I currently have a bit of an obsession with Cyberpunk RED. I bought the hardback. I bought ther PDFs. I bought the Humble Bundle. I bought the core rulebook on Roll 20, and I just now bought the rules on Demiplane, because of the coupon DriveThruRPG sent me.
And I’m thinking to myself, I should not need to buy rules I already own. Why can’t I buy a Print+Digital bundle for say $10-$15 more than the print book and get the book on Roll20, DriveThruRPG and Demiplane?
Or even better, buy a digital book on Demiplane and Demiplane has an API that allows other VTTs to plug into it and pull down your legally purchased content.
This problem isn’t unique to Demiplane or Roll20. It’s an industry-wide problem with needing to develop rules for each platform and then selling them on that platform. I want a buy once, use anywhere solution.
With Roll20. Demiplane, and DriveThruRPG owned by the same parent company, this presents a unique opportunity to integrate these platforms and prevent people from having to buy the same content repeatedly.
I bought the Cyberpunk RED content on Demiplane, because I wanted to try the platform out, and mostly because I got the coupon. Otherwise I would have probably skipped it.
I like what they’ve done. I have no issues paying for the content…different platform, different offering and think that the discounts provided for the content I already owned were solid. If you want a completely vertical offering, look no further than D&D Beyond…but I think that is for more driven by WotC’s approach to control the sales channel versus providing more value to the consumer (YMMV).
The discount that RTAL offered was good. And if they continue to offer good discounts if you own another product, I may continue to buy more books this way. But these books/rules need to work with VTTs. I don’t want to buy books on Demiplane and my VTT of choice. There needs to be a universal API for this stuff.
My VTT of choice is Foundry. RTAL has already said they won’t develop for Foundry. But if I can buy the books here, and import them into Foundry, that would be acceptable.
D&D Beyond offers a Print+Digital bundle. I’m OK with that kind of offering. I just don’t want to buy the PDF, the Roll20 book and the Demiplane book.
But problem with Demiplane (and D&D Beyond) is that the books are hosted. There is no offline access. And if Demiplane goes away, my account gets banned, or RTAL stops supporting Demiplane, I could lose access to my books.
That makes Demiplane less valuable to me than the PDF, because it’s not permanent.
Kudos for what they’ve done. It’s impressive. If they add the ability to import this stuff into other VTTs, and allow me to export the books into ePub or some other open format, then buying books on Demiplane is going to be a no-brainer.
Completely understand. I’m curious to see how they expand the Roll20/DTRPG/DP integration. They may be able to offer an integrated digital bundle that would be pretty intriguing. The cross-compatibility with VTTs is going to be interesting. I would love to see an official DP API, but I can also see reluctance in offering that given the tie-in to Roll20. I guess time will tell.