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Current D&D Products in PDF form

Posted by Zonk on from the legal-pdfs-mean-designers-can-eat dept.

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."

8 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by N473 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...now if only I played RPGs, I could carry the books on my Palm, yay!

  2. Overprice by eviltypeguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    $34.95 USD for a PDF? When I know I can get a real, physical book at the same price or cheaper? WTF?

    1. Re:Overprice by Babbster · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Depends on how bad the DRM is, and how good the PDF is. I can see where a P&P player would appreciate having a library of fully searchable guides on a flash RAM card. I know it would have been handy back in the day when I'd lug five or more big books from game to home to game again. That's carrying capacity that could have been used for Mountain Dew and Ho-Hos.

    2. Re:Overprice by msuzio · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So... as usual, a poor understanding of the economics of things dooms what could have been a great idea.

      Oh, and not being able to copy it among my various machines dooms this too. I do my session notes and creative work on my desktop machine. Then I bring my laptop to the sessions with me... Actually, at this point, pretty much my entire group has a laptop or desktop at the table when we play. So am I going to buy a hardcopy version I can pass around to people as needed, or a software version that I can't? Hmm...

      I think what I'm actually going to do is buy the hardcover, and download the scan of the same book on my P2P network of choice!

      Oh wait, that's what I already do. :-)

      I call this idea DOA, but let's see how it plays out.

      --
      It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
  3. Monte Cook by lexarius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When they start pricing their non-physical versions like Monte does his, I will buy more Wizards books. That isn't to say I don't buy Wizards books now, but I mostly limit it to books that I'm getting a lot of use out of. If I'm just browsing I grab a copy from P2P. Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed was only $5 (there was some sort of special because I bought some other PDFs) so I bought it. For $5 I support one of my favorite designers, avoid doing something illegal, and get much better quality.

  4. For those looking for legit non-drm'ed versions... by (H)elix1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For those looking for legit copies of old AD&D books, check out the old 'Core Rules' CD. Came with a bunch of utilities, a mediocre character generator, and a bunch of the manuals in rich text format! There were other things on it as well, but having the tables in RTF format was worth the CD alone. I don't care if it is 'simple to remove' DRM like some other industries are promoting right now, I really do not want to screw with copy protection on stuff I shell out money for.

    --
    +++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
  5. Kinda miss real books by gamgee5273 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Call me odd... I started playing D&D back in 1980 or 1981 and the cool things about the game were the books. It was almost arcane in and of itself to be dragging a DMG, Monster Manual, and Player's Handbook to and from friends' houses.

    Now you can drop it on a laptop? I applaud the advance in technology, don't get me wrong (Save your backs, kids! Don't stuff all those books in your backpacks!). However, it just strikes me that something is lost, just like the first time, many years ago, I saw a computer printed dungeon map as opposed to a hand-drawn one on hex or graph paper...

    I feel old.

  6. Dead Products, White Wolf by Mechanik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Game publishers should really do this kind of thing when they kill off a game line...

    Take White Wolf for example. This year they killed off the entire line of previously existing World of Darkness games so that they could "reset" the whole world and start fresh. There are many similarities between the old games and the new games which have risen from their ashes (e.g. Vampire: The Requiem is very much like the previous Vampire: The Masquerade). However, there have been a LOT of changes, not just in rules, but primarily in setting.

    This has a lot of WW purists cheesed off... "Where is my favourite clan? How could you get rid of them and keep clan X!", etc. There are a lot of people that would be happy to just keep continuing playing the old game, and that also includes people who like the new game as well.

    Problem is, now all of the books for the old games are out of print. If you already have the books, well, you're golden for now... until they wear out (and yes, if you actually use them regularly they DO wear out quickly). For now, yeah, you could buy them online, or at your local game store, or whatever, but there is a finite supply. Eventually, they will be either impossible to find or too expensive to buy. At that point, the game will start to die as new players can't get books, etc.

    IMHO, some fixed time after they kill off a game, I think they should just take every book that was ever released for it, and jam them onto a CD as PDFs. Sell that sucker for $20 or whatever. Then at least the game will live on forever in theory.

    Luckily, I have a copy of the Vampire Revised CD-ROM that they came out with a few years ago, which has the core books on it. But, it doesn't have all the books, and it really really sucks for anything but a quick fact check as the viewable area of the pages is so damned small. A so-so solution at best I'm afraid :-(

    Mechanik