Dungeons and Dragons Goes Digital (theregister.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: Seems like a new digital Dungeons and Dragons will soon be offered. It's not a game in the Baldur's Gate style but rather seems to be about using apps to complement the experience. I wonder if it includes some kind of VOIP facility so the D&D session can be established without everyone being in the same room. From The Register: "The game's publisher, Wizards of the Coast, calls its new effort 'D&D Beyond,' describes it as 'a digital toolset for use with the Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rules' and has given the service the tagline 'Play with advantage.' Wizards' canned statement says the service will 'take D&D players beyond pen and paper, providing a rules compendium, character builder, digital character sheets, and more -- all populated with official D&D content.' We're also told the service 'aims to make game management easier for both players and Dungeon Masters by providing high-quality tools available on any device.' That repetition of the 'any device' point point suggests this will be a web-based effort, rather than an app. The service will debut in 'summer,' presumably northern hemisphere summer so that folks who play D&D will spend up big on their breaks from school or university." You can watch the promo video here.

Comments

Digital means distract too much

[Aethedor]

Watched the introduction movie and think it looks nice, but... more and more I think phones and tablets don't belong at the D&D table. It simply distracts too much. With several friends, I play D&D 4th edition and some of them use tablets for the character sheet. But in many cases they use the tablet to do other stuff, show funny movies, etc. I know we all don't take D&D extremely serious, it's just part of an evening hanging out, but it's one of the main causes we don't achieve much in our campaign. Often we set rules like 'tablets only for the character sheet'. That works for several evenings and allows us to really move forward in our adventure, but after that, the browsing etc slowly comes back.

Because of the arrival of the 5th edition, I fear the 4th edition online character builder will soon be taken offline. A few months ago, I decided to go back to only use the books. The only thing I really missed was an easy way to deal with the power cards. I made myself an Excel template to solve that. Extra bonus: no more need to cut out all the individual power cards. I hated that after printing out a new version of my character sheet. And although it's less digital, reading and browsing through all the D&D books feels more nerdy. :D