Wizards of the Coast has revealed a video game DLC-style pre-order table to explain the bundle options fans have when pre-ordering the new Dungeons and Dragons core books, and to highlight the “savings” available by purchasing the larger bundles. But to find the actual price of the bundles, you’ll need to head over to the DnD Beyond store.
This is going to be a snarky one, reader. While we eagerly await the new DnD books on the DnD release schedule, seeing charts like this immediately makes us skeptical about the value of pre-orders, both as consumer advocates and industry observers.
While tabletop roleplaying games tend to be a refuge from the digital world, there’s no denying that digital DnD is a huge part of the game for many players. Wargamer’s DnD expert Mollie Russell is actually increasingly optimistic that the official virtual DnD tabletop should be such a big part of One DnD. But we’re annoyed that some video game nonsense has been dragged into the mix.
The three pre-order tiers are, in ascending order of content (and cost), a digital version of the Player’s Handbook ($29.99), a digital and print bundle ($79.98), and a bundle of all three physical and digital books ($179.97). All come with a few digital goodies, like digital DnD dice sets, frames and backgrounds, and early access to online content.
There’s a $20 discount between the digital-only and digital-and-print bundles – or to look at it another way, if you buy the print edition, you can pay $10 extra to get the digital edition as well. We’re not going to argue that digital goods should be free – they take effort to design, even if they’re nearly free to reproduce – but it’s a shame that fans who miss the pre-order window don’t get the same discount.
The bundle with all three core books and digital editions is discounted by $60, so again, you’re paying $10 per digital edition in this bundle. For committing to a $180 pre-order, you’ll also receive three additional digital dice sets, 24 additional frames, 10 additional backdrops, the ‘Dragons of D&D’ digital artbook, and a digital golden dragon mini for the upcoming official DnD virtual tabletop.
If you were going to pre-order anyway, cool, you get some extra stuff. But is this tempting? Would you buy these extras separately? Or are they more like the digital trinkets and cheap resin figurines that are bolted onto video games, partly to inflate the perceived value of the core product and partly to ensure that the customer can’t figure out what the core product actually is from the matrix of multiple different launch editions?
This Player’s Handbook DLC chart isn’t exactly annoying, but as DnD continues to become more digital, we have to wonder: is this just the beginning? Will there be multiple editions and optional extras?
“Marketing” in the broad sense of the word means identifying a market group of potential customers, producing something that meets their wants or needs, and getting them to buy it. It is a long-term strategy that requires you to clarify, not hide, the value of a product and to understand that a customer who has been tricked into buying something will not remain a customer forever.
The digital shift could be a brilliant thing. The feature in DnD Beyond that allowed you to purchase only the parts of a book relevant to your character’s DnD class or race used digital technology to give consumers a unique advantage. But since that feature was removed without explanation in a recent update, we’re allowed to be a little skeptical about how this is all going to play out.