Wizards of the Coast has unveiled a video game DLC-style pre-order chart to explain the bundle options fans have when pre-ordering the new Dungeons and Dragons core books and to highlight the “savings” available from purchasing larger packages. But to find the actual price of the packs, you have to go to the DnD Beyond storefront.
This is going to be weird, reader. While we look forward to new DnD books on the DnD release schedule, seeing this kind of chart immediately makes us skeptical of the value of pre-orders, both as consumer advocates and industry watchers.
While tabletop RPGs are usually a refuge from the digital world, there’s no denying that digital DnD is a huge part of multiplayer gaming. Wargamer’s DnD expert Mollie Russell is actually increasingly optimistic about the official virtual DnD table that is supposed to be such a big part of One DnD. But we’re pissed that the crap from the video game world has come along with it.
The three pre-order levels are, in order of increasing content (and cost), a single digital version of the Player’s Handbook ($29.99), a digital and print bundle ($79.98), and a of all three physical and digital books ($179.97). They all come with some digital doodads, like digital DnD dice sets, frames and backgrounds, and early access to online content.
There’s a $20 discount between the digital-only bundle and the digital-and-print bundle – or to look at it another way, if you buy the print edition, you can pay a $10 top-up to get the digital edition as well. We won’t argue that digital goods should be free – they take effort to design, even if they’re almost free to reproduce – but it’s hard that fans who miss the pre-order window won’t have the same discount.
The bundle of all three core books and digital editions is $60 off – so, again, you’re paying $10 per digital edition in this bundle. For closing a pre-order of $180, you’ll also receive three additional digital dice sets, 24 additional frames, 10 additional backgrounds, the Dragons of D&D digital art book, and a digital gold dragon mini for the upcoming official tabletop virtual DnD.
If you were to order anyway, well, you’ll get a few extras. But is this supposed to be seductive? Would you buy these supplements yourself? Or are they more like digital sculptures and cheap resin statues stuck in video games, there partly to inflate the perceived value of the core product and partly to ensure that the customer can’t tell what the essence of the product actually is from matrix of many different launch editions.
This DLC chart for the Player’s Handbook isn’t particularly badass, but with DnD set to go more digital, we have to wonder – is this just the beginning? Will multiple editions and optional extras be added?
“Marketing,” in the broadest sense, means defining a market group of potential customers, producing something that meets their wants or needs, and making sure they can buy it. It’s a long-term strategy that requires you to clarify the value of a product, not hide it, and it understands that a customer tricked into buying something won’t stay a customer forever.
Digital change can be a great thing. The feature in DnD Beyond that allowed you to purchase only those parts of a book that were relevant to your character’s DnD class or DnD race used digital technology to provide a unique benefit to consumers. But since this feature was inexplicably removed from a recent update, allow us some skepticism about how this will all turn out.