Dungeons and Dragons Beyond is an official digital companion to D&D, with a free character-generator and a bunch of paid additions, from access to hyperlinked editions of the rulebooks ($30/each), and a $3/player, $6/DM subscription service that lets DMs share their books with players.
D&D Beyond is made by Curse, a subsidiary of Twitch, and the creators say that Twitch streaming is coming to the platform soon, so you can share your D&D games with the whole world.
The character creator was great—and free—but I wanted to dive deeper and see just how robust this new system was. That’s when I ran into some trouble. Dungeons & Dragons Beyond isn’t cheap, but neither is the traditional game. The digital versions of the books cost the same as the hardcover editions—$30 each.
For that price, players get access to the full content of the print book—complete with artwork—but in a handy digital form that’s cross-referenced and hyperlinked. This is much more than a simple PDF. No more hunting for multiple books to chase down a reference of specific trait. The digital books are intuitive and filled with hyperlinks. If I’m reading some lore and see a monster referenced, I can hover over the name to get a tooltip or click the name to jump to the full description of that creature wherever it may be in Beyond’s ecosystem.
There’s also a tiered subscription service for players who want to fully integrate their campaigns into Beyond’s system. It’s cheap: just $2.99 a month for players and $5.99 a month for dungeon masters. The sub allows users to make as many characters as they want (Beyond limits free accounts to six characters) and share homebrew content. DMs get the added benefit of sharing any content they’ve purchased with any player signed into their campaign. That way, not everyone has to buy the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual.
Dungeons & Dragons Finally Has Official Digital Tools
[Matthew Galt/Motherboard]