Current D&D Products in PDF form

sckeener writes "The latest Wizards of the Coast D&D product Frostburn has also been release as a PDF. There are also older D&D products in PDF format at RPGNow. The current products are being tested at Drivethrurpg.com with the catch being Adobe DRM locks on the PDFs."

Comments

This is the future

[miyako]

I'm the head artist for the brood D20 Modern series Year of the Zombie, and we are releasing all of our books as both PDF and Dead Tree versions. PDF is really where most of the gaming books are headed. One nice thing that this allows is for companies to sell short campaigns for a few bucks each as PDFs, which is nice because they are often short enough to be resonalbly printed off by the DM, but it would not be reasonable to do a full print run for the books.
The nice thing about this setup is that it allows startup companies to sell their work without having to go through all the trouble of getting publishers to publish a book, and it allows established companies to put out short books.
PDF versions of books also are nice for people who run MUDs or games on IRC, where it is often more convenient to have a pdf on the computer.
While these are not the types of materials that one would want to get for reading on a PDA on long flights, there are many advantages of having electronic distributions of gaming text. [obligitory self-whoring]
Year of the zombie should be released soon, anyone interested in zombie themed D20 modern games should check it out
[/obligitory self-whoring]

Enworld link

[sckeener]

Here's a link to a comment made on Enworld by Sigil
below is a cut&paste of the comment. It should be noted that I disagree with his views on DRM and the price of Frostburn. I am fine with both. I just think his comment sums up the pluses of PDFs in a table top RPG environment.

Sigil:
Speaking from my POV as an avid PDF consumer (though since I am also a PDF publisher, you may wish to take it with a grain of salt; I am trying as best I can not to bring publisher bias into the equation, but in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you I write PDFs too - though I should also tell you that my policies as a PDF publisher are essentially governed by, "if I were buying this product, what would I want?").
Quote:
Originally Posted by rowport
Hey, there! I am glad that you posted about this, because I am curious of the opinion of a true pdf fan: do you think that pricing the electronic document the same as the MSRP for the hardback volume is reasonable?
In two words, "{expletive edited for Eric's Grandma}, NO!"

Traditional (non-DRMed) PDFs have the following advantages over print products (in no particular order):
1 - They don't take up shelf space - when you have a collection of over 500 PDFs, as I do (at least, I'm pretty sure it's approaching 500) you appreciate not having to find room for 500 books.

2 - "Take only the parts you want" - As an extension of the above, you need only print small sections of the PDF that are relevant to you instead of lugging the whole thing around to your games. Alternatively, a DM can print only those portions of a PDF he wants his players to see.

3 - Cut and Paste - Again, related to "take the parts you want" but very nice for quickly pulling material from a dozen sources to create a customized "sourcebook" for your PC.

4 - Searchability - The "search" feature of a PDF lets you almost instantly find that nasty little rule to stump (or be) a rules-lawyer.

5 - Backups - PDFs are easier - and much cheaper - to "back up" in case of catastrophe than traditional print items. In some cases (such as RPGNow.com), you have the ability to send yourself re-download links of products you've already paid for in case of true catastrophe (e.g., the house burns down - at RPGNow.com, you can simply use a few clicks to regenerate your PDF collection for free).

6 - Cost - In theory, part of paying for a print product includes the cost of printing, binding, warehousing, and distributing - including the cost of materials (paper, ink, & glue); a PDF needs not include these costs (IIRC, a good rule of thumb is that publishers get around 25% of the MSRP for each book and that's BEFORE they have to account for printing costs). Of course, Economics 101 tells you that the price of a good has NOTHING to do with the cost of production and everything to do with how much people are willing to pay (soft drinks, for example, have HUGE profit margins for this very reason).

7 - Instant, Free Updates - Some PDF vendors update their products for free... again, because the cost of distribution, et al, is negligible... don't you wish you had gotten a free 3.5 PHB if you had bought the 3.0 PHB, for example?

It should be noted that DRMed PDFs often (not always) take away some of these advantages. In particular:

3 - Cut & Paste - Most Drivethrurpg PDFs limit your cut & paste ability to 10 cut/pastes in a 10-day period. This doesn't do away with the utility entirely, but does mitigate it considerably, as most people (a) don't want to be bothered rationing their cutting/pasting and (b) in my experience, want to cut lots of small sections rather than a few large ones.

5 - Backups - As has been discussed before, some of Adobe's limits (6 computers) can come into play; also, a computer without an internet connection (e.g., a laptop) can't be used at all to display things... not to mention the trouble with remembering

Re:Grab them through official channels...

[ivan256]

First of all, I don't know where you think you're going to find a library that stocks recent RPG modules and campaign settings. Assuming you can find one, you'd have found a library that is in the minority.

Secondly, just because you can get the book out of the library doesn't make it legal or ethical for you to make a permanent copy the book for yourself out of the library copy rather than buying your own.