DI and freedom from the revision cycle

[Lonely Tylenol]

Yeah, but check this out - all those things are typically short reference tasks. You take about one minute to check the weather forecast, and move on.

Computers are great for the fast fact check. They aren't so hot for the longer reading and design tasks, IMHO.

QFT. They are, in fact, the reason I wear glasses. Too much screen time.

I think forcing the matter either direction is sub-optimal. You can go ahead and use your machines for whatever you like - but remove my dead tree editions, and I have an issue with your plan.

Dead trees aren't a volatile medium. My laptop has been known to crash on occasion. Also, it takes longer to flip through a pdf to find something I don't know the exact location of (especially if the index is poor or nonexistent) than it does to flip through pages until I hit the page I was looking for. Books are convenient for certain tasks, and pdfs for others. I love having pdfs, but I hate not having hardcovers to go with them.

 

[Umbran]

I think we will find that the two are mutually exclusive, though. See my "less utopian" post.

They aren't mutually exclusive, in a general sense. You are correct, though, that you can't realize full freedom from the revision cycle so long as a goodly chunk of your players are using dead trees. All those who use dead trees cannot have their content edited or changed remotely.

My real wonder is about support for house rules and 3rd party material. The gaming community is really, really used to being able to customize, to play as they like it. If the new digital stuff is WotC official, most current release only... well, I think that'd limit the usefulness significantly for many gamers.

 

[Imperialus]

Umbran does have a point. Not all gamers are nessesarally tech heads. One of the guys I used to game with till he moved had a 200mhrz pentium with a 56K connection. He couldn't even read E-books because downloading the latest Adobe Acrobat would take the rest of his natural life. Of course he was an extreme example but I'm sure he's not the only one.

 

[1Mac]

They aren't mutually exclusive, in a general sense. You are correct, though, that you can't realize full freedom from the revision cycle so long as a goodly chunk of your players are using dead trees.

That's what I meant, yes. And I feel that freedom from the revision cycle is important enough that those who want their books may have to cope.

Imperialus, I can appreciate that not all gamers are tech savvy, but we are moving toward an era where computer technologies are more and more ubiquitous, to the point where in forming their strategy, WotC cannot take every outlier into account.

I hope I don't sound like I am drumrolling for the Inevitable March of Progress. I think it is really about making a choice; continuing to release book after book, revision after revision; or adopt a program like DnD Insider.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Not everywhere I game has internet and computer access.

And it will SUCK not to be able to get my books if I'm in someone's basement just because they don't have a computer or they don't run chords down there or a laptop can't get a signal.

SUCK A LOT.