D&D 5E I Love D&D Next, But ...

[thewok]

In terms of format, I honestly don't care what they use. I like the agnosticism of PDF, but it has major drawback which I noticed last night while browsing some of mine: they render pretty slowly.

Adobe needs to work on the rendering speed of Reader. It sucks having pages go blank and then re-render when a new page shows up at the top or bottom of the page.

Hell, I'm all for a new wunder-format, so long as it's independent of platform and can gain enough traction to keep support in readers for a long time.

 

[avin]

Another vote for quality PDFs.

After all those years carrying my books it's nice to go only with a notebook or iPad.

Online tools hurt many places we and my pals play, so PDF is the winner.

 

[slobster]

They would do well to stick with an established industry ebook standard. Kindle format 8 comes to mind. It has DRM built-in by the folks at amazon, but it isn't too restrictive (YMMV). It is supported on multiple platforms, including android, ipad, PC, iphone, and of course the Kindle. They could essentially subcontract the logistics of handling ebook stuff out to Amazon.

Wait, don't hang me, internet! It was just a suggestion! *ducks*

 

[Drago Rinato]

In terms of format, I honestly don't care what they use. I like the agnosticism of PDF, but it has major drawback which I noticed last night while browsing some of mine: they render pretty slowly.

Adobe needs to work on the rendering speed of Reader. It sucks having pages go blank and then re-render when a new page shows up at the top or bottom of the page.

Hell, I'm all for a new wunder-format, so long as it's independent of platform and can gain enough traction to keep support in readers for a long time.

Little OT: try using Sumatra PDF, it's light and efficient.

 

[Desmoinesguy]

They would do well to stick with an established industry ebook standard. Kindle format 8 comes to mind. It has DRM built-in by the folks at amazon, but it isn't too restrictive (YMMV). It is supported on multiple platforms, including android, ipad, PC, iphone, and of course the Kindle. They could essentially subcontract the logistics of handling ebook stuff out to Amazon.

Wait, don't hang me, internet! It was just a suggestion! *ducks*

Unluckly, the movies & TV-shows purchases from Amazon are not cross-platform ...

 

[slobster]

Unluckly, the movies & TV-shows purchases from Amazon are not cross-platform ...

That's why I didn't buy the D&D movies from Amazon.

I kid, of course. I didn't buy them from Amazon because they were on sale when the local Blockbuster was going out of business.

 

[Zustiur]

As I see it, there are two key facts, and one key question:
Fact: There will be printed books (WotC will publish them)
Fact: There will be PDFs of those books
Question: Will WotC be the one publishing those PDFs, or will there only be pirated copies?

What I'd like to see is:
Book costs $X
PDF costs $X/2
Book includes a one-time-use voucher to purchase the PDF at $X/4 (or maybe $X/3. I'm not sure on costing here...)
A subscription service which lets you preview a book online (not as a PDF) a limited number of times, and makes some portions of every book available for the duration of your subscription. e.g. contents, index, any 'core' rules which are expected to be included in all games.

Where X is the current suitable market value for such a book.
AND by having a legitimate purchased copy in your customer account inventory, you can download it any time in the future, AND they continually update the PDFs with errata. Updating PDFs with errata is the best way of providing your legitimate customers with a better experience than the pirates.


I believe there are ways to mark up a PDF to show who bought it. Use that to track which copies are legit, and which have been pirated. Do not do ANYTHING else which could impact on the freedom of the legitimate customer.

Ultimately; I look at pirated copies as free advertising. The more accessible your product is, the greater your audience. Get enough pirates into your game, they're bound to buy a legit product eventually; especially if the price is appropriate. I credit Steam (and Steam sales) for a significant impact in pirating of games. Why bother pirating a hacked version which might be missing content when I can buy the real product for $3 and have it kept up to date automatically?