D&D 5E 5E - Would you buy e-Books?

[Serendipity]

Well it depends - IF after a significant amount of the playtest I decide that the next edition is for me, then yes I'll want copies of the core books / basic rules (whatever format they use) in e-format if available. I'll only need the actual books if I can get a game going.
Though I don't really expect actual ebooks out of Wizards any time soon. I think at this point, they're really married to the subscription model.

 

[was]

Not interested in buying ebooks. I'll take it if they want to give it to me free with the purchase of a hardcopy, but not if I have to pay extra for it.

 

[Elf Witch]

I would like the option of buying it as E Book or Hardback. Books that I use a lot I like in hardback. Books that I am interested but not planning to use a lot I would rather have in E book.

I just packed and moved by gaming books and as I was packing them I realized that there are some that I have only used once or twice.

If the E books cost less then it would both save me money and not take up room on my already overcrowded bookshelves.

 

[Mercutio01]

Assuming a reasonable cost for e-book version (by that, I consider about 50% of the hardcover price to be reasonable), then I would buy the e-book instead of hardcover. An e-book that costs more than that, I would just buy a hardcover version instead.

Now, if there was a significant discount on e-book version with the verified purchase of a hardcover (say, $5 for the e-book), I would do probably do both.

What I won't do is pay a monthly access fee for the rules in addition to the cost of the hardcovers.

 

[GX.Sigma]

It would be awesome if PDFs came free with purchase of a hard copy. Otherwise, there's no way I'd spend extra money on something anyone can make with a scanner and a bit of effort.

I could get behind something like $15 for PDF, $30 for hard copy + PDF.

 

[Invisible Stalker]

I will only be purchasing the physical books. I will not pay for ebooks, PDFs, DDI, or apps.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

PDFs would be great. However my suspicion is that if you are going to be using DDI and buying physical books you REALLY shouldn't have to pay for the digital versions. My guess is WotC will feel the same. Remember, they're going to be trying to be extra nice here to get people to buy their game, lol.

What they REALLY want, beyond anything else are those subscriptions. They're going to make them darn enticing.

 

[BobTheNob]

Speak for yourself. I, for one, am not part of your 'we'.

Thats alright, I wasnt including your in my 'we'. It was my group, and unless your one of my player moonlighting, I dont want to include you

I repeat, for OUR group, its PDF or its nothing

 

[Arlough]

Assuming a reasonable cost for e-book version (by that, I consider about 50% of the hardcover price to be reasonable), then I would buy the e-book instead of hardcover. An e-book that costs more than that, I would just buy a hardcover version instead.

How is 50% off reasonable? The paper isn't the valuable part nor is the binding. If that were the case the owners of used bookstores would all be wealthy compared to, say, carpenters. And Office Max would be running Best Buy into the ground.
The valuable part is the ideas and rules that have gone through a (hopefully) thorough vetting and testing process, as well as the layout, design, and other factors that increase the ease of your user experience.

It would be awesome if PDFs came free with purchase of a hard copy. Otherwise, there's no way I'd spend extra money on something anyone can make with a scanner and a bit of effort.

I could get behind something like $15 for PDF, $30 for hard copy + PDF.

What if it was more than just a scan. What if it had a nice layout that was optimized for reading off your digital device? What if it was electronically indexed like a wiki, with cross referenced links, and quality search functions. What if it was designed to make your game experience better?

Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

 

[Matthias]

Formerly as a D&D 3.X dungeonmaster, I used to cart a crate full of books around to whichever friend's house was hosting. I liked to have all my best books at my fingertips, although it was a pain to have to load and unload the car with them.

I knew that Paizo offered its books in PDF format but I wasn't really sure if it would work very well to run a campaign with all the books in electronic format. But I bought the core book in PDF anyway and stuck it on my smartphone as an "electronic backup" because, after all, every night both my hardcopy rulebooks would end up getting borrowed by this or that player and I would never really get to use them. And so it went.

I got used to looking up things on my phone, and later my laptop when I transferred the PDF to it. I decided it was pretty nice to have it not taking up space on the game table when I had to have my NPC sheets, maps, game notes, and whatnot all over the place. So then I invested in other PDF versions while keeping up with my hardcover collection, Ultimate Magic, Adventurer's Armory, Ultimate Combat, and so forth, and saw that I could lend out my hardcovers freely for the players' use while I still had access to everything on my laptop.

Finally, I began picking up PDFs without the "hardcover backups" since I didn't have the funds to get both, and considered how expensive it was to keep up to date in both book formats. And I realized after I got Bestiary 3 on PDF, there wasn't any real point to getting the hardcopy because I was the only one who really needed to be looking at it. So now I am only buying books in PDF format, and would only buy hardcopy for whatever serves as the core rulebook for players to use.