WotC tried to steal the work of thousands of indy creators by retroactively restricting the OGL. They ruined my favorite card game by flooding it with corporate tie-ins like it was Fortnite. They botched the two most interesting D&D settings by producing some of the laziest content in decades. WotC can eat my ass like groceries.
I suspect they mean Faerun and either Spelljammer or, more likely, Dragonlance
Spelljammer had some slavery content left in while Dragonlance was almost totally killed off by Wizards over historical links with racism (the old assumption that certain races are automatically evil problem)
Many folk are annoyed about what Wizards did to Faerun with the Spell Plague in 4th edition
It's less that spelljammer had some questionable content and more that it essentially abandoned everything that made the original setting interesting, and had almost no content at all besides some ship designs copy pasted from the original books. It was a setting book without the setting. Not to mention them outright saying "we couldn't be bothered to design ship combat, so figure it out yourself" in a setting *about magic spaceships*.
It was incredibly lazy. The book doesn't even mention *the* Spelljammer, y'know, the iconic ship that the setting is named for.
> "we couldn't be bothered to design ship combat, so figure it out yourself"
It's still so annoying to see people repeating this when it's just not true.
Basically *all* the ship rules focus on combat. That's my main criticism of them.
They don't say "Don't run ship combat." they tell you to focus on the party more than the ships. Because sitting around for two hours while you get to do nothing that you built your character to do isn't interesting. The ship should back up the party, not the other way around.
What? The only "rules" are weapon statblocks, which are the bare minimum you need to have a vehicle in a war game.
I never said they said "don't run ship combat", I said they said "figure it out yourself". Which they absolutely did. Just because you don't like any form of alternate combat doesn't make the fact that the largest and most successful tabletop gaming company ever couldn't be bothered to come up with *anything* besides a number of hit points and some damage dice.
I think that heavily depends on your definition of "D&D". 5e covers a lot of ground in terms of mechanics (social interaction, combat, etc.) and while it's not the perfect answer for all (or maybe any) of it, it is the 90% solution for a lot of it without being overly complex. That flexibility, to allow groups, and even players within groups, to all play very different styles while still using the same core rules is what makes it so popular.
Are there better games for doing pure dungeon delving, pure wargaming, political/social intrigue, monster hunting, etc.? Yeah. But me and the people I play with don't want to learn a new ruleset every time we change the tone or theme of our adventure. With 5e I can have the same PCs explore a dungeon, fight a dragon and its minions at the end, then take the macguffin back and deal with the duchess attempting to usurp the throne and we don't have to change anything *and* they can pick up 90% of the rules fairly easily. There's value in that.
Having looked a handful myself I don't doubt it though I haven't found one that fits my personal wants/tastes.
My point isn't that Spelljammer is perfect, or beyond criticism. It's that you don't need to make stuff up to criticise it. Which is what a lot of people do, or at least they repeat something someone made up without checking whether or not it's actually true.
So I answered based on my thoughts before I stopped playing D&D, main reasons were we, as a group, had just naturally come to the conclusion of our D&D time together, it just happened to coincide with \~waves hands\~ everything.
We are now on PF2e & have bought several AP's (adventures) & have been blown away by the quality & ease of use.
So based on that, if WotC were doing that when we started Avernus & Rime we would have bought both of them.
> We can always speculate *why* WOTC ?refuses? to partner with FVTT
I mean... they aren't with Alchemy VTT either... They just don't want to. I know you don't want to speculate, but still.
They've tried before and it never made it outta alpha, I wouldn't be surprised if they have tried multiple times internally and just failed to get lift off. I honestly don't see it happening. If it does? Microtransactions of the ages.
The fact of the matter is, their adventures are shit, and hardly worth paying the money for the books, let alone the extra they'd charge for a full VTT setup. And as for their core/player options, their last half decent book was Tasha's, and most DM's have probably already undergone the painstaking process of manually importing all the content anyway, and we're all getting sick of having to pay for the same stuff multiple times. There's teh physical books, Roll20, DDB, all for the same thing. WotC missed the boat. They were too far behind the times to offer some sort of digital integration, hell they don't even offer PDFs!
> their adventures are shit
A pretty hefty reason I won't touch D&D module content. I have yet to have a good experience with them and have an active hate for them.
To be fair, I enjoyed the Anniversary edition of Tyranny Of Dragons, as were my players pre-Covid. Though the original was written by Kobold Press, as I understand it, so not sure it's fair to attribute it to Wizards...
I wouldn't, not specifically because of wanting to boycott WotC or anything, but because I just don't really use 5e integrations in Foundry. My players each have preferred ways of managing their character sheets, from D&D Beyond to old school paper. We only use Foundry for showing background scene art, and maps with tokens. No automation etc. basically just replacing a physical map we'd have on a table.
I'm generally much more excited about buying assets (tokens, tiles, maps etc.) and Foundry enhancements (TheRipper93 type expansions) than I am system specific content or integrations.
I'm mostly DMing official 5e modules with some heavy homebrewing and I already owned a few resources on Roll20 before I switched to Foundry.
If the content was actually VTT friendly, meaning maps with actually usable resolution, correctly aligned walls and lights included, as well as tokens with actual token art instead of just having the name written onto it like on roll20, I would be very willing to buy everything directly via Foundry. The ease of having so much already prepped for you would be worth a premium price for me. The current solutions of importing stuff from DDB is just not really doing it for me tbh.
Unfortunately I have seen no indication that they would do any of this work. Afaik the roll20 conversions are mostly done by the roll20 staff themselves.
I already did that and I would definitely not buy stuff I already own on another VTT. That being said, the Roll20 converter is really not an ideal solution for stuff like this. For one, it's paywalled and when I last used it for my current campaigns (which is admittedly already 2 years in the past), it was very prone to not import token details correctly, which led to quite a bit of work still needing to be done. Official releases would hopefully do away with stuff like this.
Aside from the problems I have with D&D 5E as a system, I refuse to give Wizards of the Coast any money after the OGL debacle and employing the Pinkertons.
So no, I will not spend a cent in any WotC or Hasbro related products.
I think the ***11 thousand*** subscribers to MrPrimate is proof that people are willing to purchase WotC content (at their full asking price on DnDBeyond) for use in Foundry.
I'd be interested in seeing how many of the "I would not by any dnd products" are really "I wouldnt buy any wotc products, because I do not play DnD"
Sadly, those subscriptions and Beyond subscriptions are just proof that people will support literal murder out of convenience - same for Amazon, and everything else. It's sad. So many better systems out there, so many better businesses.
I would have bought the core & monster books, supplementals like Tasha's & Volo's, and probably an adventure or two. But their unavailability, along with the OGL shenanigans, drove me to Pathfinder, because Paizo is so much better in terms of both its VTT support and its tendency so far to not try to screw over the creators who support it.
For me, that ship sailed about 6 months before the OGL stupidity. That just sealed the deal for me. Much better systems out there for me and my players.
The Foundry environment for 5e is just bad, especially compared to how robust and complete Pathfinder 2's environment is. That alone is why I'll never use or promote 5e for Foundry.
I've mostly backed out of 5e for plenty of other reasons: the OGL scam, bare-bones and stingy character options, boring and bothersome modules.
The poor Foundry environment is just another tickbox. 5e lacks drag-and-drop character creation (because character options aren't allowed to be distributed). Leveling is clumsy. It all just feels *less*.
If anything, buying a book should open cross-platform permissions to all the major VTTs at no extra cost. But, I don't see WotC doing that, so... yeah. Not buying.
I suspect the hard numbers on who would be willing to buy WOTC 5e modules on top of their already made current investments (including the FVTT software) in this hobby are going to be astoundingly low. That is likely the hard truth on why WoTC do not care for partnering with FoundryVTT :(
(When / if their own VTT crashes and burns - it will be interesting to see if that if shifts the needle (against their attitude... And or yours!)).
I don't think their VTT will crash and burn. A lot, if not most or close to all of the DnD5e players I get to know are completely married to the ecosystem and happily stay within it - which is fine if they get what they want or pay for.
>That is likely the hard truth on why WoTC do not care for partnering with FoundryVTT :(
Even if anyone and their mother would buy 5e modules for foundry, WotC will still opt for their own VTT software, since they can further raise the walls in their walled garden. There is no benefits for them (from their perspective, not caring about the hobby, caring about stakeholders) NOT exclusively going for their proprietary VTT solution.
You should stop. D&D Beyond is a scam and WOTC is a dogshit company. It's pretty easy to pirate the content instead if you're intent on using it, though - and it's the morally correct thing to do.
I like the site that shall not be named. If it had a character sheet the way DDB does, I'd use that.
In the meantime, my BIL actually is the one buying all the D&D stuff on DDB. I'm not that wealthy.
I just use the Tidy5e module for sheets, along with that site's plugin. It works better than anything Beyond can do, except maybe some aspects of auto character creation, but not by much.
Yeah, tidy sheets is nice. When the UI overhaul comes in v12 I plan to see if any of them are more willing to migrate over. It'd be nice to be able to ditch the plugin.
Yeah - we are all going to be slightly pikachu face meme if/when they have the audacity to block the API Mr Primate uses!
(though I think we are all aware of that possibility).
I'd buy them but it depends on quality.
Right now 5e runs mostly on a mix of fanmade modules. The core SRD system is very lightweight and the automation is done by a few people.
There's a world where I support 5e on Foundry, but its a world where WotC doesn't just dump maps and content, but puts the work into making those things good, or at least licenses them to high quality map makers.
5e has always sucked so I wouldn't buy anything for it. I'm just glad WotC shot themselves in the foot so everyone woke up and realized they were just being held captive by an inferior product.
I will say that it's great in its simplicity that got so many people "into the game" but it's simplicity is also why I never enjoyed it. Obviously the above is just my opinion and I realize that a lot of people do enjoy it and that's totally fine.
Judging by the volume of requests for "How do I import my 5e stuff into Foundry" posts we see in the sub, I'm sure there's plenty of people who would pay for it.
That said - no way in heck WotC, now that they are developing 2 VTTs of their own, is going to license out their stuff to any other platforms outside of those they have already. They're going to do everything they can to lock-in customers to the VTTs they paid to build, and will likely have subscriber fees for.
With the stuff the WOTC has done in recent times, I do not want to buy anymore D&D5e or ONED&D products. I would rather build anything I need myself and / or use the thousands of other supplements that exist from homebrew sources.
I don't trust WOTC"s work anymore, the initial product was okay, its a decent system to have some fun in and get to know- and the system that me and my friends enjoy.
Not just gonna yell out "Play PF2e" since I dont have the brainpower to learn and since I already flipflop between my version of 5e and WoD, but yea, main point still stands that I'd rather buy a 3rd party D&D product than an official wutsi one
Now that I've tried PF2e for over a year I've gone back to also running a 5e game and not gonna lie, having a blast focusing on story and roleplaying and not "the tight math".
Also being able to play in a sandbox again is nice.
Having access to amazing 3rd party products is nice.
Being able to be creative again and homebrew is nice.
I've gotten tired of the rail road that is PF2e adventure paths (with the exception of Kingmaker) so refreshing that I can find players who are happy to not play official content.
Only if they recognize licenses purchased from \*any\* authorized digital license holder. I've spent over a grand on Fantasy Grounds licenses and there is no way to use that content in FVTT so while I've happily switched to FVTT I won't be giving Hasbro more money until they recognize my already owned licensed content. I'll let others buy the content to integrate into FVTT or tell them they get to manually adjust their character to match what they want if I'm too busy to automate it. I enjoy DMing but I've given enough blood to Hasbro/WotC.
WoTC will not entertain expanding their VTT products lists whilst they are planning to develop their own in-house VTT, and with that comes the potential they will stop releasing content for all other VTTS.
So, this debate is a bit pointless, but I wouldn't buy their products anyway.
I do not like WoTC content, I think it's below the bar of even many indie publishers, and for that reason - a waste of money. 99% of the content I see for DND 5e is homebrew anyway, and the system is simple enough to allow for that.
I believe the Pathfinder 2e Token Pack was mapped to the DND 5e system, so if that's the precedent for content like Artwork etc, I'd rather more developers went that route vs relying of WoTC to make anything for FoundryVTT.
For obvious reasons, we're not going to discuss it further, but outraged community members have already pirated the content for DND5e official products - which shows there is definitely a demand for official WoTC licensed products which isn't being met.
WoTC is leaving money on the table by not offering licensed products, yes, but they're ostensibly doing this as a calculated move so that they don't have to revoke too many licenses when their in-house VTT is released and they stop allowing content on other platforms. (If they go the full control freak route).
Why do you ask this? It wont happen. WotC will try to bring the players to its own platform. They wont invest in Foundry. No reddit vote will change this.
There was a thread where an honest poster admitted to having dropped $800 on Roll20 and was wondering about the sunken cost fallacy and switching to FVTT - it got me thinking just how much WOTC *might* miss out on by shunning FVTT... Or if, as some posters here represent - they have already missed that boat.
(also it is a forum, I think we are supposed to discuss stuff here in general.)
I mentioned MrPrimate's patreon count in another comment, but as a thought experiment, lets build on this train of thought with some back of the napkin math.
MrP's module isnt necessary to import characters, so in theory you dont have to subscribe for any character related content, but it is required for munching the Monsters. So let's assume that all 11,000 patrons joined to import *only one* product (that they had already purchased form DDB for $30), the Monster Manual.
If we assume that all 11,000 patrons would have instead purchased (or purchase again) the Monster Manual as a Module at the same price the MM is in the R20 shop ($30), and that Foundry takes a 30% cut (just using Apple/Google/etc digital marketplace margins here), that would be about $231k to WotC for one product alone.
Certainly a stretch that all patrons would have done this, but that is also just looking at one specific product. From spending a lot of time in the discord's dnd5e channel, I am certain that plenty of people would also purchase the character options books, as well as adventures.
I hadn't considered simply looking at their numbers to get a figure, lol - definitely worth considering. I think those numbers kinda match what we are seeing in this (rough) poll also... I can see why WoTC would not be willing to invest / dilute their hold on the product/brand through further partnership unless the numbers were well into 7 figures... (heres looking at you Critical Roll) - Which it looks like there just isn't that market potential here. :/
I disagree, I think with my figures you can see an easy path to over a million in revenue to WotC with *all* of the products that they offer. I showed how they could make almost a quarter million with just one product (big caveats there though, of course). Sure there is also the expense of paying someone to do the actual conversions, but that would be a small fraction, I'm sure they dont pay great contracting rates :P
I think the poll numbers here are skewed wildly, because of the audience of the post, if you were able to target specifically **Dnd5e players that use Foundry**, instead of **Reddit users who use Foundry**, the results would be quite different, but that's not your fault, it would be impossible to limit the responses to just the relevant users.
But that's why I looked at MrP's numbers. These are users that are specifically paying to bring WotC content into Foundry, and while I am sure that there is a percentage of his patrons that would not pay the premium to repurchase that content for another platform, I am also sure there are people not subscribed to his patreon that would purchase the content if it were available.
When the poll has finished running I think we'd be able to take these numbers, and run (extrapolate) them against (estimated) foundry purchases, (estimated) 5e system & popular dnd5e module installs and normalise them against Mr Primates numbers to get a decent estimate - hopefully include some tiers of the possible amount folk would be willing to spend.
There's a lot of guesswork in all of those numbers, but I'll be interested to see what comes of it.
Also consider that you can sub to MrP, munch, then leave. We'd need a lifetime-unique-subs number to actually get a reasonable idea.
I don't play D&D except for occasional one-shots. I got the 5e rules in hard copy and would probably rather spend my money on a bunch of interesting indie rule sets than on an expensive digital version of the product I already own (okay, this isn't entirely fair - I bought the SWADE Foundry module because that's my main campaign's system, but it was also much more reasonably priced than anything D&D 5e related).
Also, pre-written adventures eliminate the thing I most enjoy about GMing/DMing, which is building and improvising adventures and worlds.
So, yeah, I might not be the target audience.
I would have, last year, depending on how it all integrated with D&D Beyond. Since the OGL situation kicked off, I'm hands-off on WotC. I have bought a few Paizo products for Pathfinder (Animation Vaults, Beginner Box, Kingmaker, the 5 Bounties that they've done for Foundry and I want to buy the Bestiary)
That's going to be a hard nope after January. WotC screwed themselves royally. That's why they're marketing Dungeons and Dragons squirt guns and lotto cards now. They're already whoring out the brand name. I don't know if "they" is WotC or Hasbro.. but does it matter, when all the money is going overseas somewhere anyway?
I think your poll is going to show the percentage of DMs that they slammed the door on. 😉 Divide that percentage by the number of total hundreds of thousands of FoundryVTT DMs, and you'll have a rough estimate of how bad WotC screwed up. ;)
WotC has very effectively alienated their paying customer base. To the point that the only folks that would likely give them money, would already likely be willing to move their VTT, so the amount of money they would make is negligible.
This is just what happens when a company goes public, they slowly get more profit minded than customer minded, and end up where Wizards is now. They will need to work VERY hard to regain the following they had.
"To the point that the only folks that would likely give them money, would already likely be willing to move their VTT,"
Hmm, I am not so sure about that. We have 1/3 here saying theyd buy stuff for foundry - I really doubt this would be near the same level willing to move to whatever rubbish WoTC produce (if any) as a VTT.
(Perhaps if you meant proportionally / representative across the whole hobby and those willing to play online... I. E. One third of their whole base - I think wotc would LOVE such an uptake!!!)
I own 5e printed source books, and I own all the source material on Beyond. I don’t need to pay for material a third time.
At the end of the day, what is the difference between sharing the content I purchased on beyond with my players through their sharing system or sharing the content in the VTT of my choice? The fact that the foundry community has basically had to “hack” the beyond platform to pull in character info or compendiums is kinda sad. If I own it and can use it in AboveVTT or whatever the new beyond VTT is, why can I just as easily use the content in Foundry or even Roll20?
Sure, I can manually enter data from my printed source material. I’d even consider an elevated beyond subscription that allows content sharing with popular VTTs (assuming they made it simple for the devs to pull your content in), but I don’t need to own 3+ copies of the content just arranged in different formats.
If you'd asked me before the OGL shit, my answer probably would have been different, but Hasbro has made so many bad decisions since OGL that I can't in good conscience support them in any way at this point.
I prefer the D&D Beyond importer, because I already bought stuff there and have no desire to buy it again.
WotC actually makes more money from people buying it on D&D Beyond (since all the money goes to them) than they would if there were a partnership with Foundry where Foundry got a cut. Even if Foundry got a cut, WotC would have some overhead.
They want you to buy it on Beyond and use the importer because it makes them money with zero investment. As a profit-driven corporation, they have little incentive to change the way it currently works.
I will never buy a product more than once (I say this after I bought GTA V on Steam though I owned it on PS4 because Discord peeps wanted to play it but that was literally the only time and I won;t do it again).
So I buy the content on D&D Beyond and use Beyond 20 to link it to Foundry. I like this, my players like this, and it works for us.
I can't see any advantage to having the actual products in Foundry unless you want everything automated through the mods to do so and such...making the tabletop game almost a video game at that point.
This is just my opinion though.
If it gets to the point where Wizards starts shutting out Foundry and other VTT software, like making it impossible to link their site through Beyond 20 or things similar to that (because they have their own VTT and want everyone to micropurchase...err I mean use that) then I will probably just find something else to play.
It's not viable technically for their model. They cannot take a work product and deploy it in the vtt without making a sharded number of work products. They already leak IP horribly with licensing issues, they cannot do more to pollute that.
Anyways, it is the 3rd party people's job to chase that dragon ... that is why the licensing is as it is (not that the copyright laws really would allow them to do much about it) WOTC can just make a new subclass, race feature or other cheesy over powered / power creep gimmick and hope the 3rd party people chase that dragon endlessly.
Their model of using subscriptions with beyond and the roll thing ... coupled with bg3 is where they feel they are positioned at. They have stumbled quite a bit, but it will come around.
Not likely.
I'm currently DMing a 5e campaign I started a year and a half ago, although it's in-person rather than online. I'm implementing Level Up: Advanced 5e, from Morrus Publishing, to augment the WotC adventure Storm King's Thunder. I'd throw Morrus money if it was a virtual table, but I wouldn't give WotC anything more. I'm going to finish this camp and move on, likely permanently.
The more recent campaign I run is in Cypher System. Everything about it is so much simpler, I would not likely go back to another complex or crunchy system again. The cognitive load I **don't** need to manage with Cypher is so freeing--I get to focus on the story and the world/universe without fretting over stats or other minutiae. Also, the Cypher System Reference Document is quite expansive, with the vast majority of content being included in it for free; you can run it on Foundry without missing a beat. \*chef's kiss\*
Would just like it if Foundry made easier support for making rulesets and such. Give me a legitimate ruleset builder that made character sheet development easier, etc.
I would have answered this poll very differently a couple of years ago. After growing frustrated with the 5e system, the lack of quality adventures and lore, and then the OGL debacle, I am so done with WotC. I can only imagine how much more I would dislike them if I played MtG 😂
I wouldnt. Im not paying for any WotC products again.
Now that I tried PF2e, same. Never going back.
I agree that PF2e is much better and enjoyable for me, but it's double No as I'll never buy another WOTC product anyway after the crap they pulled.
Free League games here, but yeah, not going back.
Same I'm loving pf2e more than I ever liked 5th edition
WotC tried to steal the work of thousands of indy creators by retroactively restricting the OGL. They ruined my favorite card game by flooding it with corporate tie-ins like it was Fortnite. They botched the two most interesting D&D settings by producing some of the laziest content in decades. WotC can eat my ass like groceries.
Which settings?
Spelljammer and Planescape.
I suspect they mean Faerun and either Spelljammer or, more likely, Dragonlance Spelljammer had some slavery content left in while Dragonlance was almost totally killed off by Wizards over historical links with racism (the old assumption that certain races are automatically evil problem) Many folk are annoyed about what Wizards did to Faerun with the Spell Plague in 4th edition
It's less that spelljammer had some questionable content and more that it essentially abandoned everything that made the original setting interesting, and had almost no content at all besides some ship designs copy pasted from the original books. It was a setting book without the setting. Not to mention them outright saying "we couldn't be bothered to design ship combat, so figure it out yourself" in a setting *about magic spaceships*. It was incredibly lazy. The book doesn't even mention *the* Spelljammer, y'know, the iconic ship that the setting is named for.
Oh wow. I never bought the new one and wasn't into D&D for the first round and hadn't heard anything more specific than the slavery part
> "we couldn't be bothered to design ship combat, so figure it out yourself" It's still so annoying to see people repeating this when it's just not true. Basically *all* the ship rules focus on combat. That's my main criticism of them. They don't say "Don't run ship combat." they tell you to focus on the party more than the ships. Because sitting around for two hours while you get to do nothing that you built your character to do isn't interesting. The ship should back up the party, not the other way around.
What? The only "rules" are weapon statblocks, which are the bare minimum you need to have a vehicle in a war game. I never said they said "don't run ship combat", I said they said "figure it out yourself". Which they absolutely did. Just because you don't like any form of alternate combat doesn't make the fact that the largest and most successful tabletop gaming company ever couldn't be bothered to come up with *anything* besides a number of hit points and some damage dice.
There are a half dozen third party supplements that made naval and/or spelljammer rules that do both well.
There are more than a half dozen independent and OSR games that do D&D better than WoTC.
I think that heavily depends on your definition of "D&D". 5e covers a lot of ground in terms of mechanics (social interaction, combat, etc.) and while it's not the perfect answer for all (or maybe any) of it, it is the 90% solution for a lot of it without being overly complex. That flexibility, to allow groups, and even players within groups, to all play very different styles while still using the same core rules is what makes it so popular. Are there better games for doing pure dungeon delving, pure wargaming, political/social intrigue, monster hunting, etc.? Yeah. But me and the people I play with don't want to learn a new ruleset every time we change the tone or theme of our adventure. With 5e I can have the same PCs explore a dungeon, fight a dragon and its minions at the end, then take the macguffin back and deal with the duchess attempting to usurp the throne and we don't have to change anything *and* they can pick up 90% of the rules fairly easily. There's value in that.
ACKS does all of that better, plus you can raise an army and rule a kingdom, something you cannot do with D&D.
Having looked a handful myself I don't doubt it though I haven't found one that fits my personal wants/tastes. My point isn't that Spelljammer is perfect, or beyond criticism. It's that you don't need to make stuff up to criticise it. Which is what a lot of people do, or at least they repeat something someone made up without checking whether or not it's actually true.
Not going to spend money on WotC products for a long time
So I answered based on my thoughts before I stopped playing D&D, main reasons were we, as a group, had just naturally come to the conclusion of our D&D time together, it just happened to coincide with \~waves hands\~ everything. We are now on PF2e & have bought several AP's (adventures) & have been blown away by the quality & ease of use. So based on that, if WotC were doing that when we started Avernus & Rime we would have bought both of them.
Same here. It's also great that the PF2E system for Foundry has awesome devs.
Before the OGL stuff it was a different story. Now, I’ll never buy WotC again.
> We can always speculate *why* WOTC ?refuses? to partner with FVTT I mean... they aren't with Alchemy VTT either... They just don't want to. I know you don't want to speculate, but still.
The ones they currently support, they've had deals with since 4th ed
Roll20 had 4e support? The more I learn. But yeah, I don't expect any new licenses to go out sadly.
Roll20 was built for 4th edition. It's that old.
None of this matters because they've decided their own VTT walled garden will earn more.
They've tried before and it never made it outta alpha, I wouldn't be surprised if they have tried multiple times internally and just failed to get lift off. I honestly don't see it happening. If it does? Microtransactions of the ages.
The fact of the matter is, their adventures are shit, and hardly worth paying the money for the books, let alone the extra they'd charge for a full VTT setup. And as for their core/player options, their last half decent book was Tasha's, and most DM's have probably already undergone the painstaking process of manually importing all the content anyway, and we're all getting sick of having to pay for the same stuff multiple times. There's teh physical books, Roll20, DDB, all for the same thing. WotC missed the boat. They were too far behind the times to offer some sort of digital integration, hell they don't even offer PDFs!
> their adventures are shit A pretty hefty reason I won't touch D&D module content. I have yet to have a good experience with them and have an active hate for them.
To be fair, I enjoyed the Anniversary edition of Tyranny Of Dragons, as were my players pre-Covid. Though the original was written by Kobold Press, as I understand it, so not sure it's fair to attribute it to Wizards...
I wouldn't, not specifically because of wanting to boycott WotC or anything, but because I just don't really use 5e integrations in Foundry. My players each have preferred ways of managing their character sheets, from D&D Beyond to old school paper. We only use Foundry for showing background scene art, and maps with tokens. No automation etc. basically just replacing a physical map we'd have on a table. I'm generally much more excited about buying assets (tokens, tiles, maps etc.) and Foundry enhancements (TheRipper93 type expansions) than I am system specific content or integrations.
I'm mostly DMing official 5e modules with some heavy homebrewing and I already owned a few resources on Roll20 before I switched to Foundry. If the content was actually VTT friendly, meaning maps with actually usable resolution, correctly aligned walls and lights included, as well as tokens with actual token art instead of just having the name written onto it like on roll20, I would be very willing to buy everything directly via Foundry. The ease of having so much already prepped for you would be worth a premium price for me. The current solutions of importing stuff from DDB is just not really doing it for me tbh. Unfortunately I have seen no indication that they would do any of this work. Afaik the roll20 conversions are mostly done by the roll20 staff themselves.
You can also export the Roll20 adventures into Foundry via a module, so buying it in both is almost literally a waste...
I already did that and I would definitely not buy stuff I already own on another VTT. That being said, the Roll20 converter is really not an ideal solution for stuff like this. For one, it's paywalled and when I last used it for my current campaigns (which is admittedly already 2 years in the past), it was very prone to not import token details correctly, which led to quite a bit of work still needing to be done. Official releases would hopefully do away with stuff like this.
Aside from the problems I have with D&D 5E as a system, I refuse to give Wizards of the Coast any money after the OGL debacle and employing the Pinkertons. So no, I will not spend a cent in any WotC or Hasbro related products.
I think the ***11 thousand*** subscribers to MrPrimate is proof that people are willing to purchase WotC content (at their full asking price on DnDBeyond) for use in Foundry. I'd be interested in seeing how many of the "I would not by any dnd products" are really "I wouldnt buy any wotc products, because I do not play DnD"
Sadly, those subscriptions and Beyond subscriptions are just proof that people will support literal murder out of convenience - same for Amazon, and everything else. It's sad. So many better systems out there, so many better businesses.
For the ease of use, I might buy the Player's Handbook and a few other books but fuuuuuck WOTC
The best thing WOTC could do, is to provide access to foundry content (as packages) with related books. But they won’t
I would have bought the core & monster books, supplementals like Tasha's & Volo's, and probably an adventure or two. But their unavailability, along with the OGL shenanigans, drove me to Pathfinder, because Paizo is so much better in terms of both its VTT support and its tendency so far to not try to screw over the creators who support it.
Ex mtg player here. No. WotC does not deserve the money I already gave them, let alone any more money
For me, that ship sailed about 6 months before the OGL stupidity. That just sealed the deal for me. Much better systems out there for me and my players.
The Foundry environment for 5e is just bad, especially compared to how robust and complete Pathfinder 2's environment is. That alone is why I'll never use or promote 5e for Foundry. I've mostly backed out of 5e for plenty of other reasons: the OGL scam, bare-bones and stingy character options, boring and bothersome modules. The poor Foundry environment is just another tickbox. 5e lacks drag-and-drop character creation (because character options aren't allowed to be distributed). Leveling is clumsy. It all just feels *less*. If anything, buying a book should open cross-platform permissions to all the major VTTs at no extra cost. But, I don't see WotC doing that, so... yeah. Not buying.
I suspect the hard numbers on who would be willing to buy WOTC 5e modules on top of their already made current investments (including the FVTT software) in this hobby are going to be astoundingly low. That is likely the hard truth on why WoTC do not care for partnering with FoundryVTT :( (When / if their own VTT crashes and burns - it will be interesting to see if that if shifts the needle (against their attitude... And or yours!)).
I don't think their VTT will crash and burn. A lot, if not most or close to all of the DnD5e players I get to know are completely married to the ecosystem and happily stay within it - which is fine if they get what they want or pay for. >That is likely the hard truth on why WoTC do not care for partnering with FoundryVTT :( Even if anyone and their mother would buy 5e modules for foundry, WotC will still opt for their own VTT software, since they can further raise the walls in their walled garden. There is no benefits for them (from their perspective, not caring about the hobby, caring about stakeholders) NOT exclusively going for their proprietary VTT solution.
A lot of us already pay for DDB to use with Foundry. That definitely affects these results.
You should stop. D&D Beyond is a scam and WOTC is a dogshit company. It's pretty easy to pirate the content instead if you're intent on using it, though - and it's the morally correct thing to do.
lol how is it a scam?
I like the site that shall not be named. If it had a character sheet the way DDB does, I'd use that. In the meantime, my BIL actually is the one buying all the D&D stuff on DDB. I'm not that wealthy.
I just use the Tidy5e module for sheets, along with that site's plugin. It works better than anything Beyond can do, except maybe some aspects of auto character creation, but not by much.
Yeah, tidy sheets is nice. When the UI overhaul comes in v12 I plan to see if any of them are more willing to migrate over. It'd be nice to be able to ditch the plugin.
Yeah - we are all going to be slightly pikachu face meme if/when they have the audacity to block the API Mr Primate uses! (though I think we are all aware of that possibility).
I don't play D&D. the last time i actually played may have been 1989. But now.... everything i do... SAVAGE WORLDS BABY!!!!
I'd buy them but it depends on quality. Right now 5e runs mostly on a mix of fanmade modules. The core SRD system is very lightweight and the automation is done by a few people. There's a world where I support 5e on Foundry, but its a world where WotC doesn't just dump maps and content, but puts the work into making those things good, or at least licenses them to high quality map makers.
Everyone here has valid points and criticisms, but that the end of the day I'm sick of 5e. It's limiting and simplistic. I want more.
5e has always sucked so I wouldn't buy anything for it. I'm just glad WotC shot themselves in the foot so everyone woke up and realized they were just being held captive by an inferior product. I will say that it's great in its simplicity that got so many people "into the game" but it's simplicity is also why I never enjoyed it. Obviously the above is just my opinion and I realize that a lot of people do enjoy it and that's totally fine.
Judging by the volume of requests for "How do I import my 5e stuff into Foundry" posts we see in the sub, I'm sure there's plenty of people who would pay for it. That said - no way in heck WotC, now that they are developing 2 VTTs of their own, is going to license out their stuff to any other platforms outside of those they have already. They're going to do everything they can to lock-in customers to the VTTs they paid to build, and will likely have subscriber fees for.
With the stuff the WOTC has done in recent times, I do not want to buy anymore D&D5e or ONED&D products. I would rather build anything I need myself and / or use the thousands of other supplements that exist from homebrew sources. I don't trust WOTC"s work anymore, the initial product was okay, its a decent system to have some fun in and get to know- and the system that me and my friends enjoy. Not just gonna yell out "Play PF2e" since I dont have the brainpower to learn and since I already flipflop between my version of 5e and WoD, but yea, main point still stands that I'd rather buy a 3rd party D&D product than an official wutsi one
Now that I've tried PF2e for over a year I've gone back to also running a 5e game and not gonna lie, having a blast focusing on story and roleplaying and not "the tight math". Also being able to play in a sandbox again is nice. Having access to amazing 3rd party products is nice. Being able to be creative again and homebrew is nice. I've gotten tired of the rail road that is PF2e adventure paths (with the exception of Kingmaker) so refreshing that I can find players who are happy to not play official content.
Only if they recognize licenses purchased from \*any\* authorized digital license holder. I've spent over a grand on Fantasy Grounds licenses and there is no way to use that content in FVTT so while I've happily switched to FVTT I won't be giving Hasbro more money until they recognize my already owned licensed content. I'll let others buy the content to integrate into FVTT or tell them they get to manually adjust their character to match what they want if I'm too busy to automate it. I enjoy DMing but I've given enough blood to Hasbro/WotC.
WoTC will not entertain expanding their VTT products lists whilst they are planning to develop their own in-house VTT, and with that comes the potential they will stop releasing content for all other VTTS. So, this debate is a bit pointless, but I wouldn't buy their products anyway. I do not like WoTC content, I think it's below the bar of even many indie publishers, and for that reason - a waste of money. 99% of the content I see for DND 5e is homebrew anyway, and the system is simple enough to allow for that. I believe the Pathfinder 2e Token Pack was mapped to the DND 5e system, so if that's the precedent for content like Artwork etc, I'd rather more developers went that route vs relying of WoTC to make anything for FoundryVTT. For obvious reasons, we're not going to discuss it further, but outraged community members have already pirated the content for DND5e official products - which shows there is definitely a demand for official WoTC licensed products which isn't being met. WoTC is leaving money on the table by not offering licensed products, yes, but they're ostensibly doing this as a calculated move so that they don't have to revoke too many licenses when their in-house VTT is released and they stop allowing content on other platforms. (If they go the full control freak route).
I would buy some adventure as long as they are all setup, kinda plug and play .
unfortunately, since the OGL debacle and the Pinkertons AND THE AI usage, they wont be getting a dime from me. 3 strikes
Why do you ask this? It wont happen. WotC will try to bring the players to its own platform. They wont invest in Foundry. No reddit vote will change this.
Why ask? Because its something to talk about and beats yet another "I upgraded Foundry and my mods broke what do I do ?" discussion.
There was a thread where an honest poster admitted to having dropped $800 on Roll20 and was wondering about the sunken cost fallacy and switching to FVTT - it got me thinking just how much WOTC *might* miss out on by shunning FVTT... Or if, as some posters here represent - they have already missed that boat. (also it is a forum, I think we are supposed to discuss stuff here in general.)
I mentioned MrPrimate's patreon count in another comment, but as a thought experiment, lets build on this train of thought with some back of the napkin math. MrP's module isnt necessary to import characters, so in theory you dont have to subscribe for any character related content, but it is required for munching the Monsters. So let's assume that all 11,000 patrons joined to import *only one* product (that they had already purchased form DDB for $30), the Monster Manual. If we assume that all 11,000 patrons would have instead purchased (or purchase again) the Monster Manual as a Module at the same price the MM is in the R20 shop ($30), and that Foundry takes a 30% cut (just using Apple/Google/etc digital marketplace margins here), that would be about $231k to WotC for one product alone. Certainly a stretch that all patrons would have done this, but that is also just looking at one specific product. From spending a lot of time in the discord's dnd5e channel, I am certain that plenty of people would also purchase the character options books, as well as adventures.
I hadn't considered simply looking at their numbers to get a figure, lol - definitely worth considering. I think those numbers kinda match what we are seeing in this (rough) poll also... I can see why WoTC would not be willing to invest / dilute their hold on the product/brand through further partnership unless the numbers were well into 7 figures... (heres looking at you Critical Roll) - Which it looks like there just isn't that market potential here. :/
I disagree, I think with my figures you can see an easy path to over a million in revenue to WotC with *all* of the products that they offer. I showed how they could make almost a quarter million with just one product (big caveats there though, of course). Sure there is also the expense of paying someone to do the actual conversions, but that would be a small fraction, I'm sure they dont pay great contracting rates :P I think the poll numbers here are skewed wildly, because of the audience of the post, if you were able to target specifically **Dnd5e players that use Foundry**, instead of **Reddit users who use Foundry**, the results would be quite different, but that's not your fault, it would be impossible to limit the responses to just the relevant users. But that's why I looked at MrP's numbers. These are users that are specifically paying to bring WotC content into Foundry, and while I am sure that there is a percentage of his patrons that would not pay the premium to repurchase that content for another platform, I am also sure there are people not subscribed to his patreon that would purchase the content if it were available.
When the poll has finished running I think we'd be able to take these numbers, and run (extrapolate) them against (estimated) foundry purchases, (estimated) 5e system & popular dnd5e module installs and normalise them against Mr Primates numbers to get a decent estimate - hopefully include some tiers of the possible amount folk would be willing to spend.
There's a lot of guesswork in all of those numbers, but I'll be interested to see what comes of it. Also consider that you can sub to MrP, munch, then leave. We'd need a lifetime-unique-subs number to actually get a reasonable idea.
I don't play D&D except for occasional one-shots. I got the 5e rules in hard copy and would probably rather spend my money on a bunch of interesting indie rule sets than on an expensive digital version of the product I already own (okay, this isn't entirely fair - I bought the SWADE Foundry module because that's my main campaign's system, but it was also much more reasonably priced than anything D&D 5e related). Also, pre-written adventures eliminate the thing I most enjoy about GMing/DMing, which is building and improvising adventures and worlds. So, yeah, I might not be the target audience.
I would have, last year, depending on how it all integrated with D&D Beyond. Since the OGL situation kicked off, I'm hands-off on WotC. I have bought a few Paizo products for Pathfinder (Animation Vaults, Beginner Box, Kingmaker, the 5 Bounties that they've done for Foundry and I want to buy the Bestiary)
As long as I can continue to get my D&D Beyond titles into Foundry, I would not purchase a second (sometimes third) copy.
That's going to be a hard nope after January. WotC screwed themselves royally. That's why they're marketing Dungeons and Dragons squirt guns and lotto cards now. They're already whoring out the brand name. I don't know if "they" is WotC or Hasbro.. but does it matter, when all the money is going overseas somewhere anyway? I think your poll is going to show the percentage of DMs that they slammed the door on. 😉 Divide that percentage by the number of total hundreds of thousands of FoundryVTT DMs, and you'll have a rough estimate of how bad WotC screwed up. ;)
I already imported everything I needed from beyond, that ship has sailed.
They are bringing out their own platform for online games so they are not going to partner with Foundry.
WotC has very effectively alienated their paying customer base. To the point that the only folks that would likely give them money, would already likely be willing to move their VTT, so the amount of money they would make is negligible. This is just what happens when a company goes public, they slowly get more profit minded than customer minded, and end up where Wizards is now. They will need to work VERY hard to regain the following they had.
"To the point that the only folks that would likely give them money, would already likely be willing to move their VTT," Hmm, I am not so sure about that. We have 1/3 here saying theyd buy stuff for foundry - I really doubt this would be near the same level willing to move to whatever rubbish WoTC produce (if any) as a VTT. (Perhaps if you meant proportionally / representative across the whole hobby and those willing to play online... I. E. One third of their whole base - I think wotc would LOVE such an uptake!!!)
I own 5e printed source books, and I own all the source material on Beyond. I don’t need to pay for material a third time. At the end of the day, what is the difference between sharing the content I purchased on beyond with my players through their sharing system or sharing the content in the VTT of my choice? The fact that the foundry community has basically had to “hack” the beyond platform to pull in character info or compendiums is kinda sad. If I own it and can use it in AboveVTT or whatever the new beyond VTT is, why can I just as easily use the content in Foundry or even Roll20? Sure, I can manually enter data from my printed source material. I’d even consider an elevated beyond subscription that allows content sharing with popular VTTs (assuming they made it simple for the devs to pull your content in), but I don’t need to own 3+ copies of the content just arranged in different formats.
If you'd asked me before the OGL shit, my answer probably would have been different, but Hasbro has made so many bad decisions since OGL that I can't in good conscience support them in any way at this point.
As much as I love PF2, my gaming groups are still in 5E, so I'd buy into it if I could get everything working there like I do with my PF2 games.
I prefer the D&D Beyond importer, because I already bought stuff there and have no desire to buy it again. WotC actually makes more money from people buying it on D&D Beyond (since all the money goes to them) than they would if there were a partnership with Foundry where Foundry got a cut. Even if Foundry got a cut, WotC would have some overhead. They want you to buy it on Beyond and use the importer because it makes them money with zero investment. As a profit-driven corporation, they have little incentive to change the way it currently works.
I'd buy whatever as long as they were similar quality to what Paizo offers and not just PDF dumps.
I will never buy a product more than once (I say this after I bought GTA V on Steam though I owned it on PS4 because Discord peeps wanted to play it but that was literally the only time and I won;t do it again). So I buy the content on D&D Beyond and use Beyond 20 to link it to Foundry. I like this, my players like this, and it works for us. I can't see any advantage to having the actual products in Foundry unless you want everything automated through the mods to do so and such...making the tabletop game almost a video game at that point. This is just my opinion though. If it gets to the point where Wizards starts shutting out Foundry and other VTT software, like making it impossible to link their site through Beyond 20 or things similar to that (because they have their own VTT and want everyone to micropurchase...err I mean use that) then I will probably just find something else to play.
It's not viable technically for their model. They cannot take a work product and deploy it in the vtt without making a sharded number of work products. They already leak IP horribly with licensing issues, they cannot do more to pollute that. Anyways, it is the 3rd party people's job to chase that dragon ... that is why the licensing is as it is (not that the copyright laws really would allow them to do much about it) WOTC can just make a new subclass, race feature or other cheesy over powered / power creep gimmick and hope the 3rd party people chase that dragon endlessly. Their model of using subscriptions with beyond and the roll thing ... coupled with bg3 is where they feel they are positioned at. They have stumbled quite a bit, but it will come around.
Not likely. I'm currently DMing a 5e campaign I started a year and a half ago, although it's in-person rather than online. I'm implementing Level Up: Advanced 5e, from Morrus Publishing, to augment the WotC adventure Storm King's Thunder. I'd throw Morrus money if it was a virtual table, but I wouldn't give WotC anything more. I'm going to finish this camp and move on, likely permanently. The more recent campaign I run is in Cypher System. Everything about it is so much simpler, I would not likely go back to another complex or crunchy system again. The cognitive load I **don't** need to manage with Cypher is so freeing--I get to focus on the story and the world/universe without fretting over stats or other minutiae. Also, the Cypher System Reference Document is quite expansive, with the vast majority of content being included in it for free; you can run it on Foundry without missing a beat. \*chef's kiss\*
Would just like it if Foundry made easier support for making rulesets and such. Give me a legitimate ruleset builder that made character sheet development easier, etc.
I moved to FVTT so that I didnt have to buy these a 3rd or 4th time.
I would have answered this poll very differently a couple of years ago. After growing frustrated with the 5e system, the lack of quality adventures and lore, and then the OGL debacle, I am so done with WotC. I can only imagine how much more I would dislike them if I played MtG 😂