D&D Beyond Twitch Extension - Looking for Feedback
Today we are opening up the D&D Beyond Twitch Extension to everyone! The team has been hard at work on this and we are thrilled to finally get it into the hands of streamers and viewers. We set out with two core goals: Make the experience for new viewers watching D&D for the first time better, and making the setup for new streamers starting to stream D&D easier and faster than ever before!
Key Features
As players update their hit points, add conditions, and equip new items, viewers will see these changes on the stream in real-time. After initial setup, streamers can be hands-off as the extension does the work!
Viewers no longer have to wait for the streamer to cycle through the display of information about a character. Viewers can mouse over the overlay and click on any character to see their stats, skills, and more!
Streamers can control how the overlay displays, including whether the bar shows on the left or right or if it displays on mouseover only. Choose which characters to show and hide from a given campaign or customize which information about characters appears around their portraits!
Install and Use on Your Stream
- Head to the D&D Beyond Twitch Extension page over on Twitch and click the Install button.
- Click the “Configure” button, and follow the widget to select your campaign and players!
- Note: The account you stream with will need to be a part of your campaign here on D&D Beyond
- Once installed and setup, head over to your “My Extensions” tab on your dashboard page.
- Select the “Activate” dropdown under the D&D Beyond Twitch Extension and set it to “Set as Overlay 1”.
- From here on, you will be able to update any settings on your stream dashboard in real time!
Let Us Know What You Think
Make sure to come back and let us know how everything went! We want to know how your first time setup went, if there was enough options for you, and if your viewers enjoyed the experience! Let us know if there is anything else you are looking for in a Twitch Extension that can help improve your D&D Streams over in our Mega-Thread for feedback!
I realize that it isn't the purpose of a twitch stream extension. But do you realize, if you could stream privately, just how close this is to providing a medium to run online games?
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Neat. Now what do you have for those of us that don’t stream but want the same kind of live-updated campaign dashboard while we play?
Cool extension, y'all. :) I look forward to checking out my favorite streams when they activate this integration.
@adas and @Roger_Bannister, during the Q&A, Adam said they were exploring a digital DM Screen/non streaming version with many more features, possibly for next year :)
Cool! Thanks. Looking forward to that functionality!
Thanks for the info. I'll have to catch the stream at some point.
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Great stuff. Now that this is out of the way, maybe they can go back to finishing putting all the info into the numerous Action panel sidebars THAT ARE STILL EMPTY MONTHS AFTER LAUNCH
A great expansion that no one asked for. Why don’t we have accessible character sheets yet? Why am I having to use third party apps for that functionality? This should be the priority for this app. Not a feature that many people will likely never use. If you all can’t figure out how to make it work, hire the fight club guys because they managed this year’s ago...
The character sheets are perfectly accessible. What exactly is your complaint?
Yeah, I don't really get the complaints from Legacy_of_Lokk and TragicCurse. All of those features work just fine, and this was one of D&D Beyond's objectives from the very beginning, being a part of Curse / Twitch.
1) I never said I had a problem with them working on the Twitch integration. I understand they are owned by Twitch.
2) No, the Action panel sidebars don’t “work just fine”. A great number of them are missing the information that should be in there. Letting someone tap to pointlessly open an empty window is a basic UX failure. The sidebars on the Features panel “work just fine”, so it’s not a challenging problem, just a matter of priority. I’d prefer they finished off areas to a usable state before they move on to others. That’s all.
Not from the app they are not.
Those features work great if you’re online on the website. They are nonexistent on the app.
The character sheets are not accessible on the app at all. You can only access them via the website.
The app is in beta and is worked in by a separate team.
I understand where you're coming from since I don't have use for the twitch extension either. But many others do (either for their own streams or ones they like to watch). And I believe it when they say it was a requested feature. I also believe them when they say they respond to user feedback. Because they have demonstrated it quite frequently in other areas. The twitch extension actually got mentioned way earlier in development and then fell off the radar. When asked about it the DDB folks said that they had put it on the backburner due to user feedback.
I do think it is low-hanging fruit for them because of the company. So I'm sure that has an influence. But I would expect it to.
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Also worth mentioning that the character sheet is very functional on mobile and I suspect the app will mirror it. So the only advantage of the app versus the website is the offline functionality. Which would be great. But it's not like you can't access the character sheet on mobile.
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But that’s the whole point. A lot of the places I play do not necessarily have access to WiFi. This should be an easy fix
There are 100s of thousands of people who watch D&D on Twitch every week so yes people will want it. This extension was shown on the first day D&D Beyond was announced during the Stream of Annihilation. I don't know the facts but the number of people who don't have access to WiFi or cellular is probably on the smaller side.
When you say easy fix... are you talking about a dynamic character sheet like the online version that allows you to make any changes you desire on the fly, including all of the character options in the builder and customisation on just about any item/spell/action etc? And one that syncs up all changes perfectly when you go back online? That's a monumental task, you'd basically need a clone of the DDB web server on your phone with a huge amount of code and data in it. I can't think of any major web services that work particularly well offline (including the Google ones, and they've been working on it for years).
Alternatively—and I'm not saying it's a perfect solution by any means—when you're expecting to go offline, then download a PDF of your character sheet and you can edit it on your phone or tablet with the Acrobat app while you play. You will need to update your online sheet when you get back to civilisation.
The sheet is coming to the mobile app. It's the next thing after listings, which they just added. So at this point it's just frustration with the timing. Which is ok to express, since it's the kind of feedback I'm sure the team wants. But it's misunderstanding the process a bit to think character sheet versus twitch extension is a zero sum game or that the character sheet is a quick add. Part of the delay I believe had to do with waiting for the online sheet to be finalized.
Anyway. It's all coming. It's just never as fast as you'd want it.
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