D&D Beyond Goes Beyond ‘And Beyond’
Whether you use the digital toolset’s robust free resources, went all-in with a Legendary Bundle and Master Tier subscription, or remain skeptical of the whole affair, D&D Beyond is without a doubt part of the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons culture and conversation. Here at Nerdarchy, we are big fans and advocates of DDB. We use it for our games in-person and live streamed, for research and reference with its fantastic search features and filters, for tinkering with homebrew creatures, items and spells, and basically everything. Don’t get us wrong – we still cherish our physical books, dutifully adding them to our bookshelves and flipping through them in equal measure. But as DDB continues to evolve, the already indispensable resource establishes a firmer foothold with the upcoming mobile app, the fantastic video content from Todd Kenreck and, most recently, the announcement of a writing team to create even more D&D content.
D&D Beyond Product Director Adam Bradford took time from the always busy days at the Curse offices to share some insights with Nerdarchy into the growth and development of DDB, meeting goals and emerging new ones, and how much he enjoys giving away Legendary Bundles. (Be sure to watch Adam’s monthly And Beyond developer Q&A sessions on Twitch…or basically anywhere he shows up there’s a chance he’ll give away one of these.)
We also had a chance to hear from new D&D Beyond Lead Writer James Haeck on his new role. Haeck is joined by guest writers James Introcaso an Mike Shea to expand Content Director Todd Kenreck’s scope. The writing team will be creating articles for DDB, adding to the legacy of classic publications Dungeon and Dragon for the fifth edition D&D world.
Q&A with D&D Beyond’s Adam Bradford
When I heard the Word of the Day my first thought was “This guy really loves giving away Legendary Bundles!” Real talk: it’s fun giving these away and you must love it right?
If I could give everything away, I certainly would. Unfortunately, we have to sustain a business to be able to allow D&D Beyond to become what I dream for it to be.
The character transfer and copy character features are both things I have seen myself people ask for on the forums. The moderators and dev team are very responsive and active there, and I encourage people to visit them myself with questions, concerns, wish lists, etc. How impactful is community feedback to DDB development?
If we’re not listening and responding to the community, then we aren’t accomplishing our core tenet – for the game, for the players. That’s been posted in our development area since the first day I pitched DDB internally, and it’s still the primary drive behind what we’re doing. We’re reaching a point where much of the community understands that we are dedicated to making DDB into something special, and that’s the trend we want to see. I look forward to being able to continue to reinforce that as we introduce more and more in the coming days, months, and years.
The usage data is always fascinating and insightful. What’s one piece of data that’s been surprising to see, in terms of DDB usage?
I am surprised about the popularity of warlocks on D&D Beyond. From the start, character counts showed that the “classic” classes of fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard were the most popular, and that made sense to me. With the advent of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and mostly the enormous impact of the Hexblade subclass, warlocks have overtaken clerics and will overtake wizards (likely) within the month. I think it’s a testament to the new flavor of the warlock class, but probably also to the fact that DDB is new for players and they’re trying new options using it.
Is the progress of development for DDB typical in the software industry? Is the response much greater than anticipated? The development of DDB is happening broadly and quickly so I’m wondering if a lot of things were planned from the beginning and if it’s accelerated because of strong positive response, or have a lot of brand new ideas surfaced since launch?
I had a vision for the D&D Beyond toolset from the beginning that extends for 5+ years (without exaggeration). Our roadmap is very well-defined – much more so than for any other product I’ve ever worked on – and we are intentional in our development approach. As we gather feedback from the community, the priorities sometimes shift, but they are still almost always things that we have always planned to do.
The DDB team is growing, especially in new directions after bringing Todd Kenreck aboard and now James Haeck, James Introcaso and Mike Shea. Are you surprised by these new directions or is broadly encompassing what DDB offers the vision from the beginning?
Our original content initiative was not initially planned, but came about after we established the core product. I saw Todd (and others) starting to do some incredibly engaging things in the community, and knew that DDB could provide a megaphone for those emerging voices.Todd started doing great video content, and the natural evolution was to go find those same types of voices for written article content. We codenamed the expansion “Rolling Stone,” because we want to bring that feel to D&D, a place to find great content on a regular basis. Looking at what all three of our announced (and a few unannounced) writers have in store is incredibly exciting and confirmation that this is a great direction for us to take.
I feel like the community response has turned a corner. There’s always outlying detractors for anything, but I see more and more people supporting and using DDB, and encouraging others to try it out for themselves. Did the dev team anticipate a level of pushback, and do you feel the acceptance and positive response is growing?
I agree that the reception and response has turned a corner. As a longtime player and D&D mega-fan, I could certainly expect and relate to the skepticism and criticisms that came up following our announcement and through launch. I am sensitive to buying content again, the fact that there were many false starts before us, and how it’s tough to get excited about anything these days because too many things don’t live up to the hype. All we could do was work hard to overcome the negativity by following through on our commitments, being transparent with the community, and demonstrate that we are in this for the long haul. We’re not “there” yet, but we’re heading in the right direction.
What can you tell us about the new endeavor with the writing team? Are we looking forward to Dragon Magazine Beyond in a manner of speaking? Will the content produced by this great team be available to anyone or subscription-only? Will the content contain DDB tooltips like the official WotC content?
Although it’s not a direct revival, we definitely are channeling the fun and feel of those glory days where Dragon and Dungeon were mainstays. All content the team creates will be available for free now and going forward, and yes, the articles will take advantage of any conveniences that DDB has introduced, such as tooltips.
As the toolset grows, are you discovering unforeseen things that need to be implemented before other goals are met? I imagine this is not an uncommon situation in software development. For example, I know the team wants to complete Twitch integration but do it right the first time. Are there related and maybe unanticipated tasks that need to be in place before this can move forward?
Twitch stream integration is a good example of the shifting of priorities that I mentioned earlier. We planned to do it earlier, but we de-prioritized it based on a large amount of community feedback that we’ve been acting on in the meantime. Things like finishing out the basics of homebrew and our in-progress major character sheet revamp. Good news is, we started meeting this week to talk about starting development on stream integration, so the ball is rolling and the community will start seeing much more on this soon.
What’s the most exciting development or direction the team hadn’t planned for?
The “Rolling Stone” initiative was unplanned and exciting. I’m happy we’re able to provide this kind of content for the community.
Do we have a date, or tentative date, when we will see the first piece of content from your new writing team?
We will reveal the date on the Dragon Talk livestream on March 5th. Stay tuned!
Q&A with DDB lead writer James Haeck
Can you give us any info about new up and coming items in we can expect from D&D Beyond?
Nothing specific to say right now, but people love the Tome of Beasts. We just released that book on Roll20, it would be great to get it on D&D Beyond.
It’s been a big year so far with the Tal’dorei Campaign Setting Eldritch Lair’s and now D&D beyond, are there any other big works in the fire for you that we can hope to see this year?
Moving away from what I’m doing with Kobold Press right now, D&D Beyond is the big undertaking on my plate right now. We’re going to be the “Rolling Stone” of D&D, publishing tons of content every week. I’m still feeling out how much I can bite off before I choke, but you’re going to be seeing a lot of news and features from me on that site very soon. When that happens, the D&D Beyond home page may look a little different… more suited to editorial content, like Kotaku or Gizmodo. Other than that, I was a contributor to a D&D project with Wizards of the Coast over the summer. I wish I could say more, but you’ll just have to wait for the big announcement.
Can you elaborate what you will be doing as lead writer at D&D Beyond? Will it be more content based as in source items or will it be more campaign orientated?
I’ll be writing a ton of content for D&D Beyond every week, including feature articles, recaps of Critical Role, and weekly news roundups. I’m most excited about the feature articles. They’ll tackle every topic I can think of, from how to build interesting magic items, to analyzing the design of controversial spells and monsters, to taking a close look at how good the much-maligned Beast Master ranger archetype actually is. You’ll see a lot of standalone articles, interspersed with a few series when I feel a topic deserves some real depth. I have the skeleton of a three-part series on dungeon design in my work-in-progress folder right now, for example, that I could easily extend into a six-parter with a few more topics to examine. You’ll definitely see content that dovetails with new releases like Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes and the two adventures codenamed “Broadway” and “Catacomb” that will launch next fall. D&D Beyond is uncommonly well-positioned to write hard-hitting and insightful articles, because not only do we have a direct line of communication with the D&D team, we also have some of the best RPG writers in the industry working with us. I can’t wait for you to see the articles James Introcaso, Mike Shea, and I produce in the coming weeks.
* Nerdarchy writer James Leslie contributed to this post.
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