How Good Are These PDFs?

[Crothian]

Eater of the Arcane is a freebie and pretty cool but on rpgnow it and the Necromantic Feats PDF have "NOT VALIDATED FOR SALE" slapped on them. Anyone know why? It seems to be in place of a download link.

I'd e-mail the folks of the site and ask them. I can take some guesses but nothing based on fact.

 

[Ghostwind]

You will also find another review of Dweomercraft: Familiars at RPGnet.
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10223.phtml

Overall, I am quite pleased at the response thus far.

 

[Kaji]

I've purchased:

Elements of Magic (the original)
Everyone Else
Arcane Strife
Complete Guide to Beholders
Complete Guide to Drow
Dweomercraft: Enchanters

Overall, I've been pleased. The old 2nd edition Drow of the Underdark book was a better Drow handbook, but I absolutely love the Complete Guide to Beholders, and I use Everyone Else in pretty much every game session. The quality of the formatting and art is good, though I've noticed that most pdf publications could have used a bit more editing (it's never been serious, though).

I bought all of these as well, except for Elements of Magic. I also picked up Wild Spellcraft, Arcane Strife, and Deadly Games. Deadly Games did not do much for me, so I say skip that one. Other than that, they were all pretty cool, especially for the price.

 

[The Sigil]

I'd e-mail the folks of the site and ask them. I can take some guesses but nothing based on fact.

RPGNow started a policy a bit ago that it would no longer offer to host "freebies" for free publishers... bandwidth costs were getting too high, I imagine. A publisher can put a free product on RPGNow.com for a one-time fee of $10. If a product was already on RPGNow.com for free, it was made into an "unavailable" product until such time as the $10 was paid. My guess is that the $10 hasn't been paid for these products.

--The Sigil

 

[Azure Trance]

Thanks for all the replies. I'll definetly take a good look at the reviews, but now that there was mention of a print product I might get the print one instead. The ones I was most interested in for Forbidden Arcana was actually Potion Mixology, Magical Foods, and Magical Pipeweed & Tobacco. Gotta love that crunch.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Beyond that, what else does it need:
cover art (would you buy it if it looked like the front page of a term paper)
interior art (would you buy it with no art)
fancy fonts (or is times roman/courier sufficient)
watermarks/background (will a white/blank background suffice)

Joe's Book of Enchantments became a best seller based upon great content without any art, but that was in a very different time. The market is quite saturated today, so I'd guess you need at least a cover image and some minimal level of interior art.

Fancy fonts can be OK for headers/titles/section heads, but the body font better be something at the high end of the readability scale, which probably means the usual suspects.

Watermarks and backgrounds tend to be a negative for many PDF buyers (like me). They make the PDF more difficult to read on screen (which is already tough enough for those of us with not-so-young-anymore eyes) and can both eat up ink when printed (which is expensive) or, depending upon the system and printer, print out too heavily which also makes the printed version unreadable. They're a great idea (or they can be, if properly executed) for print books, where you and a professional printer with very expensive hardware control the output, but for something that will be printed on the office laser, or whatever the home inkjet is, leave background images and watermarks out.

Just my opinion, of course.
-Dave