All D&D Books To Be Available As PDFs

sckeener writes "DriveThruRPG has just announced that it will be selling all of WotC's 3.5 Edition D&D products in e-book format - over 90 books. Wizards has elected not to make the three core rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons available as eBooks at this time, but almost every other current Dungeons & Dragons title will be available from DriveThruRPG. New titles are scheduled to release one each weekday on DriveThruRPG: Some of the titles to be released first include: Book of Vile Darkness, Heroes of Horror, Arms and Equipment Guide, d20 Apocalypse, Champions of Ruin, Complete Arcane, Unearthed Arcana, Masters of the Wild and Book of Challenges. The books are still full price and are DRM protected." I'd be happier about this if they were even slightly discounted, but it's a good step. Heroes of Horror is worth every penny.

Comments

D&D Books in PDF is awesome.

[Kranfer]

I love this idea. While I like having my nice tidy bookshelves full of books, being able to have my laptop right there with a PDF to search for Rules or concepts would make people who are rule whores like me be able to find the specifics quickly without spending 20 minutes looking. I would like to see the PDFs discounted though, that would be a kicker to have to pay full price for the PDFs again just to have them on my laptop and not have to have 09571340987 books to look through. It would also be nice to see the Fantasy World books put out by Wizards to be in PDF too. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, etc.

Re:D&D Books in PDF is awesome.

[Lacota]

You don't need these. Aside from the lovely consept art, most of the D&D content can be found in the SRD (System Reference Document). Which encompasess the core rulebooks, as well as some of the fringe 3.5 content (Psionics, Divine feats, etc) You can download it in chunks or the whole thing. They are in unencumbered RTF files. Totally free too! In Wizard's own words, here is the missing content from the SRD: Q: What's missing from the SRD compared to the core D&D rulebooks? A: Mostly the "flavor" elements. There are no named gods, none of the spells have significant NPC names, there's no mention of Greyhawk, etc. You'll also note that there are no rules for character creation, for advancing characters in level, calculating experience, or anything else related to the topics forbidden by the d20 System Trademark Guide. Here is the D&D SRD: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/s rd35 Here is the D20 Modern SRD (MSRD): http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/m srd

Sweet!

[sunrise.kid]

No all I need are some friends to play with :-(

Boo

[giorgiofr]

There they go and take a perfectly cool idea and corrupt it. These books should be sold with a huge discount because lots of costs have been cut by distributing them online as PDFs. And don't they realize that the very value of a PDF is intrinsically lower than that of a hardbound book? I might as well just buy the real thing and be done with it.
Besides... PDF DRM? I've been given tons of supa-dupa-drm-protected PDFs in the past and usually they gave up in under 10 seconds. As usual, determined attackers will get what they want, while people who are obviously loyal to the brand and good customers get shafted by having their book usage restricted.
(OK, I have an axe to grind... I never really forgave them for the switch to d20... or for buying RTS at all)

Re:Boo

[Red Flayer]

"And don't they realize that the very value of a PDF is intrinsically lower than that of a hardbound book? "

Absolutely false. The cost of production might be lower, but the value is determined by the consumer, not directly by the characteristics of the item.

To me, the PDF would actually be MORE valuable, since I commute a long distance and would be able to read them on my laptop without lugging around some heavy tomes. Easier to tag, cross-reference, etc. How about indexing the books and being able to instantly (well, near-instantly, these are pdfs after all) call up all references to a certain spell in all the books?

In short, value is ascribed by the perceived utility of the object, not by production and distribution costs.

Love electronic distribution but...

[cgranade]

While I do love electronic distribution, trying to read something as long as the Spell Compendium in a PDF makes me shudder. I love being able to physically flip pages, pass the book around and read without a computer. There are certianally things that are nicer about an electronic distribution, but when they try to recreate a book on a computer, it loses a lot of what makes reading on a computer better. When I can do a spin-find, resize the window and have the text rewrap, change fonts for maximum readability, etc., then I'll give it some more thought. Until then, I prefer that my books are in fact books, and that my files stay delightfully DRM-free.

Re:Cool... but...

[lytlebill]

Actually, you can already get a ton of them as pdf. And not too expensive, either.

http://paizo.com/store/downloads/wizardsOfTheCoast /aDAndD2/

Here's how new gaming sessions will go...

[MagicDude]

DM - As you enter the dimly lit room, you see a creature lurking in the corner, laughing in the corner. As you approach it, things to dark for a second and then the entire room is illuminated with a bright azure light. You have encountered - A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!

Fighter - I punch the the screen with my fist.

Rogue - I sneak around back and attempt to unplug it.

Wizard - I cast "Bigby's Typing Hands" to press Ctrl-Alt-Del

Cleric - I cast "curse" on Bill Gates

Sorceress - I summon Tech Support

Saving Costs...

[MrLizard]

A lot of people here seem to be sans clue about the 'costs' of physical books. Books are sold to distributors at about 25% of retail cost (and there has to be a small profit on that), so, if you just cut out the physical costs of the books, you will save about 15-20 percent. Furthermore, if PDFs are significantly cheaper than physical books, this undercuts retailers, who get angry, and stop ordering the product. If brick-and-morter stores stop buying, this cuts out the main source for new players entering the hobby. Keeping the physical distribution chain alive is key to the long-term survival of the genre.