Query on ESDs from SVgames

[diaglo]

i bought some of the original attempts at ESDs before svgames took over.

they were not the same as the originals. they don't come close.

but if you never had the originals i guess they do qualify as red headed step children.

i have heard that the quality is worse. so i'm holding off buying anymore.

 

[Desdichado]

Odd, I have no problem whatsoever with the Planescape stuff I got. The Dark*Matter ESD is a little blurry and dark, but not unreadable except in some of the really stylized text boxes.

 

[Voadam]

I've had problems with about half of the ones I've gotten from svgames with pages or entire sections giving page errors and not displaying. The other half have been zero problems. I have gotten a lot but now that I've gotten most of the big ones I wanted across the board, I'm going to hold off on buying any more until the problems I e-mailed them about are resolved.

 

[Voadam]

I didn't have any problems with the pre-SVgames ones when the operation was run by WotC and I have not had problems with pdfs from rpgnow.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

...I'm going to hold off on buying any more until the problems I e-mailed them about are resolved.

I did the same thing. I praised the one that worked and pointed out that it would have made for a better experience had the others been even half as well-done. The response e-mail was a very polite, "It's not going to happen, so suck it up." Which, if not encouraging, is at least a lot better than the "Ha ha. We have your moooooney!" that I've gotten from many online vendors.

 

[Psion]

I haven't purchased a whole lot of ESDs (but should... I really want the PS collection on my laptop, and it would also be nice to have an indellible collection of a few other things.)

But Undermountain is my 2e gig that I still get loads of use out of, and I got everything to do with undermountain. The text parts of the scans were good, but the maps were pretty bad... you couldn't make out the numbers on a lot of areas. (Good thing I have the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas, or my laptop undermountain plans would have been shot.)

 

[johnsemlak]

It seems to me that too much attention on the goods and bads of the ESDs is directed at SVGames. As I understand it, they are a vendor of the products and nothing else. The company responsible for the scans is (correct me if I'm wrong) Bastion Press. Bastion's page on their ESD work is here. Bastion has a forum devoted to the WotC ESD program at mortality.net .

 

[Darius101]

I have bought allot from them to replace my old orginals for preservations sake. Easier to print and write on new paper than write and earase on the old ones.
As far as legibility ...yes the old ones were better but they must have taken a ton more time to scan in.

They made the maps the bigger ones anyway that way so that you could just copy the section you needed.

The Blurring thing your talking about...I haven't noticed it on the 30 or so modules and box sets I have got off there. I have noticed that some of the modules appear to have a small amount of what I call bleed through of text. It is kind of like a shadow text.
some of my favorites are the GDQ Queen of the Spiders
Falcon series of modules
Bloodstone series
Return to the Tomb - which I am going to run online and it is easy to cut and paste the text for editing in grip. The maps also transfered to bitmaps really easily for use in combat in grip. There is a page out of place in this ESD which although annnoying at first is still worth $5 to get.

++Darius++