[PRESS] Guardians Of Order Offers E-Books at DriveThruRPG.com

[Guardians Of Order]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Guelph, Ontario
7 June 2004

Contact: Mark C. MacKinnon, President

GUARDIANS OF ORDER OFFERS ELECTRONIC BOOKS AT DRIVETHRURPG.COM

Guardians Of Order, Inc. announced today that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with DriveThruRPG.com to offer secure e-Books versions of its role-playing game products, effective immediately. Guardians Of Order’s entire gaming library, excluding some licensed products, can be downloaded within minutes at DriveThruRPG.com — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“We believe that our customers want options,” said Guardians Of Order President, Mark C. MacKinnon, “and these digital books are available to complement the traditional printed version of our products. To kick off our new relationship with DriveThruRPG.com and encourage everyone to give our RPG e-Books a try, we will be offering our smash-hit Japanese anime RPG, Big Eyes, Small Mouth (Revised Second Edition), for download absolutely free during the week of June 14 to 20, 2004. Drive on through and check us out!”

About Guardians Of Order

Founded in 1997, Guardians Of Order, Inc. is a Canadian publishing company specialising in Japanese anime and superheroic role-playing games, as well as licensed resource and reference books. In addition to their Origins Award-nominated Big Eyes, Small Mouth anime RPG and Silver Age Sentinels superhero RPG, they publish licensed fan guides and RPGs based on: popular anime series (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Trigun, Hellsing, Fushigi Yugi, The Slayers, and others); George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire (fall 2004); and DC Comics’/WildStorm’s acclaimed superhero series, The Authority and StormWatch (summer 2004). Guardians Of Order is headquartered in Guelph, Ontario. For more information, contact Guardians Of Order at info@guardiansorder.com, or visit the company's website at http://www.guardiansorder.com.

About DriveThruRPG.com

DriveThruRPG.com is the first completely professional gaming e-Book site, offering secure downloads using Adobe’s secure server technology. This allows publishers to offer their full line of products as e-Books on the site. DriveThruRPG.com does for role-playing games what iTunes does for music — it’s a virtual gaming superstore with products from top RPG publishers, with both current releases and classic games that brings us back to our own “good old days.”

 

[Krieg]

About DriveThruRPG.com

DriveThruRPG.com is the first completely professional gaming e-Book site, offering secure downloads using Adobe’s secure server technology. This allows publishers to offer their full line of products as e-Books on the site. DriveThruRPG.com does for role-playing games what iTunes does for music — it’s a virtual gaming superstore with products from top RPG publishers, with both current releases and classic games that brings us back to our own “good old days.”

Since this is going to be a hotly discussed topic for some time, I strongly recomend you take a look at the various threads regarding this and continue to do so in the future to monitor the pulse of the consumer. Some examples...

DriveThruRPG Exclusivity
If you like Malhavoc PDFs, get them now!
Drive Thru RPG -- No Thanks
Post good things About DrivethruRPG.com here

 

[Kesh]

This is pretty cool. I like seeing more companies offer their products in electronic format as well as paper. Having more choices is good.

I'm not particularly happy with DRM, but it doesn't seem bad. No copy restrictions, limited Copy & Paste (which is understandable). Might get a few purchases from me.

 

[Funksaw]

This is pretty cool. I like seeing more companies offer their products in electronic format as well as paper. Having more choices is good.

I'm not particularly happy with DRM, but it doesn't seem bad. No copy restrictions, limited Copy & Paste (which is understandable). Might get a few purchases from me.

Except that the DTRPG publishers are lying about the abilities of the product and what you can do with them. Moving from one computer to another is - at the least a MAJOR hassle and may be impossible with a non-free product without repurchasing it - different people have reported different things. You can't use it on anything other than a Palm handheld - PocketPC and iPaq users are right out - and of course, there's the whole DRM morality issue - most of those posters on the threads listed above have bad things to say about DTRPG.

What's more, DTPRG was only established to drive RPGnow -the good guys of PDF- out of business after RPGnow refused to sell to White Wolf.

I'm actually boycotting GOO products - in print and in electronic form - as well as White Wolf's and Eden's - until they quit this nonsense and start treating the customer with a bit of respect.

Check out the Electronic Freedom Foundation's website for more information on DRM.

 

[GMSkarka]

"DriveThruRPG.com is the first completely professional gaming e-Book site"

Yet again, another publisher parrots the borderline-libelous party line from DTRPG. You'd think that at least one of them might balk at this.

Ah well.

 

[Cergorach]

Except that the DTRPG publishers are lying about the abilities of the product and what you can do with them. Moving from one computer to another is - at the least a MAJOR hassle and may be impossible with a non-free product without repurchasing it - different people have reported different things.

Lying, shees hat a heay word to use!
How come i did it in less then a minute and others have been trying for days. It's almost asif they don't want it to work, or they're more stupid then i am (and i must say, that's a feat in itself ;-)

You can't use it on anything other than a Palm handheld - PocketPC and iPaq users are right out

iPaq = a PocketPC
They never said it would work on a pocket pc or even Win CE.

- and of course, there's the whole DRM morality issue - most of those posters on the threads listed above have bad things to say about DTRPG.

If you look around you, you'll find that a lot of people have bad things to say on all sorts of subjects, even subjects you find good. No customer is happy with Adobe DRM, but if i have a large amount of 'choice' with Adobe DRM than without, Adobe DRM it will be...

What's more, DTPRG was only established to drive RPGnow -the good guys of PDF- out of business after RPGnow refused to sell to White Wolf.

Well, WW has a business plan, RPGnow was a good start for that business plan, RPGnow refused to sell, does that mean that WW should stop their business plan? I certainly don't hope so! DTRPG is just an expression of that business plan, it's not meant to be an 'evil' tool to destroy those who say nay to the big bad white (were)wolf. it's meant to exploit a new market, the ebook market. If RPGnow is a casualty, then so be it, it might not be nice, it might not be fair, but it's hardly 'evil'.

I'm actually boycotting GOO products - in print and in electronic form - as well as White Wolf's and Eden's - until they quit this nonsense and start treating the customer with a bit of respect.

You don't mean respect, you mean subjugate to your will...
But you do have the power to vote with your wallet, and by all means be my guest ;-)

Check out the Electronic Freedom Foundation's website for more information on DRM.

Don't forget that DRM is a term, not an implemntation, what's used at DTRPG is Adobe DRM, look around on the web for some specifics on what it does...

 

[Cergorach]

"DriveThruRPG.com is the first completely professional gaming e-Book site"

Yet again, another publisher parrots the borderline-libelous party line from DTRPG. You'd think that at least one of them might balk at this.

If you look around on the adobe site, you'll notice that the term [e-Book] means something different then [pdf]. E-book is the DRMed version of a pdf. RPGnow doesn't offer Adobe DRM, so it's (according to Adobe) technically not an ebook site...

 

[mroberon1972]

iPaq = a PocketPC
They never said it would work on a pocket pc or even Win CE.

Wow...

Considering I have a PPC, and never have owned a Palm...

Guess I'm not interested if their cutting out hardware I use...

(They really cut out PPC? That's wierd...)

John Bowden

 

[Cergorach]

Wow...

Considering I have a PPC, and never have owned a Palm...

Guess I'm not interested if their cutting out hardware I use...

(They really cut out PPC? That's wierd...)

John Bowden

It's mostly Adobe's fault for being slowpokes, but i can understand why they went with Palm first, PalmOS is/was used more then the PPC platform (mostly because it was cheaper to own).

To be honest, i don't think that your really missing much, Adobe for Win Ce sucks big time (very annoying navigation)! I prefer to use µBook, works great with txt files, that's one of the reasons why i'm now converting my DTRPG purchased files to txt (the other is OGC).

I own a Dell Axim 5 btw, what do you use?

 

[kingpaul]

If you look around on the adobe site, you'll notice that the term [e-Book] means something different then [pdf]. E-book is the DRMed version of a pdf. RPGnow doesn't offer Adobe DRM, so it's (according to Adobe) technically not an ebook site...

So Adobe is trying to rewrite the vernacular in their own image?