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Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 6245831" data-attributes="member: 9789">Very interesting to see that among the ~100 people who have responded, most prefer books.  Sorry, but I'm in the "strongly prefer PDFs" camp.  One big reason (and I've not read the thread to see if anyone else has said these things) is because I ALWAYS have a laptop in front of me when I run a game, and it's 100x easier to have a bunch of PDFs open to quickly reference things than books.  I typically already have a browser with several tabs open anyway, so this just makes everything easier and quicker and saves tons of space at the table.I've also gotten to the point where I much prefer just reading PDFs of gaming books as well - AS LONG AS THEY ARE BOOKMARKED.  I honestly don't know why anyone would ever release their book in PDF form without extensive bookmarking, other than the fact that they had no idea that anyone would actually read their book in PDF form.  Bookmarks are a billion times faster than looking something up by hand in a physical book, period.  If I skip around as I read - which I often do, since no one writes a gaming book in an order that makes sense - being able to quickly jump back and forth is awesome.  However, even non-bookmarked PDFs are still typically faster for me to jump around in, since I can memorize page numbers and jump around that way.Additionally, 4th Edition D&D absolutely burned me when it comes to books vs. PDFs and I'm hesitant to go back for this alone.  4E books were worthless within a month of print (sometimes faster) because they treated the game like a software project and constantly updated it.  Errata can be tolerable, but even a small amount is not the best situation - and nearly every game has rule adjustments and tweaks eventually.  In theory, PDFs are far superior because you can re-download the updated version of the book instead of just throwing your physical copy in the trash (or writing in it or whatever).  To be fair, many companies don't always update their PDFs - but at least they could (and should).But probably the biggest reason of all is because I like to read, use, and reference game books from lots of different locations.  And sometimes certain games (like 3.5 D&D) have tons and tons of books.  It just doesn't make any sense to lug all that weight around when I have dropbox on my iPad.  If I'm at lunch and I want to browse something - bam, it's right there.  This is one advantage that print never had and will never have:  PDFs just completely eclipse physical books this way.  Even if I buy a book in book form, I want to get a PDF copy as well so I am not so limited when it comes to access.I'll honestly have to go back and read this thread sometime so I can figure out why anyone would buy a book anymore - they offer little more than decoration and nostalgia to me.  PDFs have such huge advantages I doubt I'll ever go back.  (Oh, and they're typically cheaper, too!)Edit:  Ok, going back through this thread, the majority of responses are actually in favor of PDFs, or people who like both but only list positives for PDFs.  So far, the only positives for books listed are:- collectable nature of books (fair enough)- enjoy reading physical copies more (probably because they are used to it; I wonder if some of these people have tried the latest tablets) That's pretty much it.  "Decoration and nostalgia" still seem to be the main reasons as far as I am understanding.Another good thing I forgot to mention that someone else did about PDFs is that you can often just snatch a couple of pages and email them to someone if they need a reference, whereas with a book you need an entire copier/printer to do the same.  (Obviously some peoples' access varies, so this may or may not apply to you.)</blockquote>

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