New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022
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I honestly don't know why more companies don't embrace the digital playfield more fully.
Even Wizards of the Coast with all their cash flows should have put out a platform out there encompassing all aspects of bringing a party together and playing a campaign online by now. D&D Beyond may be the closest thing to that and it still isn't a full solution since it lacks voicechat with integrated dice rollers, etc.
It just seems like a good idea. Pay to buy books and then they give you the tools to play with your friends no matter where they are.
I hope this toolset pans out for WoD. Not sure how deep their pockets are or how fully fleshed out their approach will be though.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022:
I honestly don't know why more companies don't embrace the digital playfield more fully.
Even Wizards of the Coast with all their cash flows should have put out a platform out there encompassing all aspects of bringing a party together and playing a campaign online by now. D&D Beyond may be the closest thing to that and it still isn't a full solution since it lacks voicechat with integrated dice rollers, etc.
It just seems like a good idea. Pay to buy books and then they give you the tools to play with your friends no matter where they are.
I hope this toolset pans out for WoD. Not sure how deep their pockets are or how fully fleshed out their approach will be though.
Well, White Wolf -- and thus oWoD as an IP -- is owned by Paradox, which is a video game developer. This is pretty well within their wheelbarrow.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@coin Hell, one of the relatively large companies in the hobby should at try out a more modern approach to RPGs, instead of merely adopting table-top ones to sorta-kinda make it playable online.
For example why not try a subscription model? The GM pays $XX/month for access and their party (up to say, 5 people) get access to the rulebooks. So $5 gets you Mage: the Awakening or $20 gets you the full gamut of nWoD.
This would also lock people into a platform since they don't own the books, they just rent them out. In the long run it ought to be more profitable - and the fact they're digital means no need for distribution channels, printers, storage, etc.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022:
I honestly don't know why more companies don't embrace the digital playfield more fully.
I've heard the profitability margins are really small. I don't know anything about the business, but when I was fully into Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 during the start of the pandemic, that was what I kept hearing from people that at least sounded like they knew what they were talking about.
I guess supposedly there's not enough buy in from people. Hopefully, these companies can find a way to be more efficient online so that the profitability is there and more people are drawn to it.
On Fantasy Grounds D&D was popular, while WoD was practically non-existant. D&D had an established base so people wound up there if they were looking for that initially or not, cause that's where the players were. That just perpetuated the D&D base even more. Rinse and repeat.
One of the things that helps D&D is the availability of a ton of established modules. It makes it easier for DMs to run stuff and you can go a long time before running out of things to play. Now to me that isn't as fun as freeform gaming (in theory) but it does make it easier for things to come together. It also has the benefit of keeping relatively consistent play/fun expectations. You know what you're getting. Whereas with WoD, as a lot of us have experienced, your fun at a session is heavily dependent on the people you're playing with, not the content.
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@arkandel A subscription model would make me want to pirate books MORE, not less.
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@jennkryst said in New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022:
@arkandel A subscription model would make me want to pirate books MORE, not less.
That's the trick though.
A really good platform where you can play for free only if you are subscribing could make it actually undesirable to pirate.
Sure, you'd have the source rulebooks not the fancy cool online tools to collaborate, create and run handle combat encounters on the fly, manage and store character sheets, talk in real time with your group, etc.
Let me put it this way. Ten years ago if you asked most people whether they'd rather own music or subscribe to a service they'd pick the former.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022:
Let me put it this way. Ten years ago if you asked most people whether they'd rather own music or subscribe to a service they'd pick the former.
I don't think that's really an apples-to-apples comparison though.
A lot of the appeal of music subscription services is variety. Listen to something new every week. There's also stability. Nobody's worried about Apple Music going away any time soon.
Paying $60/year to rent game books that ideally I would be referencing for decades? Not at all appealing.
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@faraday said in New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022:
Paying $60/year to rent game books that ideally I would be referencing for decades? Not at all appealing.
Even less appealing when you know where to get your own copy fo' free.
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@faraday said in New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022:
Paying $60/year to rent game books that ideally I would be referencing for decades? Not at all appealing.
The dollar amount was pulled out of my ass, obviously.
It could be $5 after the cost analysis is done.But also think the model I had in mind would be per group, not per person; if you and your 4-5 friends played it'd be cheaper, too.
Finally the real benefit in this scenario wouldn't be the books themselves. It'd be the game, where that means both the rules and the platform to fully and 100% run your campaign through. You'd need nothing else, as long as you had an internet connection and a microphone.
It seems it'd have no fewer chances of succeeding than trying to survive on razor-sharp profit margins and distribution channels over Amazon and local hobby stores also needing a cut.
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Not surprised, but still disappointed that Mage appears to not be included for this.
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@carma
It wouldn't help existing WoD games; they said on their Twitch where they talked about it that it's only for 5th edition products, as far as the digital tools, character stuff, etc. They said 'never say never' but adding anything else is not on their roadmap currently. Which isn't surprising, Paradox has onlly been pushing official support for X5 editions, since that's the current edition.
