D&D 4E Posssibility of 4E pdf's being leaked?

[SteveC]

No, but you have to consider it will take an Act of Congress to change things in the US. The teen and 20 somethings part of this generation will have to wait about 20-30 years before any of them get elected. So any changes will come very slowly to the actual law. And you can bet Civil Disobedience alone won't work.

One might say that it already has. The music industry in this country is fundamentally changing. The reason for all the lawsuits we see from RIAA is that they (record companies) realize they don't have a reason to be there anymore.

PDFs and electronic content are a few years behind the curve, but they're going in the same direction: you can get a PDF of nearly every gaming product for free on the Internet. I don't condone what you have to do in order to get them (in fact, I've spent hundreds of dollars on PDFs) but the fact is you can. When 4th edition comes out, you'll be able to get each book in the same manner, for free.

WotC has to consider how to deal with these issues, and the DI is what they've come up with. Giving you cheap and easy access to electronic versions of their rules, and adding access to updates and errata to that gives a lot of people a reason to pay for them. I'm sure the DI will have a rocky start, but if WotC provides a quality product that's worth something to their market, it will succeed.

I would make the argument that the existence of the SRD was their attempt to deal with the piracy issue in 3x. Why do you need to steal a copy of the 3x Players Handbook when the SRD is there for free? And make no mistake, WotC sold a lot of PHBs! I checked Amazon, and the 3.5 PHB is ranked approximately 8500 for all book sales right now, and is #1 for D&D books and #11 for RPG books, again that's right now! Not bad for something you can get "for free," and will be obsolete in six months.

I'd argue that a lot of the popularity of D&D came from the OGL and the fact that the books were freely available in a limited format. WotC would be well advised to continue this in 4E in my opinion.

--Steve

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

One might say that it already has. The music industry in this country is fundamentally changing. The reason for all the lawsuits we see from RIAA is that they (record companies) realize they don't have a reason to be there anymore.

PDFs and electronic content are a few years behind the curve, but they're going in the same direction: you can get a PDF of nearly every gaming product for free on the Internet. I don't condone what you have to do in order to get them (in fact, I've spent hundreds of dollars on PDFs) but the fact is you can. When 4th edition comes out, you'll be able to get each book in the same manner, for free.

WotC has to consider how to deal with these issues, and the DI is what they've come up with. Giving you cheap and easy access to electronic versions of their rules, and adding access to updates and errata to that gives a lot of people a reason to pay for them. I'm sure the DI will have a rocky start, but if WotC provides a quality product that's worth something to their market, it will succeed.

I would make the argument that the existence of the SRD was their attempt to deal with the piracy issue in 3x. Why do you need to steal a copy of the 3x Players Handbook when the SRD is there for free? And make no mistake, WotC sold a lot of PHBs! I checked Amazon, and the 3.5 PHB is ranked approximately 8500 for all book sales right now, and is #1 for D&D books and #11 for RPG books, again that's right now! Not bad for something you can get "for free," and will be obsolete in six months.

I'd argue that a lot of the popularity of D&D came from the OGL and the fact that the books were freely available in a limited format. WotC would be well advised to continue this in 4E in my opinion.

--Steve

You know, this isn't a new business model. "Give them the razor for free, and sell them the blades."

 

[SteveC]

You know, this isn't a new business model. "Give them the razor for free, and sell them the blades."

Well it worked with many of the folks I game with. Lots of them enjoy one particular type of character and have bought sourcebooks without owning the core books. Heck, it worked with me with Conan: the cheap pocket Conan book prompted me to a sourcebook for the game, which I never would have done without it.

--Steve

 

[mxyzplk]

The pdf will hit the Web. Whether it's before the launch or after the launch. The publishers forking over $5k won't, but a playtester probably will (assuming they actually are using outside playtesters right now and it's not just a myth).

I'm not sure what all the handwringing's about; every single 3.0/3.5 release is available out there. It usually takes a couple weeks post release, and there's a scan. Then another week, and there's an OCR. Been going on for a long time, so there's no "change" to anything relevant to 4e here.

 

[Piratecat]

Hijacking slightly, there are definitely outside playtest groups. I know people in at least 3 myself, and several other friends are being mysteriously silent.

Every single one of them has been scrupulously silent on the subject of 4e. It's darned impressive.