So, I hate pdfs. Any advice on hating them less?

[schneeland]

A good device, well set up, makes the whole thing much more pleasant. Notice that I have tried to match the brightness of the screen to mimic the page under natural light; that helps minimise eye strain.

You also need to learn new strategies for navigating the books. Get a good app which allows you to add your own bookmarks. The ability to pull out to a thumbnail view of multiple pages is also great. And, of course, the search function can make niche rules easier to look up.

Just curious: what app are you using for this purpose?

 

[MarkB]

I'm not keen on PDF books - I find that they tend to often be poorly laid out for screen reading, and even with decent index-links they're a pain to scroll through.

However, I've found books on D&D Beyond a lot friendlier. It's easier to find things, the pages are formatted to fit a screen, and you can easily split off to a new tab if you want to cross-reference. I'm at the point where I'm foregoing printed versions of books that are available on D&D Beyond.

 

[dbm]

Just curious: what app are you using for this purpose?

GoodReader. I’ve used it since the very first iPad and found it excellent. Other people swear by PDFExpert, which is also good but has different strengths.

Here’s a link:

‎GoodReader PDF Editor & Viewer

‎First released in 2009, GoodReader® is truly a veteran of the App Store. In the modern app business, it's not easy to stay relevant that long. We're proud to say that after 13 years and counting, we've been delivering wonderful updates with extraordinary new features. And we're going to keep...

apps.apple.com

 

[John Dallman]

A lot of the material I use is PDF-only, so I had to learn how to use it best. That ended up, for me, as a low-end Windows laptop, with Libre Office (because it's free), Sumatra PDF (free, much faster and less fussy than Adobe Reader), and Agent Ransack (not free, but cheap, and a very powerful PDF search tool). Plus a printer: I find fussing with electronics in-session is slow and error-prone, because of the time pressure.

With that, my GMing prep usually ends up as one or two sides of paper for a session. I have the core books in hardcopy for in-session reference when needed, but that isn't common: I often go through a session without needing them.

When I'm a player, I have a character sheet, maybe a cribsheet or two that I've written, and a page or eight of notes about what's going on in the campaign that we need to deal with.

 

[schneeland]

GoodReader. I’ve used it since the very first iPad and found it excellent. Other people swear by PDFExpert, which is also good but has different strengths.

Thanks! I'll take a look at both.

 

[gargoyleking]

Buy the book, be happy.

 

[Phion]

Have you tried turning your hate off then on?

 

[Hawkwind]

The ten inch kindle fire is a nice cheap large tablet for pdfs compared with an IPad

 

[jaycrockett]

Yes I have a 10 inch Kindle fire that I got for 100 bucks on prime day, and it's great for reading pdfs and comic books.
I also agree with the D&D beyond compliments. I find I can have a character sheet in one browser tab and the players handbook in another, and it runs great.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I am not really a player but a collector, and I miss opening the book and smell the paper, but for publishers selling PDFs is better. It isn't only TTRPG industry, but also music, media or videogames. Selling a file by internet is cheaper and faster than producing a physical product.

Today the book is like selling the videogame collector edition with art pictures and miniatures.