Anyone else feel indifferent about the PDF thing?

[Fenes]

And you are honestly telling me that the majority of posts on these threads is directed on these legitimate concerns? Also WotC makes the significant majority of rules available online at any moment through the Compendium already. Those few that are not available should be, but they certainly are few and the Compendium gets updated in more ways than simple addition of content. And last I checked, noone came and deleted all the WotC pdfs we have from our computers. Believe me I would have noticed.

I am honestly telling you that I can't buy a number of books I wanted anymore, and that has an impact on my game. The material is, being 3.5E, not available in the compendium either. Buying the stuff second-hand hardcopy would mean I can't use it very well due to weight and space issues.

So, effectively, someone came and told me "You're not allowed to play with that material". They are completely in their rights to do so, of course, but that doesn't mean I and others don't have every right to be angry at them in response.

 

[Crothian]

I agree is was badly done but it has not been worth the amount of negativity it has produced. Especuially when it is the same people who complain about about Wizards every chance they get. And I am a PDF user and own hundreds if not a thousand of theirs.

 

[Barcode]

Wow, so now to support or not care about this decision is to hate on childhood cancer victims. Well played...

 

[Badwe]

When I was younger and a poor student, I would pirate all of my pdfs. The only 3.x books I ever bought were the phb and eventually an ill-fated DMG (never did get around to the MM). Now I’m a recent grad with no wife, kids, house, or shiny new car to weigh down my wallet (loans aren’t too bad either for most my age), so I have the money to spend on real product and I do. I’ve bought almost every 4e hardback WotC has printed. If I’m going to spend money, I want a real product. If I want to look at a pdf, I’ll go find it online. These days, I sometimes do both and don’t concern myself with harebrained schemes to connect me to a pdf of something I already own. If anything, a 10 dollar a month subscription to the compendium has pretty much erased my need to go digging for pdfs.

So does this change affect me? Not one bit. Do you think my FLGS or Barnes and Noble cares that people can’t bypass them as easily and buy online pdfs? I’m going to guess “no”. So that’s at least 2 people/groups unaffected (and possibly benefited) by this decision. Have others been adversely affected? Absolutely. Is this the nail in the coffin for WotC? Don’t kid yourself. Magic is still the most profitable product WotC puts out, if they genuinely shoot themselves in the foot with regards to D&D that just means D&D goes bye-bye and magic keeps going strong.

 

[Imaro]

Wow, so now to support or not care about this decision is to hate on childhood cancer victims. Well played...

You know I was going to stay out of this but...

Wow, did you really just play this card, I mean seriously... Rechan basically calls bull on the truth of a posters claim, by making broad generalizations... it's refuted by someone with first hand evidence... and this is what you took away from it. Uhm, just wow.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

I'll be frankly honest in that I really couldn't care less about the whole PDF thing.

About the only two WotC product lines I routinely buy stuff for is the Star Wars RPG and the SW minis line, neither of which have been or would ever be available as PDFs in the first place.

I also tend to prefer a solid book in my hand instead of something on my computer screen. Now that's not to say I don't appreciate the ability to be able to search through a PDF for specific text, but 9 times out of 10 having the book is more useful to me, especially if I'm away from my computer.

Will it acheive what Hasbro (I'm pretty much convinced this was a Hasbro decision forced on Wotc) wants in reducing piracy? Doubtful, especially if these boards are any indication. It didn't slow them down prior to the books being available as PDFs, and I doubt it'd do much to deter them now. Of course, charging full cover price for the PDFs probably didn't help WotC's bottom line either (never understood the logic of that myself, since they don't have to worry about shipping or printing costs for PDFs compared to dead-tree versions).

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I'm a big PDF proponent. So much so that I pretty much don't buy hardcopies anymore if I can get the PDF instead. Hardcopies for gaming books are not that great for me any more. They dont help with my game prep because I'd have to hand copy chunks of text, when I can jsut copy and paste from a PDF and alter a few lines to suit whatever changes I need to make.

They are also easier to produce handouts from. So yeah, no more hardcopies (unless they are bundled together like the Paizo AP's).

WOTC's recent move doesnt effect me because:

1) I either already have hard copies or PDF's of the older material that I want.

2) I have the material backed up over 5 different hard drives and several DVD's. So unless I get hit with an EMP I should be alright.

3) I pretty much stopped being a customer of WOTC after I purchased the 4E gift set in order to try out the new game. It's an edition that I don't wish to support in anyway. Admittedly my lack of support also has to do with how they've dealt with their customers over the past year or so.

I like their SW Saga game and their Dungeon Tiles, but I've decided not to even support those lines anymore. They wont miss my money, but on the other hand I wont support them because of some of their moves over the past year.

There's really no need to get all up in arms and storm out saying "I'm never supporting WOTC again and I hope their cat dies!!" Just simply dont buy any of their stuff and move on. Youre not really spiting them, there are hundreds of other fan boys who are going to pick up the slack.

I DO understand why people are upset. I'm also not trying to insinuate that they are wrong or stupid for feeling the way that they do because this doesnt effect me. I'm just saying that there's a way to handle this that could less full of drama.

 

[Cadfan]

You know I was going to stay out of this but...

Wow, did you really just play this card, I mean seriously... Rechan basically calls bull on the truth of a posters claim, by making broad generalizations... it's refuted by someone with first hand evidence... and this is what you took away from it. Uhm, just wow.

Its what I took away from it.

I'm pretty certain that the express intent of the people bringing up disability was to say "you should care about the pdf decision because of its effect on the visually impaired."

It started with people who are legally blind, until someone who was legally blind pointed out that it was nonsense. Then it moved to the totally blind.

But the overall point clearly remained. It was an attempt at casting this as an issue we should care about for the sake of blind people, in this specific case, someone blind due to childhood cancer.

 

[Ourph]

I think the decision to end all .pdf sales was pretty dumb, but I'm not really upset about it. It certainly won't affect my RPG buying habits (which are pretty spartan anyway, and never involved .pdf purchases).

 

[Barcode]

You know I was going to stay out of this but...

Wow, did you really just play this card, I mean seriously... Rechan basically calls bull on the truth of a posters claim, by making broad generalizations... it's refuted by someone with first hand evidence... and this is what you took away from it. Uhm, just wow.

Relax, Black Avenger, it was just an observation.