It's happening again!: DTRRPG.com is selling WotC books!

[ForceUser]

Dual layer dvd burner. 8 gigs on a dvd will back up some serious data.

Stop talking techie at me! No comprende pig latin!

 

[dagger]

They got Dual Layer DVD burners for 40 bucks....

 

[dagger]

I don't think WotC could lower prices enough to make pirating go away. Short of giving stuff away for free, of course.

/M

Yea, I didn't mean to stop piracy, just need to lower prices. I might be inclined to actually purchase them.

 

[Mercule]

Some day we'll think "hey, why aren't the print books cheaper than the pdfs! They aren't half as useful as the pdf books I've got!".

Only when PDFs start to be hyperlinked and indexed -- and cross-document hyperlinked. Until then, print is so far superior to digital that it's pretty much a joke to even discuss them in the same manner.

Seriously. I'm a tech guy: programmer; use PCGen, Word, and Excel constantly during my games; tablet PC; home network; all my notes or electronic. Heck, I've even taken to downloading scans of books to evaluate, rather than driving across town to Barnes and Noble (and, yes, I really do either buy 'em or delete 'em). The websites (specifically, http://www.d20srd.org) are pretty much break-even with the core books -- with a slight advantage to the digital. The PDFs just plain suck, comparitively; and I'd never use 'em, given the choice (which I have).

For raw portability, I'd pay, probably $5 per book I own. That's just in case I want to take my library to a friend's house to game. If the PDFs were hyperlinked, especially cross-document linked (so, when you clicked "extraordinary ability" in a MM3 listing, it linked you to the DMG entry), then the value would go way up. Add in a reformatting to actually make use of the computer screen, rather than fighting it with a 2-column layout, and we're in business.

 

[JustaPlayer]

For raw portability, I'd pay, probably $5 per book I own. That's just in case I want to take my library to a friend's house to game. If the PDFs were hyperlinked, especially cross-document linked (so, when you clicked "extraordinary ability" in a MM3 listing, it linked you to the DMG entry), then the value would go way up. Add in a reformatting to actually make use of the computer screen, rather than fighting it with a 2-column layout, and we're in business.

This is just some of the kind of stuff I do with my database. Of course it's not pdf any more. But I can print a specific document like a spell, creature, class, etc. to PDF or a printer. It's super cool for creating a character's spell book.

I currently use Notes for my engine. I have toyed with other types of DBs but I really love the funtionality I'm getting at the moment.

 

[Thanee]

I prefer books, but if I were to pick up a PDF, I would never get one with DRM.

If the book I wanted was only available in DRM, I would rather give the money to charity and download a ninja copy (or was that a pirate copy?), than support that crap.

Gladly, I'm not in the position, since I just buy the hardcopy book, anyways.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Nightfall]

Ninja copies generally are japanese. Pirates are for everyone!

 

[amazingshafeman]

I can't take a pdf out to the picnic table on a nice day for lunch when I'm creating the week's adventure on my breaks at work. For that functionality, I'd have to print the parts I need, which is why I wouldn't pay book prices for a pdf.

 

[delericho]

Were you aware that you can get all the material from the core rulebooks (except a few Intellectual Property monsters, Greyhawk names in the spell list, and the XP rules) available free online, easily searchable?

Sure, but it's not the same. I'm now very familiar with the PHB, and can find whatever I want in the book very quickly. The same is not true of any other arrangement of the information, even if it's all there. So, having a .pdf of the core rulebooks that is exactly the same as the printed version is of value.

Is it worth $30? I don't know about whether that's true in the general case, but I would have paid it. I won't pay more than about $5 for .pdfs of any other book I already have in print form, and my preference for new books is to get them in print form, at least initially - I don't like reading on a screen.

 

[resistor]

I don't buy that many books in general. The only ones I'll pay full price for are books that I am 100% certain will get used in my game. There's another tier of books that are good and interesting, but that I won't buy at full or near-full price because I'm not certain I'll be able to use them.

This tier is where I'd have liked to see these PDF offerings fall. For instance, I'd like to get a copy of Lords of Madness, because it looks really interesting from looking through it in my FLGS, but I'm not going to pay full or near-full price because I'm not likely to actually use it in the near future. It'd be more of a "get because it's interesting and maybe it'll inspire me in the future" thing.

However, I would definitely pick up some books like that if they were offered at a $10-15 price point in PDF form. A lot of these are the kind of books that I wouldn't really need at the table with me anyways, or would only need excerpts (like NPC stats) from, so the limitations of PDF format wouldn't be a hindrance.