Wednesday, November 2, 2022

D&D Beyond is Great, and I Hope the Digital/Physical Bundles Will Be Better in One D&D

 I finally caved and purchased the "Player Bundle" (PHB, Xanathar's, Tasha's, and Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide) along with Monsters of the Multiverse on D&D Beyond, despite already owning those books as physical items. At 125 bucks, roughly, that comes to 25 dollars per book, or about 50% of what I originally paid for each book (SCAG might have been cheaper, but the bundle made the cost of getting that one added on trivial, so I went for it).

With WotC's purchase of D&D Beyond, we've seen a lot of content released through it, between free things like Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1, the Vecna Dossier, and in fact the whole playtest for One D&D (though, frustratingly, they haven't actually made it so you can make character sheets with the new rules - hopefully that's just a technical challenge they'll eventually figure out).

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen will be the first book they release as a physical/digital bundle. I believe it costs like 5 dollars more, which I still feel a little salty about, but certainly not as much as I do over paying 30 bucks more.

The problem, as I've said before, is that this only lets you get the physical book from WotC directly. I have a local gaming store where I'm friends with the manager, and I'd really, really prefer to buy books from there. But this 125-dollar purchase I just made (which doesn't even cover some of the other sourcebooks I'd like unlocked on D&D Beyond, such as Fizban's or some of the setting books) is not something I want to make a regular habit.

I would love, love, love if WotC gave out digital vouchers with a code to stores selling the books, which they could hand you at checkout (perhaps even charging a little premium for it).

I only use D&D Beyond for character sheets, so I'm really only ever going to get the player-facing sourcebooks on it (a reason, perhaps, why we've seen a lot more races and subclasses going into DM-facing books) and so I have no real compunctions about picking up the awesome alt-cover of the Dragonlance book at my store.

But I'd far prefer to lose any friction here and let me support my local store while getting the new D&D books. As it stands, the current model disincentivizes people from getting their books at the stores that have done so much to promote the hobby, and feels... not great.

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