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Really? Home internet penetration is at 90% in the United States (that number is likely significantly higher for D&D players). Those who don't have home wi-fi (for whatever reason) can easily access wi-fi temporarily at any public wi-fi hotspot. They're everywhere. Lack of wi-fi is simply not a...

It sounds like checking books out of the library is a good choice for you. Notably, all the public libraries around here allow you to check out e-readers. You may want to look into whether your library participates in a program like that (especially since you mention living in an urban area)...

A Kindle is $70. It uses your home wi-fi. You don't need to be constantly connected to read, just to download new books. One charge gives you a month's worth of light reading. The books are cheaper than physical ones. You can check them out of a digital lending library for free if you have a...

No, I just hear the same comments from people repeatedly about why physical books are better than e-readers, and they're the same arguments every time: you have to charge them, it's hard to read in light/dark, it's uncomfortable, it's hard to find a specific page, etc. The vast majority of...

Books come in basically every size format imaginable. e-readers, on the other hand, are designed for ergonomics. I'm not sure how you can make this claim, at all. Use e-ink. e-readers automatically save your progress, without the need to stick a bookmark in. Again, e-ink. My Kindle has a...

I think it's safe to say that, at some point, a theater owner probably thought to himself, "Man, I wish I were in film right now." I don't know that physical books will ever disappear entirely. There may always be a niche market for them. But it will be a niche market, eventually. Digital...

No, I think probably you just don't get to define what is and isn't a playtest.

I feel like I should probably let you know that D&D Next is actually cited, in the very article you linked to, as an example of playtesting in the tabletop RPG industry. "An example of a role-playing game that is being heavily playtested is the upcoming 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons." Next...

Look, you don't know what this means. Or you're pretending not to. Either way, it's time to stop. WotC has been running a playtest. They are providing non-final rules materials to players with the expectation that they will play the game using those rules and provide feedback on what they liked...

Because they didn't fix your personal complaints, or what?

I cannot imagine either of those things happening in real life.

"(Television) won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." - Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox founder, 1946

I'll be honest - I've never seen any campaign that didn't have more rules inconsistencies introduced by natural lack of familiarity with the rules than caused by official changes to the rules themselves. Assuming the changes happen incrementally, in manageable chunks, then no, it's not really...

Wizards of the freaking Coast. They haven't moved to it exclusively, but they are clearly providing a tabletop roleplaying game as a subscription service, and are using the subscription service as the foundation of a policy of active system support.

You're fine for now, I'm sure. But we're in a transition where a) games in general are moving from static products to actively-supported services, and b) physical books are transitioning to digital. Unless you believe that RPGs are immune to both of those transitions, at some point you're going...

Then I fear you're in something of a predicament. That's not the way things are headed.

He may have been, but I stipulated that, for the sake of argument, we were assuming that in the event that the subscription service is discontinued, you would still be able to get a physical copy of the book. The question is whether it's worthwhile to participate in the subscription service...

It's not naive when you're paying them for it. If they stop providing something, you stop subscribing. That's a pretty damn good incentive to keep providing it, at least until you have a replacement. And we're not talking about perpetuity. Just for the length of your subscription.

That's my point. Gameplay is not fundamentally altered merely by making a portion of it digital. Whether the gameplay is altered depends on how that digital implementation impacts the play of the game. Bringing this back to what we've been discussing, the only change between having rulebooks at...

This is important to Trivial Pursuit how? Come on. Your argument boils down to, "My game of Trivial Pursuit is dramatically altered by reading the questions off a screen instead of a card." Not to go too wild with puns, but I'm pretty sure that nearly everyone would label that particular change...