D&D 4e PDFs at RPGNow

[Festivus]

Still too much, IMO. $20 would be the absolute max I'd consider paying. $10-$15 is much more realistic.

I could care less if the price is comparable to Amazon, the product is not comparable to a book in my hands.

$15 is my price point for PDF. I already bought a second PHB for keeping at the office / taking with my to conventions and whatnot, so PDF's aren't a real high priority for me right now.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

And with pdfs you get a searchable, bookmarked, easily portable, cut and paste-able product.

Yep. It's almost worth it to me to buy the MM PDF and use it to screenshot and cut and paste the monster stat blocks into my campaign notes, so that I don't have to write out the stat block myself or flip through the MM during a session. I can't easily scan pages from the MM into my scanner, so it's probably going to be more cost-effective and convienent to have the PDF version right there to cut from.

 

[jmucchiello]

And PDFs have advantages over print books too.

Are they all enabled? Print? Copy?

 

[Lizard]

That was one of their original goals, but they weren't able to find a suitable way to make this work. The idea of a coupon in each book didn't seem feasible due to the ease of fraud and the resulting consumer frustration (fraud: People just copy the coupon id; frustration: people buying their books finding their coupons already being redeemed)

This can be worked around; place the coupons in a sealed envelope so it's obvious if someone has ripped it open. Provide 'browsing' copies at low/no cost to stores which order, say, 10 or more; they keep the (couponless) browsing copies on display to let people read through, and then sell a shrink-wrapped, guaranteed-to-have-coupon copy to a buyer.

It's not 100%, but nothing is, and it would make a lot of buyers happy.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I don't mind reading PDFs (having a tablet PC helps for that), but I'd like to know if there are any plans for updating the PDFs with errata when it comes out. Given WotC history with digital and tech issues, I have my doubts that there will ever be changes, but has anyone heard anything official from WotC people regarding this?

 

[Kristian Serrano]

I wish they'd include errata for 3e PDFs, too.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I wish they'd include errata for 3e PDFs, too.

The Rules Compendium is available for purchase.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

The Rules Compendium is available for purchase.

The solution is not in your answer. Rules Compendium does not include errata for other books. For example, errata for the scount in Complete Adventurer or for the Artificer in the Eberron Campaign Setting is not included.

 

[Alvoros]

Can someone explain to me the difference between the "Original Electronic" version and the "Watermarked PDF" version of the books? Can't seem to find a reference to the difference formats anywhere.

Alvo

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This can be worked around; place the coupons in a sealed envelope so it's obvious if someone has ripped it open. Provide 'browsing' copies at low/no cost to stores which order, say, 10 or more; they keep the (couponless) browsing copies on display to let people read through, and then sell a shrink-wrapped, guaranteed-to-have-coupon copy to a buyer.

It's not 100%, but nothing is, and it would make a lot of buyers happy.

I can only assume (and maybe they even stated so, but I can't remember all of the details) that they investigated this option, too, and found that it would not work well enough.

Technically, it's possible. But practically, this requires instating a rigid policy for all retailers, and also ads cost for placing the sealed envelope.

Since all these suggestions have definitely been made before WotC made their decision, I can only assume that none of them proved feasible.