D&D 5E D&D Beyond Support Included In ‘Monsters Of Drakkenheim’ Kickstarter

WotC has been including select third party products on D&D Beyond for some months now, including product from Ghostfire Gaming, Kobold Press, Critical Role, and others.

Monsters of Drakkenheim from the Dungeon Dudes (who are associated with Ghostfire Gaming)--who already have two million dollar Kickstarters to their name, with this one looking likely also--promises D&D Beyond support in advance. It's a 300 page monster book for their highly successful setting. There's also the usual selection of dice, minis, pins, bookmarks, dice bags, plushies, and so on.

150+ New 5e monsters inspired by Eldritch Horrors. Harvest felled foes to craft loot. Engage epic bosses. Explore forbidden lairs.

This is the first time a Kickstarter has included DDB support--you can't have a Kickstarter-funded project on DM's Guild--and it makes it clear that WotC is actively forming long-term partnerships with some publishers to expand the offerings available on their platform. To get the D&D Beyond version, you can add on a $35 VTT license (there are also Roll20 and Foundry options).

 

[Reynard]

Interesting. WotC appears to be going full Steam for D&D. I wonder if that ultimately bodes well for the industry.

Also: oh, look, yet another monster book for of "eldritch horrors." Can we get something fresh, please?

 

[mamba]

The interesting part to me is that they will have new conditions and monsters that scale with the number of players (number of attacks, HP, maybe more) which sounds like they would need to add support for this to DDB in some form, which then would make these available beyond this monster book (I hope)

 

[Parmandur]

Well, that is interesting.

 

[Leatherhead]

The most shocking part of this is that they are letting the book on D&D Beyond before the book even exists. I know the Dungeon Dudes have a track record, but you would think WotC/D&D Beyond would have someone read the book before giving it a spot on the servers.

 

[Scribe]

The most shocking part of this is that they are letting the book on D&D Beyond before the book even exists. I know the Dungeon Dudes have a track record, but you would think WotC/D&D Beyond would have someone read the book before giving it a spot on the servers.

Steam doesnt particularly care about the quality of content it sells.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Interesting. WotC appears to be going full Steam for D&D. I wonder if that ultimately bodes well for the industry.

I think it's probably fine for the industry for two reasons:

1) It's just D&D, not all RPGs, and that doesn't seem likely to change whilst WotC owns Beyond (unless WotC publishes other RPGs, but that seems a distant prospect at best).

2) Beyond isn't that great. It's fine. You'd definitely want your product to be sold there if it was a D&D product and you didn't have ethical objections to WotC making money off you. But like, Beyond is only okay. Its VTT is still very "early days" many months after access started and the longer-term goals don't seem to want to make it much more than "A really easy to use VTT, at the cost of more powerful features". The campaign management features are... not great, even "unimpressive" seems too kind. All it's really good at is allowing you to search the books you own and letting you create and manage PCs, and even there, there are some weird holes in its capabilities (unless things changed in the last six months), and the search, whilst it has improved, is still in the realms of what my father once called "crazy search" rather than reliably finding what you were actually looking for.

Re: Eldritch horrors I concur but I also think it's unsurprising given other areas of monsters do tend to be a bit "mined out". You can still get good mileage but you need a level of originality and style that most of the sort of people who like making monster books, god bless 'em, do not typically possess, or you need to "remakes" of existing monsters to make them cooler and more interesting (c.f. the recent ToV Wight or a number of A5E's monster takes or the like). It's easier to make the latter fruitful but I don't know if it pushes sales the way "new" monsters do.

 

[Reynard]

I wonder who is doing the coding. Does the 3PP provide a compatible file, or does WotC dedicate staff to that?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wonder who is doing the coding. Does the 3PP provide a compatible file, or does WotC dedicate staff to that?

I can't remember where it was discussed, but it was implied pretty strongly, that the 3PPs would be given the ability to add stuff themselves with these - which would make sense - users can - and we know from various D&D Beyond staff comments that the staff who add content essentially just have a more powerful version of the same tools users can access, and having to wait on the development team to add certain features (some of which remain, to the best of my knowledge, not added). My guess here is that if a 3PP has unique mechanics they actually want to function, rather than merely to be listed, and would require new functionality to be added to Beyond, they'll probably have to make a feature request and get in line, as it were (or pay for time/priority, but that tends to be hideously expensive, at least my industry and many companies just won't do it even if you offer them $$$). I presume WotC/Beyond would have a staff member check over all the additions before they go live of course, to ensure conformation to any content or functionality rules WotC/Beyond have.

 

[Egg Embry]

I wonder who is doing the coding. Does the 3PP provide a compatible file, or does WotC dedicate staff to that?

I have an interview with Nick Ingamells of Ghostfire Gaming coming on Tuesday in which we discuss this.