to all data without having to buy books.
The first catch with the unique code in each book is that unethical people will go into a bookstore, do what is necessary (remove shrinkwrap, rip open envelope, etc.) to get access to that code, copy it, and put the book back on the shelf. Then go home and use the code as if they had bought the book.
Hey, there's a big issue now with people doing the same thing with gift cards. Copy the code from a card, and then regularly attempt to use it online so they can jump in between the time that some unsuspecting customer actually puts money on the card and the time that the intended recipient gets it - and drain it dry.
The second catch is that you've so far offered no provision at all for people who, for their own reasons, want the content but will not buy the paper book.
People will always find a way to steal things. there is the option to treat it much like a gift card and make it so the code isn't activated until the book is bought. Another trick would be to have it work much like the release of video games that come with codes. Have the code print with the reciept that comes with the book. The last thing I can think of for getting around the code scammers is to have the codes on a card that vendors keep at their sales desk when you buy the book they throw the card into it. I am in favor of the former option where the books need to be activated by the vendor for the code to work. The recipt codes pose the issue that someone may recieve a book as a gift and have the reciept discarded by someone that doesn't know what is going on. That cards at checkout option runs the problem of forgetful counter workers or possibly confused counter workers throwing the wrong card in the book you just bought.
Now, for the second catch. If you mean people that wish to buy a digital copy of the book. That is easy enough and hardly even needs to be discussed. If you mean people that want content and rules without buying a book at all I would have to say this shouldn't happen. If it were my choice I would tie the book codes to the data your allowed to access via the WOTC online tools. Just as a business model being able to get all the data concerning 4E from one DDI account was a poor choice. After about the first year my gaming group stopped buying books almost entirely because we could find all the rules and stat blocks on DDI. Up until late last year we had one DDI account that we all used to get the information we needed. Now we have about 3 DDI accounts for the 6 of us in my group just because we needed to make more characters for all the games we are running but still we buy no books. I say make it so you can't get at the rules or stats you haven't paid for. I would say that with this change they should lower the DnD insider price but in reality with the increas of complexity of the data system and the fact that your paying for the magazine's at the same time 6 bucks a month doesn't seem to bad. maybe make that the base monthly cost though and make ordering a year long sub cost 5 bucks. Or you can take the example of the edition it's self and both follow my model and allow people to pay even more for a special sub that gives you access to all data without having to buy books.
Like you said, there is always going to be a way for people to steal. Be it stealing the book from the store (police don't even bother with a theft call unless it is over $250 in some states), downloading it from a pirate site, or some other form of theft/fraud.
Your second thought intrigues me though.... what is wrong with the account driven service? Sure you can use 1 or 3 accounts and take care of everyone at the table, but it costs very little to deliver that info to you and for each account, Wizards is collecting a monthly charge. Over the course of a year, they make more money off of the recurring fees they they do off of the books after considering overhead and publishing costs. Now I think that books will still be needed. I like them and it is a pain to have the computer right there to reference. But with both choices, Wizards will benefit, and the players will benefit regardless of what method the rules are consumed.
The first catch with the unique code in each book is that unethical people will go into a bookstore, do what is necessary (remove shrinkwrap, rip open envelope, etc.) to get access to that code, copy it, and put the book back on the shelf. Then go home and use the code as if they had bought the book.
Hey, there's a big issue now with people doing the same thing with gift cards. Copy the code from a card, and then regularly attempt to use it online so they can jump in between the time that some unsuspecting customer actually puts money on the card and the time that the intended recipient gets it - and drain it dry.
The second catch is that you've so far offered no provision at all for people who, for their own reasons, want the content but will not buy the paper book.
People will always find a way to steal things. there is the option to treat it much like a gift card and make it so the code isn't activated until the book is bought. Another trick would be to have it work much like the release of video games that come with codes. Have the code print with the reciept that comes with the book. The last thing I can think of for getting around the code scammers is to have the codes on a card that vendors keep at their sales desk when you buy the book they throw the card into it. I am in favor of the former option where the books need to be activated by the vendor for the code to work. The recipt codes pose the issue that someone may recieve a book as a gift and have the reciept discarded by someone that doesn't know what is going on. That cards at checkout option runs the problem of forgetful counter workers or possibly confused counter workers throwing the wrong card in the book you just bought.
Now, for the second catch. If you mean people that wish to buy a digital copy of the book. That is easy enough and hardly even needs to be discussed. If you mean people that want content and rules without buying a book at all I would have to say this shouldn't happen. If it were my choice I would tie the book codes to the data your allowed to access via the WOTC online tools. Just as a business model being able to get all the data concerning 4E from one DDI account was a poor choice. After about the first year my gaming group stopped buying books almost entirely because we could find all the rules and stat blocks on DDI. Up until late last year we had one DDI account that we all used to get the information we needed. Now we have about 3 DDI accounts for the 6 of us in my group just because we needed to make more characters for all the games we are running but still we buy no books. I say make it so you can't get at the rules or stats you haven't paid for. I would say that with this change they should lower the DnD insider price but in reality with the increas of complexity of the data system and the fact that your paying for the magazine's at the same time 6 bucks a month doesn't seem to bad. maybe make that the base monthly cost though and make ordering a year long sub cost 5 bucks. Or you can take the example of the edition it's self and both follow my model and allow people to pay even more for a special sub that gives you access to all data without having to buy books.
Like you said, there is always going to be a way for people to steal. Be it stealing the book from the store (police don't even bother with a theft call unless it is over $250 in some states), downloading it from a pirate site, or some other form of theft/fraud.
Your second thought intrigues me though.... what is wrong with the account driven service? Sure you can use 1 or 3 accounts and take care of everyone at the table, but it costs very little to deliver that info to you and for each account, Wizards is collecting a monthly charge. Over the course of a year, they make more money off of the recurring fees they they do off of the books after considering overhead and publishing costs. Now I think that books will still be needed. I like them and it is a pain to have the computer right there to reference. But with both choices, Wizards will benefit, and the players will benefit regardless of what method the rules are consumed.
If I had to buy every book over the whole year I would give them way more money than they make off my yearly sub. My yearly sub doesn't even cost as much as 2 full books would. For this price I essentially get all of the books they released that year. Adittionally I get all of the content in Dungeon and Dragon for that year. Furthermore I get to use all of the digital tools they have released. Unfortunately the overhead of printing books is only replaced by the overhead of them producing digital resources. I'm no economical expert but I would say those two bits of overhead are fairly similar in their cost. This is where their business model goes down. My suggestion is one of business. If we want well built digital tools and all star content from every book and in every dragon and dungeon article we need to pay these guys a bit more. Right now they have accidentally taken away their biggest source of income and replaced it with one that is only partially comprable.
The idea I put forth is one to put more money in WOTC pockets more than anything else. The codes idea also has to do with an idea I had from another thread. The idea is that having codes from different books would also give you more content. Say I have the code for MM1 on my acount and then I get the code for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Having these two codes means you would in the digital realm now unlock a whole bunch of fluff for all of the monsters that exist in MM1 as it relates to the forgotten realms campaign setting. This would be in an easily printable pdf format in addition to being stored online. Just in case you like hard copies. This is where you could have a subscriptionless account that you just keep putting codes into it to get all the digital copies of your books and the additional bonus content you have access to but have no access to the digital tools. Pay for a sub and get the digital tools. Pay a bigger sub and get the magazines and the digital tools. Pay a whole lot for a sub and get all of the digital material that is released durring your sub. That last option would be similar in cost to the cost of subscribing to an MMO because your essentially buying every letter of content the release in a given amount of time and would still most likely be cheaper than actually buying everything, especuially if you go for the one month of everything in a month with like three book releases in it.
If I had to buy every book over the whole year I would give them way more money than they make off my yearly sub. My yearly sub doesn't even cost as much as 2 full books would. For this price I essentially get all of the books they released that year. Adittionally I get all of the content in Dungeon and Dragon for that year. Furthermore I get to use all of the digital tools they have released. Unfortunately the overhead of printing books is only replaced by the overhead of them producing digital resources. I'm no economical expert but I would say those two bits of overhead are fairly similar in their cost. This is where their business model goes down. My suggestion is one of business. If we want well built digital tools and all star content from every book and in every dragon and dungeon article we need to pay these guys a bit more. Right now they have accidentally taken away their biggest source of income and replaced it with one that is only partially comprable.
The idea I put forth is one to put more money in WOTC pockets more than anything else. The codes idea also has to do with an idea I had from another thread. The idea is that having codes from different books would also give you more content. Say I have the code for MM1 on my acount and then I get the code for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Having these two codes means you would in the digital realm now unlock a whole bunch of fluff for all of the monsters that exist in MM1 as it relates to the forgotten realms campaign setting. This would be in an easily printable pdf format in addition to being stored online. Just in case you like hard copies. This is where you could have a subscriptionless account that you just keep putting codes into it to get all the digital copies of your books and the additional bonus content you have access to but have no access to the digital tools. Pay for a sub and get the digital tools. Pay a bigger sub and get the magazines and the digital tools. Pay a whole lot for a sub and get all of the digital material that is released durring your sub. That last option would be similar in cost to the cost of subscribing to an MMO because your essentially buying every letter of content the release in a given amount of time and would still most likely be cheaper than actually buying everything, especuially if you go for the one month of everything in a month with like three book releases in it.
Its about profit. There is a huge cost involved with publishing the books and distribution. That is the reason each of those books are $35.00+. Now I can not afford to purchase every book and even if I could, it is not feasible for me to tote them all to games that are not hosted at my house. So not only do they not make a huge amount of money off of the books, but there are many books that undersell because the majority of the people that play D&D have a limited amount of money they can spend on their game in a year. The online subscription would allow me to have access to the books I needed, without having to buy them all.
Now running a website that can be accessed via a monthly membership that offers direct access to all the material can be very profitable. For one thing, running a website is relatively inexpensive compared to publishing and marketing a hardcover book (I am an IT graduate). Two it is much easier to deal with issues of erratas and such since content can be edited. The value a subscriber gets out of it is higher since they have access to all content and it is readily accessilble to anyone with a smart phone/laptop/iPad/etc.
Having worked in a book store, codes can and will be stolen. This will cause the book prices to go up because people will return $35 books if they can use the code and just return them. Or worse, you buy a book and the code was stolen so it is worthless to you. This would increase the amount of returns to Wizards thus increasing overhead. The cost would be passed on to the consumer.
The challenge with .pdfs are always going to be an issue. Once it is on the market, someone is going to find a way to share it. Though I miss free products like heroforge from 3e, Wizards did good by offering its own updated character generator for subscribers. Features that add value like this make the subscription method worthwhile to both Wizards and the player base.
If I had to buy every book over the whole year I would give them way more money than they make off my yearly sub. My yearly sub doesn't even cost as much as 2 full books would. For this price I essentially get all of the books they released that year. Adittionally I get all of the content in Dungeon and Dragon for that year. Furthermore I get to use all of the digital tools they have released. Unfortunately the overhead of printing books is only replaced by the overhead of them producing digital resources. I'm no economical expert but I would say those two bits of overhead are fairly similar in their cost. This is where their business model goes down. My suggestion is one of business. If we want well built digital tools and all star content from every book and in every dragon and dungeon article we need to pay these guys a bit more. Right now they have accidentally taken away their biggest source of income and replaced it with one that is only partially comprable.
The idea I put forth is one to put more money in WOTC pockets more than anything else. The codes idea also has to do with an idea I had from another thread. The idea is that having codes from different books would also give you more content. Say I have the code for MM1 on my acount and then I get the code for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Having these two codes means you would in the digital realm now unlock a whole bunch of fluff for all of the monsters that exist in MM1 as it relates to the forgotten realms campaign setting. This would be in an easily printable pdf format in addition to being stored online. Just in case you like hard copies. This is where you could have a subscriptionless account that you just keep putting codes into it to get all the digital copies of your books and the additional bonus content you have access to but have no access to the digital tools. Pay for a sub and get the digital tools. Pay a bigger sub and get the magazines and the digital tools. Pay a whole lot for a sub and get all of the digital material that is released durring your sub. That last option would be similar in cost to the cost of subscribing to an MMO because your essentially buying every letter of content the release in a given amount of time and would still most likely be cheaper than actually buying everything, especuially if you go for the one month of everything in a month with like three book releases in it.
Its about profit. There is a huge cost involved with publishing the books and distribution. That is the reason each of those books are $35.00+. Now I can not afford to purchase every book and even if I could, it is not feasible for me to tote them all to games that are not hosted at my house. So not only do they not make a huge amount of money off of the books, but there are many books that undersell because the majority of the people that play D&D have a limited amount of money they can spend on their game in a year. The online subscription would allow me to have access to the books I needed, without having to buy them all.
Now running a website that can be accessed via a monthly membership that offers direct access to all the material can be very profitable. For one thing, running a website is relatively inexpensive compared to publishing and marketing a hardcover book (I am an IT graduate). Two it is much easier to deal with issues of erratas and such since content can be edited. The value a subscriber gets out of it is higher since they have access to all content and it is readily accessilble to anyone with a smart phone/laptop/iPad/etc.
Having worked in a book store, codes can and will be stolen. This will cause the book prices to go up because people will return $35 books if they can use the code and just return them. Or worse, you buy a book and the code was stolen so it is worthless to you. This would increase the amount of returns to Wizards thus increasing overhead. The cost would be passed on to the consumer.
The challenge with .pdfs are always going to be an issue. Once it is on the market, someone is going to find a way to share it. Though I miss free products like heroforge from 3e, Wizards did good by offering its own updated character generator for subscribers. Features that add value like this make the subscription method worthwhile to both Wizards and the player base.
Not going to argue the theft of codes in this post as I already gave my ideas on how to possibly combat that. As we have established, people will find a way to steal stuff.
So for the rest of it though what your basically saying is you want them to go with nothing but digital in that case. With the current model and pricing there is little to no reason for anyone to ever buy the books. This is especially true when you average in that every single book they have released can be found in PDF version already. Unfortunately these are not legal copies and they provide no profit to the company and hurt the chances of new content coming out.
Now in addition to everything I have already stated I would also back the idea of purely digital e-book versions of all the books these would also be attached to your account via the codes which you can also purchase online most likely for less money than the print version. Saying that you can't do that because people will share the PDFs is a faulty argument because people already share all the PDFs. Like it has been established no matter what happens people will steal.
While this is about profits it is also about the fact that I personally don't want DnD becoming a purely digital product. I enjoy the books. It is a scene of my life I miss from 3.5. Towards the end of my time with 3.5 I at some points felt like a wizard. I would be sitting in front of a glowing object (laptop with crystal keep indexes on it) surrounded by a mountain of books writing down notes and working out math to see how to create the strongest character I could. In fourth I have no books almost no paper and very rarely even a pen or pencil including during game time. If I had to choose between buying the material in a digital only format or a physical and digital format I would go for the latter. At the moment I can just forgo buying books at all and I am guessing that I'm not the only one doing this. In the end that will lead to the death of DnD being in anything but digital format. Because right now all of that overhead from running presses still gets paid out with little to no return.
Nah. They will still need books. Silly to alienate those that do not want to use it in a digital form, but to make money, they need to find a way to adapt to trending technologies. To make a analogy, it is kinda the same reason stores sell iPods. They do not make anything off the iPods themselves, but they make a fortune on accessories. But if they stop selling iPods, they no one will come to their store to buy those accessories. Wizards can not go to digital only, but digital is where they will make the majority of their income going forward.
I will still buy books especially the core ones, but for the add on books (added classes, races, equipment, etc) I would rather have that in digital format.
The code is a good theory, but I have seen codes placed in books and it just doesn't work. The reciept idea is nice, except there is no means to get widespread retail outlets to incorporate a means to print it up. It would end up being an benefit that could only be recieved when purchasing online (only place it would be cost effective to implement).
The funny thing is when I used the subscription services, much my use came directly from the updated character generator. I'd build a character, and when I saw a new race/class/power that intrigued me I would read about it right there within the generator. I didn't need to reference a .pdf to get the info, it was built into a proprietary application that could not be duplicated.
I think in the future it will go along these lines more. Books will hold the rules (Players Handbook/DMG), and the subscription will hold the extras. For me, it doesn't matter how I get the rules, it is the social at the table aspect that makes it fun. Rolling the dice, moving the character, describing an action and outcome, telling the story, etc. People tend to fight change even if it is for the better
Nah. They will still need books. Silly to alienate those that do not want to use it in a digital form, but to make money, they need to find a way to adapt to trending technologies. To make a analogy, it is kinda the same reason stores sell iPods. They do not make anything off the iPods themselves, but they make a fortune on accessories. But if they stop selling iPods, they no one will come to their store to buy those accessories. Wizards can not go to digital only, but digital is where they will make the majority of their income going forward.
I will still buy books especially the core ones, but for the add on books (added classes, races, equipment, etc) I would rather have that in digital format.
The code is a good theory, but I have seen codes placed in books and it just doesn't work. The reciept idea is nice, except there is no means to get widespread retail outlets to incorporate a means to print it up. It would end up being an benefit that could only be recieved when purchasing online (only place it would be cost effective to implement).
The funny thing is when I used the subscription services, much my use came directly from the updated character generator. I'd build a character, and when I saw a new race/class/power that intrigued me I would read about it right there within the generator. I didn't need to reference a .pdf to get the info, it was built into a proprietary application that could not be duplicated.
I think in the future it will go along these lines more. Books will hold the rules (Players Handbook/DMG), and the subscription will hold the extras. For me, it doesn't matter how I get the rules, it is the social at the table aspect that makes it fun. Rolling the dice, moving the character, describing an action and outcome, telling the story, etc. People tend to fight change even if it is for the better
Basically I think we are coming down to the micro payments vs subscriptions debate for the digital media, and that's just a battle I don't have the endurance for, because bothe sides have equal merit in the debate. I personally love a micro payments system. It just makes more sense to me as both a business choice and personal preferance.
If I had to say anything further it would be that I hope at minimum that the rules represented in the books are very rarely altered, that the errata was alot more few and far between, and that entire rules sets weren't changed from one book to another. I dislike the fact that currently for fourth when there is a rules debate we can no longer reach to the PHB we bought when 4th first came out to solve the discussion we have to go online and check the rules there. This basically nullifyies the need to have ever bought the book in the first place. The same thing goes for certain powers and feats that have been changed since the original 4e PHB's first release. I think if I had to get to the core of my issue is that while I support the digital media aspects and will most likely have it all I don't want to have to depend on it for all of my content.
D&D Next should be about half digital, in that everything should have a digital counterpart.
A good chunk of D&D players are going to be like the original poster. They shouldn't abandon that market, even if it takes more to produce stuff for them. It's a core market that's been loyal for a long time. Even I prefer to have a book in front of me, though having a searchable PFD is invaluable.
On the other hand, digital alternatives aren't the future, they're the present. With so many people carrying around iPads and smart phones, there's no reason not to leverage these. Back in the day, people might have only played on a Friday night when they could get all of their friends together at their house. Now, D&D can reach a much wider audience of people who may not be able to get together on that day, or at all, depending on how far away they live from each other.
Digitally, Wizards needs to be careful. Like the second poster said, they need to provide a better service than the pirates. This means that things need to be cheap and accessible. Constant subscriptions for features like a Character Builder that everyone in the group needs is too much.
Basic features need to be available to pull people in, and everything else needs to be cheap enough that it's not just the DM that feels justified in forking over cash for it.
The number of people who would buy pdfs for the convenience of it is so miniscule as to not matter. Thinking otherwise is delusional. A lot of gamers still love their books. 4E was a pretty good compromise setup with DDi and books. Your reasoning is completely flawed. Piracy is an issue but selling cheap pdfs of your rulebooks is a non-starter.
As someone who has far more pdfs in his drive through rpg bookshelf than on the real life bookshelf holding print copies of all of AD&D 1&2, 3.X (WOTC, Green Ronin, White-Wolf), oWOD, nWOD, and various other games (yes I have well over 1000 rpg books on that shelf and way more than that on pdf) I find the miniscule number hard to believe. Steve Jackson has said numorous times that pdfs don't sell as fast but they keep selling and selling and selling. He used the example of 1000 books sold of one book is a good run for them the first year where as 200 pdfs of the same book is a good run, however the next year the pdf sells another 200, and another and another, while the print run sells 500, 200, 50, nothing... And while a small press company, Evil Hat gives away their pdfs if you buy a print copy. So does SAMS (the computer book guys) and Microsoft Press.
I think they should aim for both digital and analog. Role-playing is a mostly analog hobby; it's usually performed in-person, not through web-conferencing (thought it certainly could be done that way). This means that WotC definitely shouldn't abandon the analog. At the same time though, we live in a decidedly digital world. Any company that fails to recognize it and take advantage of it is making a mistake. PDFs are a weightless and easily accessible way to carry hundreds of books to your gaming sessions (assuming you can afford a laptop). You could probably even keep the bulk of your role-playing books on a single flash drive. Just keep it with your gaming stuff and you'll never have to deal with forgetting to bring a book again (hell, they could even market D&D brand flash-drives or flash-drive protectors).
As for the smart-phone thing, I've never had a cellphone so I don't know what all they can do. I have no doubt that you could have apps for randomly rolling digital dice, or what-have-you.
As long as players aren't handicapped by not having access to the digital stuff, I hope WotC explores all the digital options that are available to them.
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin." NPC: "Really?" Fighter: "Yes." NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?" Fighter: "I do." NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?" Fighter: "What?" NPC: "I don't know what it means either." Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do." NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics." Fighter: "These what?" NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
