D&D 5E So what's the scoop on D&D in PDF Format?

[MNblockhead]

This is excellent. For me the bare minimum is an actual read-in of the text so that it can be read text to speech, and is searchable. I really appreciate it when the toc is linked and bookmarks are placed.

Not sure about Acrobat Reader, or the various non-Adobe PDF software, but if you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat, it is really simple to OCR and optimize for text-to-speech.

Having to created the bookmarks yourself and create cross links is a much more tedious process.

But Adobe Acrobat isn't cheap and the newer version with the complete GUI redesign and all its default trying to push you to Adobe's cloud storage can be really annoying.

I do like Adobe's AI assistant. As I get better and writing prompts, I find it much easier to find info I want in large PDFs than keyword searches.

One feature in general I would like --and this would be more a piece of Reader functionality -- would be the ability to pin a page while scrolling another. This way you could pin a map page and read/scroll the text side-by-side.

In Acrobat you can kind of do this but it is wonky. First, you can go to Window-->Split View. This will give you a split view in the same window. That does what you want, except the split is horizontal. Which isn't ideal.

You can play around with the "spreadsheet" split view as well, which will give you four panes in the same window. I've seen recommendations to use the spreadsheet view and drag the horizontal muntin all the way to the top to get a vertical split. But then the vertical scroll is synchronized. You can't scroll independently as you can with the horizontal split. So, I never use this option.

Instead, I just open the same document in a new window and tile the two windows side by side.

 

[MNblockhead]

VTT formats do count because some of them are NOT rented.
As I have already stated in this thread multiple times, and in other threads on this forums dozens of time;

1) Fantasy Grounds. These are downloaded to the owner's computer. And SmiteWorks has a license with WotC that they retain irrevocable permeant rights to keep copies of their products on their server that those customer who have purchased the content can re-download at any point in time. This means that since it in on your computer and their is no mechanism within the app to remove content (unlike a Kindle), your copy on your computer is permanent. It can not actually or legally be take away from you.

2) Foundry. I don't know their license agreement with WotC. But they too you download to your own computer and their is no mechanism to take it away from you.

Both of these formats are just as permanent as any PDF.

I'm pretty sure @Reynard you have been involved in those discussions before. It's frustrating to me that I put these undisputed facts out in these forums time and again, and yet people just seem to ignore them because they are contrary to their existing opinions about "digital".

Highlighting mine. No, they really are not just as permanent as a PDF. Much of the content is in proprietary formats that are as permanent at the companies and their software. Exporting that content and converting for use in other formats is difficult for non-technical people and take a lot of effort even from technical people. PDF has been adopted by many of the world's largest libraries and many government agencies as an archive format (including, in the US, The Library of Congress and NARA). It is highly unlikely that any PDF I buy and properly store will not be readily readable to me in my life time, or to anyone in my children's or their children's life time. I have a wide selection of software I can use to view the PDFs.

Their formatting precision is, of course, one of PDF's downsides. They don't render well in different screen sizes. They are not as nice as cross-linked and embedded content in a VTT or in DDB when actually running a game. So I do buy TTRPG content for Foundry. I subscribe to and buy content on D&D Beyond. But I have no expectation that this content will be readily available to me for the rest of my life. I'm old enough to have been through the experience of losing convenient access to content when a company goes out of business or just stops supporting a particular piece of software or platform. RealmWorks being the most recent example. Yes, I can continue to access my RealmWorks content, but the software is no longer supported or being updated. To future proof that, I put it in a Windows 11 Virtual Machine image, so I can spin it up and run it should it stop working in a future version of Windows (and so I can run it on my Mac). That is not comparable to the convenience, portability, and future proofing that a PDF provides.

Companies like prorprietary formats not only because of the additional functionality they may be able to provide, but because it keeps you locked in their ecosystem.

Does that mean that I want all of my digital TTRPG content to only be available in PDF. No. I much prefer using DDB over a PDF for D&D and Foundry over PDF for Warhammer Fantasy. But I don't care so much about ensuring I have access to this content for decades. But I would never tell someone who DOES care about having long term access that buying content in Foundry, DDB, Fantasy Grounds, etc. is "as permanent" as PDF.

 

[cbwjm]

I'd prefer pdf to dndbeyond when reading the books, I find I'm able to flick around a pdf faster and I can also use page numbers which can be important when you ask a question and someone responds with the page number that answers it. I do like that dndbeyond has lists of all the various things though, if I want to look at all the spells or classes, it's great. It'll be greater if they add an "owned content only" filter.

Adobe does have liquid mode which might be for tablet/phone apps only which functions like an e-reader, resizing everything for the screen. I think it is still new though and it doesn't seem to work on large files currently. Worked fine on a Dolmenwood adventure though.

In general, for rulebooks though, I hate the e-reader format, a kindle is great for novels but, for me, it's terrible for quickly finding information.

 

[Micah Sweet]

VTT formats do count because some of them are NOT rented.
As I have already stated in this thread multiple times, and in other threads on this forums dozens of time;

1) Fantasy Grounds. These are downloaded to the owner's computer. And SmiteWorks has a license with WotC that they retain irrevocable permeant rights to keep copies of their products on their server that those customer who have purchased the content can re-download at any point in time. This means that since it in on your computer and their is no mechanism within the app to remove content (unlike a Kindle), your copy on your computer is permanent. It can not actually or legally be take away from you.

2) Foundry. I don't know their license agreement with WotC. But they too you download to your own computer and their is no mechanism to take it away from you.

Both of these formats are just as permanent as any PDF.

I'm pretty sure @Reynard you have been involved in those discussions before. It's frustrating to me that I put these undisputed facts out in these forums time and again, and yet people just seem to ignore them because they are contrary to their existing opinions about "digital".

Is there a method for reading either of these permanent documents without going online to access Fantasy Grounds and/or Foundry? Because unreadable permanent documents are no good to anybody.

Serious question, as I don't actually know.

 

[MNblockhead]

I'd prefer pdf to dndbeyond when reading the books, I find I'm able to flick around a pdf faster and I can also use page numbers which can be important when you ask a question and someone responds with the page number that answers it. I do like that dndbeyond has lists of all the various things though, if I want to look at all the spells or classes, it's great. It'll be greater if they add an "owned content only" filter.

Adobe does have liquid mode which might be for tablet/phone apps only which functions like an e-reader, resizing everything for the screen. I think it is still new though and it doesn't seem to work on large files currently. Worked fine on a Dolmenwood adventure though.

In general, for rulebooks though, I hate the e-reader format, a kindle is great for novels but, for me, it's terrible for quickly finding information.

Didn't know about liquid mode. Will have to check that out.

 

[MNblockhead]

Is there a method for reading either of these permanent documents without going online to access Fantasy Grounds and/or Foundry? Because unreadable permanent documents are no good to anybody.

Serious question, as I don't actually know.

Both of these VTTs are locally installed. So you have your assets locally. With foundry, many people use third-party companies to host. One of the largest, The Forge, has features to synch/backup everything to a local instance.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Both of these VTTs are locally installed. So you have your assets locally. With foundry, many people use third-party companies to host. One of the largest, The Forge, has features to synch/backup everything to a local instance.

Pdf still seems more accessible.

 

[mamba]

Is there a method for reading either of these permanent documents without going online to access Fantasy Grounds and/or Foundry?

Foundry is local

 

[Reynard]

One of the things that really needs to happen is a VTT standard format. It is not pro-consumer for me to have to buy my D&D books again if I switch from Fantasy Grounds to Foundry, or whatever.

 

[see]

You can't read a PDF outside of a PDF reader.

PDF is an open standard, curated by the ISO. There are many dedicated readers for the format from rival vendors, and support for reading the files in major web browsers and word processors. The format is a major part of the product strategy of a Fortune 500 company, and there is a full set of open source tools and libraries for reading, creating, editing, and manipulating PDF files. PDFs have been in wide use for more than three decades, creating a huge installed base that will serve as a market for support for the format for a long time to come.

Fantasy Grounds uses an encrypted format, supported by a single small vendor, in a single small market, which is illegal for anyone else to decode (in the US).

Those are not parallel situations in any way, shape, or form.