[Rant] Ink devouring PDFs

Doc_Klueless

Doors and Corners

• Aug 24, 2002

• #1

Yup. It's a rant. I don't do it often, but here goes. Please feel free to ignore, flame, whatever. Just have to get this off my chest...

What's with all the ink-devouring PDFs? Maybe you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the PDFs that have borders like those found in the Core Books: Pretty, Colorful, Intense. They suuuuuuuck my ink cartridges dry. Way dry. Really dry. In the end, that $5.00 pdf just cost me $30 to print out, is not neatly packaged in a book, and is, usually, one sided unless I take the extra time to do it double sided. It's driving me NUTS NUTS! I tells ya!

What I'd like is to buy game PDFs with simple borders, more words per page, and don't devour ink like it's blood for a hemophiliac vampire. It may be saving the publisher tons and, possibly, giving them better returns, but it's not really saving me any cash and giving me an inferior product (physically).

:::Sigh::: Ok. I'm done. Gee, and I even feel better!

 

Last edited: Aug 24, 2002

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Crothian

First Post

• Aug 24, 2002

• #2

It seems that pdf's are being designed more and more to be used from a lptop then to be printed out. They have the table of contents right on the side with easy to use links and it look all nice an pretty on the color screen.

 

Leopold

NKL4LYFE

• Aug 24, 2002

• #3

buy a laser printer from ebay.they are only $100 and the best damn investment for ANYONE!

 

Hand of Evil

Hero

Epic

• Aug 24, 2002

• #4

Leopold said:

buy a laser printer from ebay.they are only $100 and the best damn investment for ANYONE!

Click to expand...

When buying a printer it is important to look at a few factors, speed and toner life. People just don't think about how many pages they can print before going empty.

It is a plot! Cost of the tool is cheep, but maintenance is high!

Laptop, E-books, or PDFs can help but it is not the same, neither is just printing it is grey scale/black and white.

 

The Sigil

Mr. 3000 (Words per post)

• Aug 24, 2002

• #5

Won't/Can't speak for every publisher out there, but I know I myself have gone with the theory that "there are virtues to the nice borders - and some serious drawbacks." My product, the Enchiridion of Mystic Music, includes two flavors in the Zip file - one PDF with colorful borders, one PDF without. IIRC, Bastion Press has announced they will begin doing the same thing. That way you miss out on none of the quality (with high-quality color art and borders)... but you also have a way of printing things out without killing your ink cartridge (borderless).

I think more publishers are noticing this and I imagine at some point it will probably become a standard practice to include two (or even three - one without the interior art AND without borders) versions of the same PDF in each download.

--The Sigil

 

BiggusGeekus

That's Latin for "cool"

• Aug 24, 2002

• #6

It occurs me that if a paper publisher wants to avoid their product being scanned in and printed, the last defense would be to include lots of ink-eating graphics.

 

Mark

CreativeMountainGames.com

• Aug 24, 2002

• #7

Doc_Klueless said:

What I'd like is to buy game PDFs with simple borders, more words per page, and don't devour ink like it's blood for a hemophiliac vampire. It may be saving the publisher tons and, possibly, giving them better returns, but it's not really saving me any cash and giving me an inferior product (physically).

Click to expand...

I'd be interested to hear what you think of my approach. Please check out some of the free downloads on my site, which are easily accesssed from my main page-

http://www.creativemountaingames

In a nutshell, I keep borders colorless (B&W) and thin (about half as wide as other publishers) but feel they add to the feeling of the release. I try to use the same consideration on images and graphics, mostly B&W/line drawings, except when it comes to maps. In the case of maps, I just feel there is no substitute for a nice looking color map that can be shared at the game table. I really think it adds a lot to the game. Opinions?

 

Leopold

NKL4LYFE

• Aug 25, 2002

• #8

Hand of Evil said:

When buying a printer it is important to look at a few factors, speed and toner life. People just don't think about how many pages they can print before going empty.

It is a plot! Cost of the tool is cheep, but maintenance is high!

Laptop, E-books, or PDFs can help but it is not the same, neither is just printing it is grey scale/black and white.

Click to expand...

and all you need is some knowledge and information about the product.


I bought a IBM N17 laser printer. 17 pages per minute 10k+ pages on one toner cartridge. Toner costs me $50 maybe $75.

so for around $225 i get a 17ppm laser printer and less than $.01/page print cost? Compare a color printer cartridge which runs $30 and you get 300 pages out of it: $.10

Now take that 300 pages and multiply it by oh 10 (3000) to get how many pages you print. Now you've spent $300 to print 3000 pages and I still only spent $50..

Laser printers are cost effective and cheap. Look at the long term goals. I bought a high end color ONLY for color print but I churn out .pdfs left and right on my laser printer and it barely even beeps at me when i cue up 100+ pages....

 

Knightcrawler

First Post

• Aug 25, 2002

• #9

Ink eating PDF's

Now I bought my computer system 2 and a half years ago. If I had know how many PDF's and other downloads that I would be printing out I would have dropped the extra 150 bucks on a laser printer. At the time most of my gaming stuff was straight text. Nice, simple and easy. I could print out most things in draft mode and have them perfectly readable.

Now if I buy a PDF online, usually paying no more than $5, if I want to print them out I'm buring printer catridges at the rate of 1 per book, thats $30 per book. Yes they look very nice and are pretty on the screen. But what about those of use that don't want to read a 100 to 150 page supplement on a computer screen.

Now I know this is still an evolving development in the publishing industry. Most PDF's are just scans or images of the hard copy item. I have gamed for almost 20 years now, and am no longer moved by the art work and borders that publishers put in their supplements. Now don't get me wrong I don't want just straight black and white text but I'd rather have more "crunchy bits" over a really fancy border.

Even now I print most of my PDF's out in black only and in draft mode to save ink. I do hope though that there is a greater move towards several different downloads of an online product.

 

Last edited: Aug 25, 2002

D

Duncan Haldane

Explorer

• Aug 25, 2002

• #10

The Sigil said:

My product, the Enchiridion of Mystic Music, includes two flavors in the Zip file - one PDF with colorful borders, one PDF without.

Click to expand...

I appreciate this too. While I have a laser printer, it's old and only has 1Mb of memory - often important pages get split on to two pieces of paper because of the graphics on them. Without the borders this problem would be lessened greatly.

Duncan