Elements of Magic

[Corlon]

when it says download price...

is this a book, or simply a thing that the site has that you have to pay to download??

 

[Mortaneus]

It's a PDF document for sale. Sure, it sounds like a rip off, but wait till you read the thing.

Monte Cook can really be accredited with getting the PDF-for-sale ball rolling. Sure, there were others before him, but he's the one that blew the market open.

Anyway, it's a REALLY good book, and I highly recommend it, even if it's only available in electronic format.

 

[Corlon]

sooo

I pay money, and I download the file...
What if theres a screwup in the download?
Or my computer shuts off?
or... or... or...

Are there things to prevent this.

And besides the fact that it's a federal crime and against copyright laws, what's to stop someone downloading it and sending it to all there friends?

 

[Victim]

From RPGnow anyway, you get the download link in an email. As long as you have the email, you can download as much as you want. For example, I usually download the files and save them to my hard drive. Later on, I download them again from my internet based email account in the computer lab, so I can save them again on my personal network drive and print them out.

And you can always say the download got messed up and get another link by asking the customer service people.

Nothing prevents you from sending the file to people you know.

 

[Chun-tzu]

sooo

I pay money, and I download the file...
What if theres a screwup in the download?
Or my computer shuts off?
or... or... or...

Are there things to prevent this.

And besides the fact that it's a federal crime and against copyright laws, what's to stop someone downloading it and sending it to all there friends?

I've purchased several products from RPG Now, and never had a problem. If there's a problem during download, you can try the download link they send you again. Don't worry about it.

You really shouldn't distribute copies of it around, but there's nothing that can stop you from it except your own sense of honesty and fairness. But if you enjoy gaming, then you probably want to support the gaming industry and game designers like Matt Blakely, author of Elements of Magic. The alternative is that this experiment in cheap RPG products will die off, and we won't see such excellent supplements in the future.

 

[RangerWickett]

Nothing prevents you from sending the file to people you know.

Except your conscience. It takes a lot of time to write, arrange art for, and layout such a book. For Four-Color to Fantasy, our d20 supers book, I probably spent 80 hours in simple writing and revising, plus much more in brainstorming, arranging art, and arguing with Russ about the proper way to write the bloody thing. On FCTF I probably made about $3 an hour for the work I put in, so people pirating the book kinda get on my nerves. Sure, I love the work, but I also appreciate people paying for it, especially when it's as classily-produced as FCTF.

For Elements, I didn't have as much influence, but I still feel closely involved with it, so I hope people will only pirate it if they think it's crap; then, those who receive the free copies will realize it's brilliant, and they'll buy legit copies.

 

[Corlon]

k, thanks guys

Never looked at this stuff, but this one thing looked really cool

 

[Victim]

Except your conscience. It takes a lot of time to write, arrange art for, and layout such a book. For Four-Color to Fantasy, our d20 supers book, I probably spent 80 hours in simple writing and revising, plus much more in brainstorming, arranging art, and arguing with Russ about the proper way to write the bloody thing. On FCTF I probably made about $3 an hour for the work I put in, so people pirating the book kinda get on my nerves. Sure, I love the work, but I also appreciate people paying for it, especially when it's as classily-produced as FCTF.

For Elements, I didn't have as much influence, but I still feel closely involved with it, so I hope people will only pirate it if they think it's crap; then, those who receive the free copies will realize it's brilliant, and they'll buy legit copies.

Well yeah. But that doesn't exactly prevent you from doing, it means you don't want to. Splitting hairs I guess.

Personally, I find PDF rpg stuff to be great values. WotC splats are 20 bucks for 96 pages, and you can find PDFs that are around the same size for between a quarter and half the price. While sometimes you get poorly edited products or unbalanced mechanics, WotC stuff has those things too. The only print things I've bought lately have been the Heroes of High Favor products, because most PDFs are steals, especially since I can print them for free.

 

[La Bete]

especially since I can print them for free.

Amen to that - theres but some (somewhat) justified grumbling from some people about the cost of printing out a pdf, but if you can print at work or wherever, you're away laughing.

however, even without that, pdfs are great - the low cost of them means you can take a gamble on some stuff, and if it turns out (which it hasnt yet) to be not the best, at least youre not badly out of pocket.

PS. sending copies to your friends is bad karma - supporting this industry can only be a good thing.

PPS. buy EoM - it rocks.

 

[LGodamus]

Well since Matt is a member here and we really really appreciate his hard work.........if you were to distribute it freely, that would be hurting him and we would have to send Guido to visit you.... he is and epic Barbarian from newjersey ...