Would you keep playing without DDI?

I feel it's only a matter of time until WotC announces that they will take the DDI tools offline, at least for 4th Edition. What would you do if that happened?

I think my games would probably die overnight. Just about all my players use the online CB, and I use the Compendium a LOT when preparing for adventures. I own zero books, and while I can easily obtain them I'm not interested in leafing through page after page looking for a certain power, feat or paragon path (not to mention a lot has been erratad as well).

Losing DDi wouldn't effect our group at all. I'm the only one who even HAS a DDi subscription and that's only because I want the complete collection of 4E material and because I feel paying WotC for the content that's being added to my offline builder is the right thing to do.

Even if I lost my offline builder it wouldn't change much for the groups I'm in because I'm the only one who even uses it and even I don't use the actual sheets it generates. All that would happen in that case is I'd probably default to more common powers/feats while I slowly build a more complete list for myself.

Well Svendj, there is always the offline CB which is still floating around, via torrents (surprisingly enough). I would suggest getting that.

There is also an offline 4e Compendium I hear. Not sure about that one though.

Yea. I'm still in the process of transferring everything from the compendium into OpenText Documents in an attempt to build PDFs for personal use, everything we need from character sheets to monster stat blocks I've figured out how to make in Open Office, so as long as I have access to the compendium long enough to get all the errata'd material, shouldn't be a problem. Worse comes to worse there's always the complete errata file and going through the books.

I think I might try and fiddle with my character sheets a bit and put em up here for use... Anyone know someplace simple to host a rar file?

Our campaign (and future 4E campaigns) will continue on, unchanged. I'll miss the online tools. But I have the offline builder and I'm looking for the alleged offline compendium (hint, hint?). I've no interest whatsoever in the "next iteration" of the game as it seems to be to be going back to the version of the game I used to play. I don't want that as it feels like a step backward. So my books and my computer will still continue to work long after the DDI tools go dark. I wasn't really anticipating it to happen before next GenCon, but with the recent announcement about Dragon Mag and Dungeon Adventures I have doubts it all will make it even that far.

My group already plays without DDI.

That's a tough one.

I've got the offline Compendium but I haven't installed it yet. Ditto for CBLoader. What I am lacking, though, is the monster builder. Then again, as long as I have power2ool.com to make pretty stat blocks that shouldn't be a big issue either.

I would prefer to have continued legal access to the DDi tools but, if WotC want to be dicks about it, I like 4E enough to make the other arrangements I described.

In reality, the biggest bugbear is the Character Builder. 4E is so easy for DMs - although having the Compendium to find items to include in treasure etc... is a great boon - but there are so many options for players that it really needs character building software. That's not to say it can't be done by hand, but my players would struggle I think after being spoiled for a few years with the software.

Scrivener of Doom wrote:

In reality, the biggest bugbear is the Character Builder. 4E is so easy for DMs - although having the Compendium to find items to include in treasure etc... is a great boon - but there are so many options for players that it really needs character building software. That's not to say it can't be done by hand, but my players would struggle I think after being spoiled for a few years with the software.

This is one case where I actually really appreciate the paired down feat lists from HotFL/HotFK. While they did away with racial and class feats that would help push specific aspects of a build, it is a manageable list of feats that will work with pretty much any character. I actually adjusted some of the older feats (like Toughness and Durable) that appear in the Essentials books but still showed up in the general Heroic list so that they appear with the other Player Essential Feats in my builder specifically because they are some of the solidest (albeit not the flashiest or most flavorful) choices in the game.

Yeah, working from the feat lists in HoFL/HotFK is probably the best way to handle a character builder-free future for 4E. Thanks for the suggestion, @Chris24601.

Well I know I could play 4e without a CB... But at Epic levels... The bookkeeping would become immensely annoying and all the different sources for things being used would be more bothersome than anything. I say just using the books to play, I would probably only wanna run heroic and paragon tier games with just the books.

Nothing wrong with limiting to Heroic/Paragon at all. We MAY end up doing that with one of campaigns simply due to the fact that nothing in the particular campaign world really feels like it should be epic. The campaign will likely continue for quite some time (a lot of it has turned towards the politics and efforts of managing the PC's respective kingdoms), the characters will just stop advancing at level 20.

Another campaign has totally got an epic feel to it because the party's paragon tier exploration of what caused the fall of the gods is going to give way to the PC's ultimately replacing them as new gods. In this case, we're going to be limiting the epic destiny choice for the PC's to Demigod since the end goal for the campaign is pretty specific.

Honestly, the biggest problem with Epic tier for us is the dearth of official support for it (another of those abandoned things you were lamenting in that other thread). When its a pain just to find a single non-elite monster over level 26 or so it's a problem if your GM isn't good at making their own.

Well, we have the official announcement that the last DDI update will be March 2014. I'm wondering how long it will take for them to announce that the tools will be taken down.

I have the offline CB, but I need to migrate to it still.

As for the offline compendium, I found it and installed it. Although it seems to be a bit buggy. Right now the skills don't map right from the data base and there are a few other entries I've run across that are either blank or display data from something else.

But it is still better than not having one at all. And I'm still looking for pointers on how to make it work properly (and get it running under MacOS as opposed to the Windows Virtual Machine I have).

But we're definitely still going on with our campaign. And I have a new campaign I'm planning after the Paragon Tier campaign I'm currently running.

I've never used the online tools since I've kept the offline tools. It'll make me sad to see the online stuff die....but it won't have an impact on my game.