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.

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)

Good Idea

[Thyamine]

This is certainly a good idea since a large number of computer geeks (yes, admit it.. you are, and so am I) play, and we're the most likely to adopt e-books or books in PDF form. However I personally prefer to have a book in physical form for all things, so unless there's some motiviation to purchase the book in this format (financial or otherwise) I'm not going to be doing this.

The one benefit that is very clear though, is the ability to purchase books and have them immediately, and not be limited by what the bookstore happens to have in stock today.

Re:Cool... but...

[Kranfer]

I don't think you're trolling and I agree. 3rd Edition is perfect rules for Video Games. I always liked the 2nd Edition rules with THAC0 and such. Hopefully they WILL put 1st and 2nd edition into PDFs. I would definately buy them.

PDF, eh?

[pla]

Cool, so the DRM comes pre-cracked, and these should appear online within a month or so. ;-)


On a more seriously note - I think RPG rulebooks work better in physical form. Granted, you can't drag an entire shelf of books around with you, but the players guide, DMs guide, and whatever setting-specific guide applies to your campaign, doesn't really take that much effort - The Dew and snacks for the evening probably weigh more than the books you need.

And as for looking up a particular rule... C'mon, admit it folks - you have the rulebooks all but memorized, and just need to check whether half-ogre gets a 15% or 20% racial modifier to damage with a double-handed flail...


Sigh... And after writing the above, guess what captcha I get? "losers". Not so subtle hint, oh Gods of Slashdot?

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.

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.

Re:Perfect for video games?

[tbannist]

I think that's obvious, there are three groups of players who like 3rd Edition: newbies, fanbois and powergamers. It suffers from 2 steps forward, one step back syndrome. Most of the game mechanic changes are reasonably good, I always liked the more intricate miniature rules for combat, for example. However, I loathe the new multi-classing rules, prestige classes are terrible, and some of the weapons are just retarded. Spiked Chain? Mercurial Sword? Cabers?

Couldn't stand the new system.

Roll your own

[sckeener]

(I'm buzzing. I always love it when I submit something that is accepted.)

I recently looked into rolling my own PDF copies of my gaming books. Here is the thread on Enworld [enworld.org].

For those that don't want to click on that link, I basically talked to 3 IP lawyers about how to do it. It all comes down to the receipt. You have to have the receipt to prove purchase. A scanned receipt is fine as long as it shows your name and the product. Basically you are making your own watermarked pdfs. One IP lawyer with 20 years in the software IP field told me a horror story about how you could have the original software CD, license #, have the software registered with the vendor, and you would still need to produce the receipt to prove ownership. Without the receipt it could be stolen.....

Re:Saving Costs...

[evought]

I've worked alongside the publishing industry before. The big win with an electronic format is lack of risk. They already have the content and they have a marginal printing/storage cost. They do not have the risk of printing 1000 copies that sit in a warehouse or get returned by the retail chain. That is why many publishers (e.g. Baen Books, O'Reilley with some titles, AWL with some titles, many small publishers, etc.) give away the PDF or HTML versions of their books now. As other posters have said, many people consider the electronic form a bonus on top of the physical book they own. People who are happy with the electronic version never would have bought a hard copy anyway, but, if you hook them, they might in the future.

Re:Boo

[Neo_piper]

I'm on the fence personaly... I feel that maby the best way would be to include your super-duper-drm'ed PDF on a CD WITH the paper copy book.
The entire idea of having to lug (not to mention BUY) a Laptop and charger around to just read a book just dosn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth. I love the idea of the PDF but making me buy it seperate and additional to the book seems a bit too much.
I just can't get over the loss of the paper in a "book".
Oh and anybody who says to "Just Print it out" will be shot in the head.