All D&D Books To Be Available As PDFs 179
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.
D&D Books in PDF is awesome. (Score:5, Insightful)
Love electronic distribution but... (Score:5, Insightful)
News? (Score:1, Insightful)
PDF D&D New?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Psst - You can break the rules!
Really!
If everyone in your gaming group agrees a particular rule sucks - ignore it. If you hate using spell memorization rather than per-level MP (my own biggest peeve), just use MP and to hell with memorization. If you think a fixed exp per kill leads to mindless killing sprees and dungeon crawling, make better use of roleplaying-based advancement.
Perfect for video games? (Score:3, Insightful)
About the pricing and a few questions... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you ever go into a store, how many copies of the DnD books does the store carry?
Have you considered how much of the store's capital is tied up in those books as a percentage of their total inventory?
How about the square footage to display the books?
Now how do you expect the store's owner to feel if those books were available as eBooks for one fourth of the hardcopy retail price? (Game stores generally do not have the option of returning unsold books for full credit the way bookstores do)
Generally speaking the surviving game stores are on pretty tight margins - it would not take much to tip them into the red. WOTC sells lots more than DnD to those stores - doing things that may put their customers out of business is generally a Bad Thing.
So, while it may look like simple greed to you, there are other considerations that enter into the pricing.
Here's the deal. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they remove the crippleware and sell them as straight PDFs, I'll pay 1/2 of the price of a hardbound copy.
If they sell crippleware versions at the same price of the hardbound copy, then I'll wait until someone cracks the DRM and posts them on the internet, and I'll get them for free.
That's how it works. It would be refreshing if some publishers realized that, but it's no big deal from my end.
Another media company fails to get it (Score:3, Insightful)
What they don't get is that I download copies to supplement the physical copies I own, so I can look up something on the road from a book I don't have as I prepare the next session for my group. They are seeing it as a replacement, as it costs as much as a book.
I'm not planning to pay as much as a book costs to get something that isn't as good as one. Back to limewire for me. But their quick acceptance of digital distribution, unlike that of most media companies, leaves me hope that they will get it before 4.0...
nobody
Re:Perfect for video games? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perfect for video games? (Score:3, Insightful)
As an old-school (1977 blue-box) life-long RPGer, I disagree on several points. 3E rulset (or 3.5E, same thing, really ought to be 3.1 from a versioning standpoint) is substantially cleaner and more sensible than any previous DND. 1E/2E multiclass rules were annoying and arbitrary, and dualclass was just plain absurd.
Your post was the first I heard of mercurial sword in a DND context (I don't own any 3E books, just read the SRD. Also, I haven't played PNP in years, and if I did I'd use Fuzion, FATE, or some such) but dissing it out of hand reveals you as a gamer with two significant flaws:
FWIW, BG2 was actually a hybrid v2.1 ruleset, with sorcerer and other features added from 3E. And like most CRPGs, it was good because of the story content. BG2 under 3.5E (or even the ruleset of, say, Deus Ex) would have been just as good, or better.
Re:Saving Costs... (Score:2, Insightful)
As to my unfamiliarty with the gaming market...I've been actively writing in it for six years. I'm well aware the b&m market is dying, but it's not dead yet, and anything which can be done to revive it...or just keep it on life support for as long as possible...is a good thing. If the hobby is reduced entirely to PDFs (of which I've also authored a few), there will be no new blood. You have to know you want something to look for it online.
Reason for DRM, same price, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree though, it's not worth it. The solution is to not buy it.
I am sure that people have been demanding a PDF release for quite a while. This is pretty much the only way to do it. Release it as restricted PDF to cut down on "sharing" of the files is obvious but why make it the same price as the paper material? Simply to not piss off the small game vendors.
Yes the local RPG outlets are usually Mom & Pop style stores owned and operated by fans. They have a few rooms in back where you can get together with other players and play a game; if you need more players or are looking for a group, they offer a bulletin board. This is where new players learn how to play.
They have been slowly going the way of the video game arcade. The difference is that video games could easily move right into the home. RPGs, a social experience, aren't so lucky. Role-playing cannot survive in an online only world. I've tried dozens of times including currently with WoW but it isn't the same. It's like online poker; the mechanics are there but the social aspect is gone.
Now I personally hate D&D, as well as the whole D20 system, but it does bring new blood into the hobby. (So does LARPing but that's another story) RPG based video games also do but afterwards players need a place to meet up with others. These game stores are exactly that.
If people purchase their books and resources online exclusively, the struggling game stores lose even more money and close. Once they close, the gamers either play in their homes or leave the hobby entirely. Either way, there is no new blood infused into the hobby. No people to buy the RPG books be it printed or PDF and the game industry suffers.
So if you like the hobby, go support your local game store. Buy your overpriced splat books there instead of online. Have a chat with the owner, he's probably there. I don't think that his story will differ much from what you've just read here.
Re:Perfect for video games? (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason ToEE failed was because Atari should never have produced it and drove it into the ground like they do with just about everything they've touched lately.
In the meantime the fans have gone on to completely draw new maps for that engine and create all new content and are well on their way to releasing B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.
They also released a community patch and fixed up a number of issues in the original game. Honestly I enjoyed ToEE immensely and found the combat to be amazing in it compared to BG.
Sell book + PDF together (Score:2, Insightful)
Set up WotCbooks.com. Sell books on their at cover price. When you buy the book, you're given an instant PDF download, and the normal off-the-shelf version is shipped out to you.
I defy anyone to find a flaw in that plan which doesn't exist in the current system. No, the fact that you can't double dip customers isn't a flaw.