Power Cards, Cheat Sheets, and the Wii: Why I want legal PDFs

[im_robertb]

Power Cards: I make power cards for all my PCs using Magic Set Editor. With legal PDFs, I can copy and paste the text from the PDF to MSE, saving me a lot of prepwork. I could also do this with Insider, but that's a monthly fee rather than a one-time payment. With a book, I have to have it on my lap while manually typing the information in.

Cheat Sheets: For race, class, paragon path, and epic destiny features, as well as feats, I make cheat sheets for my PCs with full rules text and page references. Again, I'd rather copy and paste from a legal PDF than pay monthly for Insider or type from a book in my lap.

Nintendo Wii: We play in my living room, where the Wii is hooked up to the TV. With email or an SD card, you can put images on your Wii and open them up with the Image Channel, thus displaying them on your TV. Then you or your players can point and zoom in with the Wiimote. This has been a tremendous help for showing dungeon maps and helping the PCs discuss where to go next.

It's even better for combats: I can skip giving a visual description of every monster, because, with legal PDFs, I can copy the image out of the PDF, put the monsters together in one image, and put it up on the Wii. Since we use placeholder tokens (cardstock chits with a letter for monster type and each individual with its own number), I can indicate which image is for which letter too. This allows the PCs to refer to the screen instead of asking me, speeding up the game. Insider doesn't help me with this. In this respect, illegal PDFs are actually superior to buying the book, though legal PDFs would be better still.

Now I'm not condoning piracy, but I realize, as Apple did, that the best way to beat pirates is to make your service better than theirs.

 

[Raven Crowking]

but that's a monthly fee rather than a one-time payment

I think you put your finger on it here. This is, AFAICT, the only reason WotC has to pull pdfs that actually makes sense.

RC

 

[DJCupboard]

I know this isn't a perfect solution, but this might just take a paradigm shift in how you perceive the Insider subscription fee.

rather than look at it as a monthly fee (which, since you can only buy in 3 month or yearly chunks, it technically isn't), but rather a 1 time charge for several months (either 3 months or a year) of ALL the crunch Wizards comes out with. For about the average price of 7 pdfs, you would get everything Wizard's puts out (for a year that will be at least 12 books and 24 magazines) in a format you can copy and paste from.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I condone (nearly) all what the OP says: i want legal .pdfs, and it is fantastic to use the abilities of modern technology for your game. Create cards, use cool services like iplay4e etc. is where gaming is headed. However, i also have to agree that all these things can be done with a DDI sub, and a sub guarantees that the database is continuously populated and updated.

So, to the OP: i know why you want .pdfs, but the subscription is (IMHO, of course) even better. I admit: i want both.

Oh, and people who say "now, i do not want to condone piracy BUT" do actually condone piracy. IMHO, of course. That content you want comes in a different format you would like is no excuse for piracy at all.

 

[Wormwood]

[slight tangent]

I would *happily* pay a few bucks a month to be able to access the just the Compendium on XBox Live.

 

[im_robertb]

*snip* For about the average price of 7 pdfs, you would get everything Wizard's puts out (for a year that will be at least 12 books and 24 magazines) in a format you can copy and paste from.

The service will, someday, be discontinued. How many years we have is anyone's guess, but since the 3.5 debacle I don't trust WotC on the longevity front, particularly given the ongoing expertise and masterwork armor issues. Not as severe as 3.0, but still the sort of thing where the best solution is a system reboot. Also, this still leaves me stranded on images, which have been a major help to my players.

Oh, and people who say "now, i do not want to condone piracy BUT" do actually condone piracy. IMHO, of course. That content you want comes in a different format you would like is no excuse for piracy at all.

I put that phrase in to make my intent clear; it seems to have had the opposite effect. Should I apologize for taking a pragmatic view?

 

[Piratecat]

I put that phrase in to make my intent clear; it seems to have had the opposite effect. Should I apologize for taking a pragmatic view?

Nope, you don't need to.

Keefe, please don't ascribe intent.

 

[darjr]

Actually, I think i CAN use the Compendium via my PS3 and the WII internet channel. Hmmm...

 

[Mark]

Power Cards: I make power cards for all my PCs using Magic Set Editor. With legal PDFs, I can copy and paste the text from the PDF to MSE, saving me a lot of prepwork. I could also do this with Insider, but that's a monthly fee rather than a one-time payment. With a book, I have to have it on my lap while manually typing the information in.

Cheat Sheets: For race, class, paragon path, and epic destiny features, as well as feats, I make cheat sheets for my PCs with full rules text and page references. Again, I'd rather copy and paste from a legal PDF than pay monthly for Insider or type from a book in my lap.

I think you get everything you have mentioned and for cheaper by getting the DDI sub, even if you only get it for three months each year. I'm a PDF guy but for what you are discussing, the DDI sub seems better suited.

Nintendo Wii: We play in my living room, where the Wii is hooked up to the TV. With email or an SD card, you can put images on your Wii and open them up with the Image Channel, thus displaying them on your TV. Then you or your players can point and zoom in with the Wiimote. This has been a tremendous help for showing dungeon maps and helping the PCs discuss where to go next.

It's even better for combats: I can skip giving a visual description of every monster, because, with legal PDFs, I can copy the image out of the PDF, put the monsters together in one image, and put it up on the Wii. Since we use placeholder tokens (cardstock chits with a letter for monster type and each individual with its own number), I can indicate which image is for which letter too. This allows the PCs to refer to the screen instead of asking me, speeding up the game. Insider doesn't help me with this. In this respect, illegal PDFs are actually superior to buying the book, though legal PDFs would be better still.

Here's where you actually don't need to buy PDF copies of stuff but need to invest about the same kind of money in a scanner, which would turn out to be more useful to you in the long run because of all the other stuff you could snatch from the library and everywhere else in print to add as images to your home game.


Like I said above, I am totally a PDF guy for having tons of books in the palm of my hand no matter where I go. But for the specific applications you cite, the PDFs simply are not the ideal solutions.

 

[Ourph]

The service will, someday, be discontinued.

You get everything that you're talking about in the Character Builder. All of the power rules, magic item properties, etc. are included in the CB, which you download and can continue using even if your subscription lapses. The only thing you can't do if your subscription lapses is get downloads for new updates. Once you download it, you can continue using what you've got indefinitely (kind of like a .pdf, only better).

You can download the Dungeon and Dragon .pdfs and keep those forever too. In fact, if you want legal .pdfs with 4e content, you've got it in Dungeon and Dragon.