Pathfinder 1E Paizo should do a Dragon Dungeon Annual PDF CD

I'd buy it...

I have a subscription to Dungeon. And I like it. But the most useful thing I have is the Dragon Magazine CD set. I regret the day Wizards killed the Dungeon Magazine CD compendium.

I don't want to keep a shelf of paper around forever (some of them I do, but they are the exception). I wish at the end of the year or beginning of the next year, Paizo would release a CD with PDF versions of it's previous years back issues of Dungeon at least or Dragon and Dungeon. It wouldn't have to be mass market or packaged up all retail style with colors and boxes and stuff to sell from the website.

It would be amazingly useable. Especially if the added value portion of the cd was:

1) all issues in pdf format (beats maps for download- at least I can print them any way I like).

2) a text file with a summary of the issues and table of contents so you could search for features from that year.

It would be cool if they could go back to when 3.0 was released and do the issues since then. If not 3.5 is a good place to start.

If you release a product like that I think 50-60$ is fair (about 5$ for each month). If Paizo is on the ball on the information technology side, the cost of putting together the pdf's is neglible (an afternoon of time). If Paizo isn't on the ball on the information technology side, they need to be, they are in the D&D information business.

I'd even pay for a deluxe subscription that after the year was up, sent me the cd for all the magazines.


Drawbacks:

might kill your back issue sales

copyright violators potentially trading the pdf's online (they will anyway, this may lower barrier to entry).

Legal or compensatory problems with articles (I don't know if that is considered a reprint or what- the contracts with the original authors may not allow it).

What do you think?

-E

Personally, I'd rather have the Polyhedron mini-games 2002 in an archive CD-ROM. It would be an additional bonus if they updated for use with both 3e, 3.5e, and (if appropriate) d20 Modern.

Bonus material that never appeared in print would add values to such a product. And should be sold in FLGS.

I don't think an annual CD is feasible (people would quickly rationale "why buy the paper magazines when you can get the CD later?").

That said, I would like to see a CD with Dragon issues 251+ on there, including the Annuals (did anyone else notice that the Dragon CD-ROM Archive didn't have Annual #1 when, IIRC, it should have?).

One for the first 100 or so issues of Dungeon would be nice too.

I do like the idea of them updating older magazine articles to 3.5E, but only as specific downloads per article. Doing that for a massive compilation would be a bad idea; better for that to not alter the materials as they appear.

I'd buy a CD 251+ too. They should do it to 300 and when they get to 350 do one from 301-350. Don't to it too soon so people will by the paper magazine but every so often to a CD archive to allow those who missed a few issues to complete their private archive. Just my 2 cp's worth.

Man, I keep having to post this. I should save it somewhere.

Currently, no magazines are producing PDF versions of their print mags. The reason is, shortly after the release of Dragon Magazine Archive, a lawsuit came up against a different company doing this cd-archive thing.

See, people who contribute art, articles, etc. are (by contract) entitled to royalties if their creation is used in a 'new work', but not in a reprint. They sued, claiming that CD-ROMs count as a new work, rather than a simple reprint. The artists won.

As a result, companies dropped plans for putting out any new CDs. Considering it would be impossible to go back through their magazine and contact everyone who contributed to prior issues, getting permission for a new work with no compensation, they just gave up. New magazine issues after that ended up having rewritten contracts, specifying the right to electronic reprints without compensation.

Of course, this is complicated right now. A seperate court ruled in favor of National Geographic, when a seperate group of artists (photographers) sued over one of the magazine's photo archive CDs. In this case, the court sided with the magazine. If the appeal to the federal court stands, this issue will have to be decided by the US Supreme Court.

Either way, don't get your hopes up for archive CDs in the near future.

The folks at Paizo have commented on this in the past. Publishing an annual (in either print or CD format) diminishes the profitability of publishing individual issues. Also, material published in Dragon is de facto the property of WotC, who may have their own plans for republishing the material. Quite a bit of material from Dragon articles winds up appearing in WotC products.