D&D Beyond November Update
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During a recent livestream, D&D Beyond's Adam Bradford brought us up to speed with the recent developments and upcoming updates for the digital Dungeons & Dragons platform, and then held a bit of a Q&A session. Thankfully, a transcript is available for the whole thing so, if you're not particularly enthused about watching an hour or so of footage, you can read everything that was said during the livestream at your own leisure.
Here's the VOD:
And an excerpt from the transcript:
Monsters
So, definitely very happy with what's happening. The mods are doing a great job, and they have gone in and added monster descriptions for all of the monster listings, so if you have bought the Monster Manual or Volo's Guide to Monsters, you are going to actually see the full description of that monster appear in the listing now. You previously had to go to the Compendium content to see that, but we have got that in place now, where you can see that for the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide to Monsters, and we will also expand that over time, to make sure that all the sources are covered, from a description standpoint, so we're excited about that.
Official Errata
We also have been able to complete a big pass on Official Errata, so we have scoured through everything that's coming out of Wizards of the Coast. Unfortunately, some of the change control behind that entire process of making sure that all the content is as up to date as possible is a little more difficult than I would like for it to be. We're going to continue to work on that, and try to improve alongside Wizards of the Coast on that, but we have done a major pass on this.
So most everything that you should see on D&D Beyond at this point is covering all of the Errata. Some of the exceptions to this, at this point, are a few of the maps that we have have had updates and changes to them, and we just don't have access to some of those source files yet, so we are trying to track down the Mythical Lost Maps, to update those, especially, I think, Princes of the Apocalypse has several of those, so we're going to continue to do that, but by and large, the Errata is up to date on the website.
As Xanathar's Guide to Everything updates and changes come out, we will also be sure to incorporate all of that in a very timely manner. That is one of the joys of a digital platform, so we are definitely happy that we are able to get all of that in place at this point in time.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything
And then of course, a big update that we had ... Has it only been a week? It's been maybe a couple of weeks, now. We released Xanathar's Guide to Everything. We had a great deal of time, and energy, and effort that had to go into this. Unfortunately, it's not quite as snazzy as being able to say that we have completed some type of new feature or functionality that the community's looking for, but I'm pretty sure that if we weren't able to cover everything that was going to be in this exciting new source book, that would have been a worse situation for the community.
So, we have spent a good deal of development time making sure that we're covering some of the new types of rules that are happening with the over 21 new subclasses that have come with Xanathar's, and we're excited to get that out, really happy with how that's turned out. It's a great book. I encourage anyone that's watching, that doesn't have it, go pick it up. It is definitely worth your time and your money.
[...]
Homebrew Races
Homebrew races. So next on the list is being able to create an entirely new race within ... So I saw some people, even before the stream started, talking about Eberron, and how you want to create those Warforged and shifters. You are going to be able to do that without any problems, once we add homebrew races. You will also be able to add a sub-race for an existing race, so that is another big part of what's happening with homebrew races.
Then, after we complete that, I can't give a timeline quite yet on that, but my gut tells me that if you kind of keep up with what's going on with homebrew backgrounds, and homebrew feats, the actual development work there is taking a couple of weeks, so it's not terribly bad. Now, obviously the team is doing a wide variety of things, including trying to get a mobile app out the door, so we can't completely gauge that with races. Races are going to be a little more complicated than backgrounds, and a lot more complicated than feats, but we are doing everything that we can to get that to you as quickly as possible, and we'll have more to share on exactly when that's going to be happening soon. Then subclasses and the ability to create your own subclass, so you'll be able to finally have that gunslinger. That is going to follow homebrew races.
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Campaign Management
One of the questions that we get quite a bit on the forums is, "What's going on with campaign management?" Campaign management itself is a difficult one, because it's hard to identify what people are actually talking about, when they ask for campaign management tools. So we have received quite a bit of feedback on the forums, where we feel much more comfortable with understanding what the most people are asking for, so just like we have done with character management, where we have compiled months and thousands of posts of feedback, together to make real decisions, and not just be reactive, and with knee-jerk reactions to all of these bits of feedback.
We have compiled all that. We've considered it. We've decided what the best path is, and we're now executing on that. We are in the process of doing that with campaign management, so I want everyone to know, we're not forgetting about it. We're not trying to not answer you. We're definitely not trying to upset anyone, for not being able to share any more information on that. I'm just telling you that we're in the process, right now, of conceptualizing everything that that should be, how we need to bite that off, what phases we might deploy all of that, and we do have a plan. We are not flying blindly here. We do have a plan, and we're going to execute that, so you know, for what it's worth, rest assured, we're on it. None of this stuff is ever going to come as quickly as everybody wants to see it, so the ETA part, hard for me to answer those questions.
Additional campaign slots. We'll go there. This is something that we are starting to see. I don't think we were getting this question very frequently at all to begin with. We saw it a couple of times, but we're starting to see this more and more, so we will certainly look into ways for you to unlock additional campaign slots, either within a campaign, to increase the 12 player limit, which if you're playing with more than 12 people in a campaign, oh help you, I tell you.
But ultimately, we'll look for ways that we could potentially do that, and we'll look for ways to increase the count of campaigns. One of the things I would like to say is if you happen to own a store, and you are trying to run organized play events for the Adventurers League, we do have the capability, if we can verify that you're a store. There are some things that we can do for you, so feel free to reach out to us via support, and we can get back to you, and try to help out stores, because we definitely want to help local stores as much as we possibly can, especially with trying to play Dungeons & Dragons with your customers. So, definitely reach out to our support team, and we can try to help.
Private forums for campaigns is another question that has come up. This is something that from a technical standpoint, we can do, I'm going to say relatively easy. The development team is over there, just shaking their heads, so mad at me right now. But it's not too difficult, but what we are trying to avoid, with just turning private campaigns on, is again, we don't want to make a knee-jerk reaction to someone saying that they just want something quickly. We want to make sure that we are mindful of how turning on private forums for campaigns is going to fit into the overall framework of what the entirety of campaign management will be, so that's kind of where we're coming down on that. It is something that we definitely plan to do.
With what we're trying to plan, and really set out the vision for, for campaign management, we have to even ask the question of whether forums have a place in that, and whether they're needed, after we get done with some of the other things that we're talking about. So, all of those things are being weighed very heavily and seriously at this point, so I imagine in the coming few months, you will have a much clearer picture about what's going on with all of that.
