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File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?
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<blockquote data-quote="wocky" data-source="post: 1534105" data-attributes="member: 11408"><p>I only bought "Cry Havoc" and "Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" after I downloaded them illegally from the web and was able to confirm that I would be able to print them (in a black and white inkjet printer, without wasting too much ink in big areas of pure black). At the time that information either wasn't stated clear enough in the web site, or I couldn't be sure that any existing previews were faithful to the actual product.</p><p></p><p>I also downloaded the "Moonshaes" book (AD&D 2nd Edition) from a P2P server and was bummed to see it was impossible to print, as every page had a dark beige background color, with text in brown. Printing it would not only waste ink, but also be completely unreadable. Eventually (months later) I found the way to edit the PDF and make the text black and the background white... when I did, I went over to rpgnow and bought it.</p><p></p><p>Similar to many times I bought CDs I first listened to in MP3.</p><p></p><p>BTW, I think you should keep this things in mind when discussing how P2P affects the RPG industry:</p><p></p><p>- At least in Argentina the usual practice (since... always) has been to photocopy RPG books. Even now, I know more people using photocopies than PDF printouts, since they either assume photocopies are cheaper, or don't have PDFs with printable quality.</p><p></p><p>- Some book scans in PDF are great, with OCRed text and images with good resolution. Many more simply stink... text is barely readable even on the screen, pages are skewed, dark scans... missing pages. The weird part is, it's unusual to find a good version of books with poor scans. People just keep sharing the bad version, and nobody makes a new one. I've seen the same thing happen with MP3s... </p><p></p><p>- I think I've yet to see someone actually use a PDF product downloaded illegally. Many people have gigabites of this stuff, but don't actually like reading books off the screen <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> </p><p></p><p>- Most of the people I game with have access to illegal PDFs (or actually have them), but still buy real books for gaming. Some of them have a couple of photocopied products, but no printouts.</p><p></p><p>- I know of people who play using freely available versions of the SRDs in PDF format.</p><p></p><p>- If you ever search for RPG stuff in a P2P engine you'll see that while every single WotC book is easily downloadable, small publisher books are mostly nowhere to be found. I don't think PDF publishers (except for Malhavoc, maybe) loose any money to P2P.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="wocky, post: 1534105, member: 11408"] I only bought "Cry Havoc" and "Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" after I downloaded them illegally from the web and was able to confirm that I would be able to print them (in a black and white inkjet printer, without wasting too much ink in big areas of pure black). At the time that information either wasn't stated clear enough in the web site, or I couldn't be sure that any existing previews were faithful to the actual product. I also downloaded the "Moonshaes" book (AD&D 2nd Edition) from a P2P server and was bummed to see it was impossible to print, as every page had a dark beige background color, with text in brown. Printing it would not only waste ink, but also be completely unreadable. Eventually (months later) I found the way to edit the PDF and make the text black and the background white... when I did, I went over to rpgnow and bought it. Similar to many times I bought CDs I first listened to in MP3. BTW, I think you should keep this things in mind when discussing how P2P affects the RPG industry: - At least in Argentina the usual practice (since... always) has been to photocopy RPG books. Even now, I know more people using photocopies than PDF printouts, since they either assume photocopies are cheaper, or don't have PDFs with printable quality. - Some book scans in PDF are great, with OCRed text and images with good resolution. Many more simply stink... text is barely readable even on the screen, pages are skewed, dark scans... missing pages. The weird part is, it's unusual to find a good version of books with poor scans. People just keep sharing the bad version, and nobody makes a new one. I've seen the same thing happen with MP3s... - I think I've yet to see someone actually use a PDF product downloaded illegally. Many people have gigabites of this stuff, but don't actually like reading books off the screen :) - Most of the people I game with have access to illegal PDFs (or actually have them), but still buy real books for gaming. Some of them have a couple of photocopied products, but no printouts. - I know of people who play using freely available versions of the SRDs in PDF format. - If you ever search for RPG stuff in a P2P engine you'll see that while every single WotC book is easily downloadable, small publisher books are mostly nowhere to be found. I don't think PDF publishers (except for Malhavoc, maybe) loose any money to P2P. [/QUOTE]
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