D&D General Hey, are we all cool with having to buy the same book twice, or what?

[jasper]

I have bought 5. That is 1,2,3,4,5, Five. V. Now one was a present, one was for dirty Santa, one was backup, so I sold a used one for $9 to a newby and then pulled the back up copy out of closet. In fact I may just go buy a back up copy if it is cheap.

 

[Parmandur]

I haven't "paid twice" for any 5E books.

All my books are on Beyond. I'm leery of the long-term consequences of this, but currently trust that when 5E is replaced by the inevitable 6E, WotC and Beyond will arrange something reasonable. But the ease of use is so massive from Beyond, and the fact that my house is no longer full of books and print-outs and more books is a good thing, so I'm okay with that.

I think Beyond's pricing for single-items from books is predatory and ridiculous, but you don't have to engage with it. They are perfectly fine with you using their extensive and effective "homebrew" stuff to make copies of items (and races, and subclasses and so on) from books you don't own, you just can't share them.

On top of that, I've actually paid quite a lot less for the material I have, because Beyond has often had large discounts (25-33%), which can be applied to bulk purchases. I didn't buy the "everything" package because honestly you couldn't pay me to say, have Tortles in my game, but I bought all the books I needed when I started running 5E with some kind of large discount, and every time since when I've bought books it has been with a similar discount (25-33%).

One thing that also makes me feel good about Beyond is their app for reading the books. Initially I was like "ugh these guys suck, no PDFs!???!", and when the app was only on iOS, as it was initially, I refused to do business with them (we just didn't play 5E, we played Dungeon World). But once it got on Android, and I tried it with the free stuff, I was really impressed - it's actually much easier to read/use than PDFs on even my Chromebook. Indeed, my Chromebook (which flips into a tablet) makes it very much like reading an actual rulebook if I'm just laying on the sofa or something.

If I really was having to pay twice, and just getting the rulebook and a PDF, with nothing else, I'd be pretty annoyed (and likely just buying the PDFs and then printing them out as needed), but that's not the case. The added functionality from Beyond is amazing and so far has continuously and steadily improved for a very long time.

Nathan Stewart has said that they don't do PDFs for their main products because they want something more convenient for newer players.

 

[Fenris-77]

Nathan Stewart has said that they don't do PDFs for their main products because they want something more convenient for newer players.

I feel like this is a clever dodge rather than an actual thing. They have hard copy anyway, so I don't see how not having PDFs is any more convenient for anyone. I think it has way more to do with the proliferation of 'shared' PDF copies. I could be wrong, but I suspect not.

 

[Parmandur]

I feel like this is a clever dodge rather than an actual thing. They have hard copy anyway, so I don't see how not having PDFs is any more convenient for anyone. I think it has way more to do with the proliferation of 'shared' PDF copies. I could be wrong, but I suspect not.

People bandy the piracy thing, but Stewart on a Spoilers & Swag said it was about user experience primarily. When looking at the user experience of using Beyond versus the frankly awful experience of reading PDFs, it rings true. Again,Genius Scan is a thing, so piracy is not something they can really even mitigate in 2020, except by providing a superior experience through nice book quality or an app.

 

[Fenris-77]

People bandy the piracy thing, but Stewart on a Spoilers & Swag said it was about user experience primarily. When looking at the user experience of using Beyond versus the frankly awful experience of reading PDFs, it rings true. Again,Genius Scan is a thing, so piracy is not something they can really even mitigate in 2020, except by providing a superior experience through nice book quality or an app.

Part of my distaste for DDB stems from my personal internet situation. Where I live there's no such thing as unlimited internet, and it's really expensive. I don't want to have to be online to read the book, and I don't have shelf space to own everything in hard copy, so PDFs are my thang.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I don't like it...I like free stuff like everybody else...but they can price their stuff however they want.

 

[ArwensDaughter]

Part of my distaste for DDB stems from my personal internet situation. Where I live there's no such thing as unlimited internet, and it's really expensive. I don't want to have to be online to read the book, and I don't have shelf space to own everything in hard copy, so PDFs are my thang.

That's rough. The mobile app does let you download content and access it offline. An offline character sheet view is currently in alpha testing. I mention that only in case you didn't know; DDB may still not make sense for you in your situation.

 

[Fenris-77]

That's rough. The mobile app does let you download content and access it offline. An offline character sheet view is currently in alpha testing. I mention that only in case you didn't know; DDB may still not make sense for you in your situation.

I'd also have to rebuy all my books AFAIK, which as you might imagine, I'm against. I buy hard copies from my previous local FLGS and get them shipped. Small business support ftw.

 

[TwoSix]

I feel like the general response to the OP is "Yea, we're cool." Hopefully that question is answered.

 

[ArwensDaughter]

I'd also have to rebuy all my books AFAIK, which as you might imagine, I'm against. I buy hard copies from my previous local FLGS and get them shipped. Small business support ftw.

Makes sense. Our situations are all different and what works for some doesn't work/isn't appealing for others. While I don't see it as rebuying because of the tools/advantages provided, it is also the case that--technically at least--I don't own any of the print books. I do have access to many of them, as my son owns a lot of them--in most cases purchased by us or other relatives as birthday/Christmas gifts. When he leaves for college and (presumably) takes them with him, I'm not likely to purchases print copies, but simply use what I have access to on DDB, and limit my purchases for that kind of thing to DDB. But I also appreciate wanting to support small businesses. We have typically purchased the print books for our son from Amazon because there weren't any flgs' nearby to us. But now there is one about 25 miles from us: got our last gift for our son from there rather than amazon, despite the price difference, in order to support them--especially now when they can't hold game nights and the like.