Will 5e products, both WOTC and 3rd party, be available after One is released?
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Will 5e products, both WOTC and 3rd party, be available after One is released?
Yes.
WotC has no control over 3rd party products.
WotC has stated that D&D One is not a new edition of D&D and will be fully compatible with the 5E products published to date. Some products might be superseded and no longer available for sale, but that would only make sense if they replaced it with a new product (i.e. Volos and Tome of Foes being replaced by MoM), and those who have bought a superseded item will always have access and the ability to redownload it from FG (per legal license SmiteWorks has with WotC).
I noticed R20 has "limited time only" on their 5e products... and then FG is having a sale now so I was wondering... With KP also having a sale I was wondering if they were going to pull their own 5e stuff...
FG has something on sale every week, not always WotC items, but often enough. No idea about Roll20.
Oh I know... but the WotC sale followed the normal Monday sale. Then KP had an additional sale on top of that... Just odd timing with the R20 notice... Coincidence does happen though but still worth asking the question... I'd been eyeballing that KP bundle for a bit but was holding out till the next big sale. Thinking maybe KP might not offer it up that late if they're pulling their 5e products.
That just means that the sale will last for a limited time, not that the product is available for a limited time. E.g. Curse of Strahd is 25% off for a short while, after which it will go back to the regular price.
"For a limited time only" is pretty standard wording on any kind of sales/discount, not just Roll20's. It has no additional meaning.
KP will be transitioning everything to their ORC licensed 5e called "Core Fantasy Roleplaying", it was original code named Black Flag.
Edit: They actually went with Black Flag, evidently it was way more popular than Core Fantasy. So now it's BFRD
I was watching a YouTube video yesterday on the DnDBeyondVTT, and an interesting point was raised about it and D&D One. Once their VTT is released, why would they bother to license other competitors to release official One products on their VTT. Seems logical to me.
For one, their 3D VTT is far from being released, at the peace they are going with their development it will release several months after OneD&D will be out - so in the meantime, WoTC will want to make money out of the other VTTs. Moreover, the 2D VTT that they just released (Maps for D&DBeyond) is still so basic that very few users are using it now, and again it will take them a very long time before they reach a similar level of usability and features as FGU, Roll20, Foundry.
And finally, that's a very simplistic view. The reality is that people who have invested a lot of time and money into FGU or Roll20 or Foundry, buying modules, extensions, mods, plugins, etc will be very reluctant to abandon all the investment made and will likely stay on the platform that they have learnt to use and adapted to their needs. These people will likely not use either the 3D or 2D VTT, and will represent a lost income to WoTC if they stop licensing their product to competitor VTTs. Keep in mind that WoTC's new VTT is entering the VTT market late, after it's already peaked, so it's at a disadvantage compared to the others. WoTC and Hasbro are interested in making money, and the most logical thing is to not stop licensing products until they can be 100% sure that users of the existing VTTs can be easily won over to their VTT.
Let's also not forget that they faced a huge and dangerous backlash when they tried to change the SRD license terms to something more walled and locked it, and felt that they needed to backtrack most of it to avoid losing their market position; a decision to stop licensing content to other VTTs would elicit another similar backlash, and they can't afford another incident like that because you can backtrack and promise to change ONCE, but when it happens twice you lose the trust of your market.
Because they make money off of sales on other platforms. I don't doubt they'd love to force all those purchases through their own VTT, I just don't think it's likely they do it at the drop of a hat. I'm sure there'll be plenty of things only available on their platform to drive sales there, but I think it doesn't make sense for them to tell their customers on FG, Roll20, etc, "we don't want your money, go play a different game."