D&D 5E D&D Beyond: No More À La Carte Purchases But US Customers Can Buy Physical Books

WotC has announced some changes to D&D Beyond's marketplace. These include physical products (for US customers), the removal of à la carte purchases, and various navigational changes.

You can no longer buy individual feats, subclasses, etc. -- you'll need to buy the whole book. The full list of changes includes:

• US shoppers can now buy physical books
• More info on product listings, including previews
• UI improvements to makee finding your purchased content and redeeming keys easier
• No more à la carte purchases (though your previous ones still count)

 

[Alby87]

Maybe the reason to remove a la carte is because in September 2024 WotC don't want you to buy just your new class/subclass/spell to rebuild your character, they want you to buy the whole PHB. Just my 2cents...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Maybe the reason to remove a la carte is because in September 2024 WotC don't want you to buy just your new class/subclass/spell to rebuild your character, they want you to buy the whole PHB. Just my 2cents...

Maybe.

One thing noone mentions: there is an overhead cost of breaking books into parts. Especially with the 2024 books, just buying a subclass gets tricky. Because it might not work in a vacuum. Does it refer to something in the new base class? Does it refer to a new rule element?

So WotC might have to make a decision how to deal with such. Can you only buy a subclass, if you already bought the class? Is this transparent for consumers? Will people with an axe to gind complain that you can't buy a subclass without first buying a class and call it a money grab?

So maybe they decided that this is not worth the hassle and better change the marketplace now, so the rage has gone down already when the new books hit the shelves.
Because, to be honest, every change a company makes causes rage these days in social media.

Lets look at r/brawlstars. So many rage posts after each change... even after the company explains it with data...* how they destroy the game. And then I look around and see more students play brawlstars than ever.

*haters focus on a single nerf to progression and neglect everything they get to compensate for the loss and more). Always thinking all the positive changes for progression could have happened without the negative ones.
Making jokes about the developers, when someone tries to explain how everything balances out. Also neglecting that maybe they are one of the few people with slightly negative impact (because they are the ones who are already far ahead of anyone else...) and they want to deny new people any advantages to keep up. It is a big form of gatekeeping.
Sorry that I got sidetracked... but it is just the same. People often look at things from their perspective. And don't try to take the perspective of other people/companies. So while claiming "changes for no reason" it might be time to step back and try to look at it from a different angle.

 

[MNblockhead]

So two myths/rumors are countered in this announcement - that WOTC is moving more towards microtransactions, and away from physical books.

Well, they are still selling digital dice and other flair. But "micro transactions" is a term that people throw around, which seems to have different meanings for different people. There were people who complained when D&D Beyond allowed you to buy just monsters or spells or items from an adventure instead of the adventure itself. Many others (myself included) liked this option. I could care less about digital dice or character sheet flair, but other people like these things enough to pay for them.

This was a consumer-friendly version of "microtransaction" that I will miss.

 

[MNblockhead]

Getting rid of microtransactions sucks!

However, if you are worried about your stuff vanishing (I don't think it will, but I guess you never know), just put the DnDBeyond app on your phone and download anything you are worried about. I currently have all of my stuff downloaded, basically. DDB could vanish tomorrow and I wouldn't lose anything.

Or get foundry, sync everything you own using one of the DDB-integration mods.

 

[MNblockhead]

Presumably, we'll see some kind of god-tier subscription option in the near future, giving you access to everything as long as you stay at that level.

I would actually welcome that. I may be in the minority, but I would be happy to subscribe to DDB like I subscribe to, say, Netflix. Give me access to everything for a reasonable monthly sub. When I'm not playing the game, I can cancel. Re-sub when I want to play it again. But this would work better with a platform like Demiplane where a sub would give access to many games. Perhaps the opening of DDB to more third-party content foreshadows a Netflix-type subscription model.

 

[MNblockhead]

For those who use DDB, how easy is it to use on a cellphone? To like run an adventure? Probably a bad idea, right? I suppose I would need some kind of tablet? ...something cheap

The app is surprising quite good for READING books. But I am not sure I would want to run an adventure from it. You could, but I would not use the app for that, mainly because of the small screen size but mostly because lack of tabs. But if you use your phones Internet browser you can then have multiple tabs open, which makes running a game from your phone more practical, though you you need to have Internet for that.

I run my games online with three screens (my 14" laptop screen and two 24" monitors). The only game I ran in person using DDB was Curse of Strahd, but I mainly had DDB for searching. I also had the physical book, printed out the Mike Schley battlemaps on a large-format printer, and had the CoS DM screen.

I guess I just like to have multiple things open and easy to quickly reference when running a game. It would be hard to do that on a single screen, much less a screen as small as a smart phone screen.

 

[MNblockhead]

Nowadays, everyone I know just uses the DDB app to manage their characters or to look up rules. Doing lots of reading or running full content, no.

Agree for the most part. But I've read through entire books in the DDB App. It is a good e-reader for reading through a book. It is not good for jumping around a book in play. I wouldn't run an adventure from the app but I would read through the adventure on it.

 

[MNblockhead]

When I tell you the discussion ends, and you reply repeating yourself, do I just need to block you? Please stop. I am no longer trying to persuade you with a compelling argument - you've told me you think how you think is universal and there isn't any discussion to be had with someone who thinks that. If you think everyone likes buying from Amazon and that's a universal belief, fine, that's your belief.

You are not the only audience to your debate on the thread.

 

[MNblockhead]

Are they obligated to?

Again: I am no fan of WotC, and I think they are generally anti-consumer, but this particular complaint falls flat with me.

Of course they are not obligated to. They are not obligated to sell digital dice. They are not obligated to making their new adventures available in DDB. They are not obligated to continue to offer the encounter builder, or Maps, or continue to support their discussion forums (many TTRPG publishers are getting rid of their forums, what's the big deal if WotC does the same with DDB?). It is a big deal to customers who made use of that option and found it valuable. Personally, I don't know that I would call it a "big deal", but I certainly find it unfortunate and a step back.

Now, if they make all mechanical crunch (spells, monsters, rule variants, and magic items) from all the adventures available to everyone at a certain subscription tier (while still having to buy the book if you want the actual adventure), well, that would be even better for me and I won't miss the a la cart. But I expect many would still rather buy and own just specific content.

Ultimately, WotC is going to offer pricing models that make better profits while catering to most of their consumers and alienating no more of their consumers than is warranted by the extra profits and satisfaction of the majority of fans. They seem to think that getting rid of a la carte purchases will accomplish this. They have the numbers and market research, not me. Just because something I like is seen as not worth them continuing to support it doesn't mean I'm weird for being missing the thing that I like.

 

[MNblockhead]

The fundamental flaw is that most digital add-ons aren’t typically referred to as micro transactions either. Consider the common refrain - I want full fledged expansions not micro transactions. Using your semantics this sentiment has no meaning. Yet we all know precisely what is meant. (In case it’s not clear an expansion is a digital add-on)

Or consider steam, which is a free platform where you can make transactions to add digital content to your library - no one calls that microtransactions and any game added to your library is just a digital add-on. No one has ever heard that called a micro transaction because micro transaction has a more limited scope than any digital add-on.

If I didn't want to buy an entire expansion with new adventures for Skyrim or the Witcher, and just wanted to be able to buy and use some of the new items or locations, or new skills or skill systems, would that not be a microtransation? Like, what if I wanted to play a Vampire in Skyrim but had not interest in the entire Dawnguard adventure. If I could buy the Vampaire character options and skill system at a fraction of the cost of the Dawnguard expansion, would that be a microtransaction? If so, how is it different from buy character class options, monsters, or magic items from a D&D adventure instead of buying the entire adventure book?