Core Rules PDF's errata'd yet?

[Stalker0]

Scott, will the deluxe books (and possibly the pdfs based on your statement) include only the current errata, or will there be one more round of errata before they are released?

 

[The Little Raven]

Doubtful with us fully on to 4e although we are still going to put out some 4e updates to 3.5 books like Exemplars of Evil

A 4e update for Elder Evils would make my bottom tingle.

 

[SteveC]

I just wanted to comment on this issue as someone who supports purchasing PDFs at reasonable prices. One of the strongest selling points for a PDF is the fact that when the book gets updated, the PDF can be updated right along with it, since they are both going to be done electronically. Not updating a PDF when you're updating a book for a physical print run is simply inexcusable.

I was at a convention last week (go Living Realms!) and one of the folks their had a PDF of the core rules, pirated one presumes, and it had all of the errata put in as comments. I found it amazing that a pirate took the time to do something that WotC has not done yet.

This is my PDF mantra: price the PDFs reasonably, and update then when you update the physical books and I'll buy them from you.

As that hasn't happened yet, no purchase from me, and I'm not alone.

--Steve

 

[Scott_Rouse]

I just wanted to comment on this issue as someone who supports purchasing PDFs at reasonable prices. One of the strongest selling points for a PDF is the fact that when the book gets updated, the PDF can be updated right along with it, since they are both going to be done electronically. Not updating a PDF when you're updating a book for a physical print run is simply inexcusable.

And this is what we are doing as I already stated. Is this directed at us or other publishers?

I was at a convention last week (go Living Realms!) and one of the folks their had a PDF of the core rules, pirated one presumes, and it had all of the errata put in as comments. I found it amazing that a pirate took the time to do something that WotC has not done yet.

As I have stated we are going to do this in the next few weeks so I don't quite see the need to comment.

This is my PDF mantra: price the PDFs reasonably, and update then when you update the physical books and I'll buy them from you.

As that hasn't happened yet, no purchase from me, and I'm not alone.

--Steve

So do you consider our current PDF offering to be "priced reasonably"? Will you buy them when they get update within a couple weeks?

 

[SteveC]

So do you consider our current PDF offering to be "priced reasonably"? Will you buy them when they get update within a couple weeks?

Honestly, not at this point. I would pay half book price, at maximum for a PDF, and the core books are well above that. I'd do that because I reference them so often in physical form that it would be nice to get them to carry on the laptop. I also want to buy them because I don't support piracy in any form.

I would most likely pick up the PHB and MM at half price, but the DMG would have to be discounted much more, as there isn't really any reference material I need to look at: it's more a book to be read.

You used to be able to see the purchases someone had made on RPGNow on Enworld, but I don't believe that you can do this any more, so I'm going have to ask you to take me at my word when I say that I've purchased a lot of core book PDFs, and some expensive ones too, and the price is a sticking point, but support after the sale is much more important. I have Mutants and Masterminds, True20 and Spycraft in PDF format, and these books weren't cheap, but what really made me buy them was the support from the vendor after release. Frankly, it made me a bit of a Green Ronin evangalist.

WotC can get that kind of support, but it just has to step up to the plate and provide the service. I'm there, I'm willing to buy, but it's a question of price and value.

Hope that helps...it really wasn't meant as a snarky post, but I just have to say that I was flabbergasted and annoyed to see something illegal have "customer support."

--Steve

 

[am181d]

Just wanted to say that I'm purchasing 4e books exclusively in PDF from now on (after the core 3). It's a little disappointing that I don't have the hard copies to, say, read on the train anymore, but physical books are just too much of a pain to transport back and forth to games, especially as the amount of options increases.

I'm happy to pay 65% of retail for a PDF book, since I'm not dropping any money for the hard copy, and I'm happy to hear that we finally have word on errata. While I'd prefer to have it typeset in I agree with the earlier poster that adding errata as notes is an acceptable mid-term solution.

Once we have new errata, it would be fairly simple to append that errata to a PDF as notes. One of the big hassles with PDFs is flipping between multiple files, so having them all in one place would be a huge plus.

So:

Short-term: errata in separate file (as soon as it's available)
Mid-term: errata appended to PDF (within a week of being made available)
Long-term: errata typeset into PDF (probably only 1-3 times total per volume)

Just a suggestion!

 

[JoeGKushner]

I think it is a fair criticism. It is a matter of resources. On the inside typesetting always seems to be an area were we are crunched. It is often a case of cramming to much through a small department. We could probably stand to hire one more person but that is not my bailiwick.

That being said I am speaking a little off the cuff here and calling as I see it and it may be that errata does get typeset into PDFs. Time will tell I guess.

Thanks for the reply Scott. I suspect it can't always be easy telling people what they may not want to hear.

On the other hand...

Doubtful with us fully on to 4e although we are still going to put out some 4e updates to 3.5 books like Exemplars of Evil

This is excellent news. 4e Monsters are solid but the system would benefit from having more crunch.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

First of all, thanks for posting and clarifying stuff Scott, you know we love you...

Doubtful with us fully on to 4e although we are still going to put out some 4e updates to 3.5 books like Exemplars of Evil

A fourth edition update to Exemplars of Evil would be fantastic.

I loved that book, but I really couldn't use it in my game because of of the villians on it needed very high level opponents or lots of supplements that I didn't buy (or both)

 

[mattdm]

I think it is a fair criticism. It is a matter of resources. On the inside typesetting always seems to be an area were we are crunched. It is often a case of cramming to much through a small department. We could probably stand to hire one more person but that is not my bailiwick.

That being said I am speaking a little off the cuff here and calling as I see it and it may be that errata does get typeset into PDFs. Time will tell I guess.

Thanks for taking the time to answer in this thread. Since you've asked not to be spammed with e-mail I hope my request will be taken seriously here. It feels to me that with the pricing chosen, the PDFs are set up to fail, and I don't want to see that happen.

So, as a customer I'm asking for more resources to be put into this area. I need to be able to justify the continuing investment in PDF versions. We know that many supplements won't get reprints, but they will need errata. Putting those updates into the digital copies I'm paying more for than for hard copies is one of the few things that would make this worthwhile to me.

I know in my job having written customer requests for something is an important part of justifying expenditure on it, which is why I suggested sending mail above. The intention is to support, not to harass. If you have an alternate suggestion for how I can get this request across in a helpful way, I'd love to know. Thanks again.

 

[mattdm]

So do you consider our current PDF offering to be "priced reasonably"? Will you buy them when they get update within a couple weeks?

Flatly, I don't think they're priced reasonably. The three core books are 36% more expensive than I paid for the paper copies. Including shipping. That's a hard purchase to explain to a skeptical spouse.

I would really like to see the option of having a discount for people who purchased the physical product reconsidered — even if it means employing one of those mail-in-rebate companies. (Although honestly, I wonder how well just using an honor system would work. Check here if you've already purchased the hard copy. After all, we all know that on a practical level paying for PDFs is already on the honor system.)

And as for future products: I'm up in the air. The errata issue is pretty big in my mind.