Frostburn at DriveThruRPG

[Non-human Resources]

Hmmm, I just got this in my email.

Seattle, WA and Atlanta, GA — DriveThruRPG.com announced today
that it will offer Wizards of the Coast's Frostburn Dungeons &
Dragons® release on DriveThruRPG.com beginning Wednesday,
September 22, 2004, just days after the hardcopy became
available in retail stores.

Ordering and information about Frostburn Dungeons & Dragons® can
be found at this link:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1449

"We like the service DriveThruRPG is offering to the gaming
community, and we decided to release Frostburn in e-Book format
to find out what response D&D fans around the world will have to
being able to get the latest D&D release in digital format,"
said Charles Ryan, Brand Manager for Dungeons & Dragons at
Wizards of the Coast.

Wizards plans to offer Frostburn for one month or less on
www.DriveThruRPG.com and then gauge whether the e-Book format is
popular enough with D&D® fans to warrant offering additional
products in e-Book format on DriveThruRPG.

"Our goal at DriveThruRPG has always been to offer the entire
selection of the very best product the roleplaying game (RPG)
hobby has to offer in digital format. We think having Wizards
experimenting with new releases in the e-Book format is a
momentous step forward for the future of rpg e-Books, and we
hope fans of the digital format will let Wizards know its
e-Books are in demand, so that Wizards will choose to continue
their e-Book program," said Steve Wieck of DriveThruRPG.com.

With the ability to search for specific rule text, cut & paste
passages onto character sheets or adventure notes, or take an
entire rpg collection with you to the gaming table, the e-Book
format has become increasingly popular with gaming fans as an
adjunct to benefits of the traditional printed format.

Wizards of the Coast joins other leading role-playing game
companies such as White Wolf, AEG, Arthaus, Chaosium, Dream Pod
9, Eden Studios, Fantasy Flight Games, Fan Pro, GDW, Guardians
of Order, Holistic Design, Malhavoc Press, Necromancer Games,
Pinnacle Entertainment and dozens of other leading publishers of
new and classic rpg's who have their rpg products available in
digital format on www.DriveThruRPG.com.

Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.
(NYSE:HAS), is a worldwide leader in the trading card game and
tabletop roleplaying game categories, and a leading developer
and publisher of game-based entertainment products. The company
holds an exclusive patent on trading card games (TCGs) and their
method of play and produces the premier trading card game,
Magic: The Gathering®, among many other trading card such as the
recently released Duel Masters® Trading Card Game, games and
family card and board games. Wizards is also a leading
publisher of roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons®, and
publisher of fantasy series fiction with numerous New York Times
best-sellers. For more information, visit the Wizards of the
Coast website at wizards.com

 

[Voadam]

A question about this DRM stuff.

I want to buy some of the D&D 1e and 2e stuff off of SVgames and such. I want to take these to a printer like Staples, Kinkos, etc so that later I can rebind them into a hardback book format. Are these ESDs using the DRM system? Does this mean that Staples will not be able to print these out (i.e. I'd have to use my own printer at home...a much less desirable activity)? Has anyone any experience in this?

Last I checked the ones from svgames and www.rpgnow.com are not DRM encrypted.

Once you download them (and compile them if you get it from svgames) you could copy them to a CD and take it to Kinkos/Staples/Wherever and print it.

I have had problems with ones from SVGames and no problems from rpgnow so I get them at rpgnow exclusively.

 

[Henry]

"We like the service DriveThruRPG is offering to the gaming
community, and we decided to release Frostburn in e-Book format
to find out what response D&D fans around the world will have to
being able to get the latest D&D release in digital format,"
said Charles Ryan, Brand Manager for Dungeons & Dragons at
Wizards of the Coast.

Aw, heck.

They're gonna use FROSTBURN to gauge popularity? That's not good. That product, while I'm assuming it's good quality, has VERY LITTLE universal appeal. I can count on one hand the number of DM's I know who have ever run cold-weather or arctic-central campaigns. I can only hope the results do not turn off WotC management to future digital packages.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Without DRM you go buy the pdf and then share it with your other 6 gaming buddies.

Wrong. I don't share my pdf's. I'm not a bastard like that. My friends might read the copy on my computer, but they never get a copy of it. Just because someone doesn't like copy-protected stuff doesn't mean that they're wanting to break copyright laws. My whole issue with DRM is that I can't transfer the copy to other machines that I own. I don't want to have to re-register another machine with the book when I can simply take the file and copy it over to my laptop.

And I think everyone agrees about the fact that the price is way too high for this product. But I still dont understand why people would only pay 5-12$ for such a product. That's half the price of Amazon and even more compared to the official price of WotC...For the same product except that it is in digital format. At least I didn't hear a reasonable argument for this yet. Anyone care to explain his opinion?

I don't like to pay a lot for a PDF simply because it's utility is lowered compared to a print copy. Also, the more expensive a pdf is means that's even more that I have to spend on it if I take it to a print shop to have pinted and nicely bound. $35 + another $10-15 to print is WAAAY too expensive for me to spend on any pdf. Plus, thanks to places like RPGNow I come to expect that pdf's will be cheaper. They are lesser books, IMO, simply because it's a very special pdf that makes me want to read it all on the computer screen, therefore it should be cheaper...at least for me to shell out the money for it.

Kane

 

[Conaill]

The problem with DRM is that it makes the pirated version more attractive than the legitimate version. If someone wants to pirate something they will. Not a single pirate is stopped by DRM - in fact cracking the DRM on one of these pseudo-PDFs is far easier than cutting off the spine of a book and feeding it through a scanner.

Speaking of which... has anyone done a study of which of the DTRPG PDF's have shown up in a cracked version on Kazaa etc? That's probably the only thing that could stop the DRM juggernaut: if you can prove to the publishers that it simply doesn't work, when it comes to protecting against piracy...

 

[Voadam]

Speaking of which... has anyone done a study of which of the DTRPG PDF's have shown up in a cracked version on Kazaa etc? That's probably the only thing that could stop the DRM juggernaut: if you can prove to the publishers that it simply doesn't work, when it comes to protecting against piracy...

Well, many of the books were already out there as scanned and pirated PDFs before DTRPG even though they were never previously sold as pdfs.

 

[Pyrex]

*sigh* I really like the concept of buying e-books*, but for me there are two major flaws with the implementation of the Frostburn PDF.

1) Cost.
When I buy a gaming book (via Amazon, Borders, or my FLGS) I'm paying for two things. I'm paying both for the content and for the physical media containing that content.

If I buy a hardcover book at MSRP I get both of those.

When buying an ebook at MSRP I only get one.

Ergo, to my point of view, buying an ebook at MSRP is a bad deal. Especially given that I'm within fair use if I take one of my books, scan it & create my own ebook.


2) DRM
Pirates will always find a way to break DRM.
Using DRM to keep honest users honest is like trying to keep tall users tall. It just doesn't do anything except irritate them.

The thing about having an actual book is that even when my backpack wears out, I know that my book will be compatible with my new backpack. I don't have to go back to the store (which may have since burned down) and get my new backpack certified to hold my book, it just does. Also, once I've bought my book the store can't tell me that I can only ever use my book in 5 backpacks.
(I know people who have already been burned by iTunes because they swapped machines and/or reformatted enough times to exceed the activation limit)

Also, when I'm done reading my book I can lend it to someone, give it to them or sell it to them. None of these are conveniently possible with DRM'd e-media.



*Note: I am not a pirate. I'm also willing to financially support companies when I believe in their work. I have copies of the SRD on both my office and home machines. However I also purchased copies of the 3.5 PHB, DMG and MM because I want WotC to continue publishing them.

 

[jeffh]

The misrepresentation was wholly unintentional. Also, I was very very sleepy.

Fair enough, we all slip up from time to time.

(I didn't mean to suggest it was intentional, by the way, I was merely surprised at what I took to be an honest mistake, considering who it was coming from.)

 

[jeffh]

A question about this DRM stuff.

I want to buy some of the D&D 1e and 2e stuff off of SVgames and such. I want to take these to a printer like Staples, Kinkos, etc so that later I can rebind them into a hardback book format. Are these ESDs using the DRM system? Does this mean that Staples will not be able to print these out (i.e. I'd have to use my own printer at home...a much less desirable activity)? Has anyone any experience in this?

Copyright would be the main issue there, not DRM. If they refused to print it, copyright would be the reason.

The SVGames PDFs are not DRM, unless something has changed quite recently.

 

[Conaill]

Well, many of the books were already out there as scanned and pirated PDFs before DTRPG even though they were never previously sold as pdfs.

Scanned and pirated is a FAR cry from designed-for-pdf in terms of quality though. I bet most of the scanned-in books are essentially just a set of image files wrapped in a pdf. Maybe with some attempt at OCR. But I doubt anyone went to the trouble of checking and correcting the OCR, never mind adding the bookmarks, hotlinks, etc that you would expect in a professional pdf release.

Besides, there were some people who claimed DRM would only lead to *more* pirating, not less. It would be nice to see some data on that, now that DTRPG has been up and running for a couple of months.