D&D 2E Recovering previously-bought PDFs of D&D Basic to 2E

[Pragmatic]

Back in the day, before WotC discovered that pirating happens on the internet, they had made older material available for purchase on a couple of websites.

I bought about 300 of the PDFs (Planescape, Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, Birthright, plus selected Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Mystara/Basic, and various generic books).

I recently visited DriveThruRPG to check out my account. It contains five of the PDFs I purchased.

Does anyone know what was the other site that was selling PDFs back in the 2002-2005 time frame?

I've got my PDFs on my desktop, two external hard drives, and on my tablet, but if there's a fire or a burglary, I'm screwed...

 

[darjr]

put them on google drive or dropbox or both.

The other service selling pdfs included Paizo. Though I think there was one other.

 

[Pragmatic]

Hmmm... Google Drive is $2/mo for 100GB. My RPG PDF collection is 70GB, so that may be the best for me...

I wonder if I can open/download from my tablet? (So I don't have to play "musical chairs" to get all the files I currently want onto it.) And can we make "hierarchies" (e.g., "Forgotten Realms \ 3E," instead of "here's all my files")?

I actually think the second place I bought products was from RPGNow, which merged with DriveThruRPG. Which means that out of the HUNDREDS of products I bought, I have online access to only five of them. (This is why I like SJ Games. All the hundreds of PDFs I bought on there, will be available as long as they remain open...)

 

[darjr]

Yea, I love the way SJG's runs their store. If I can get the PDF there, I usually do.

70GB... gulp.... didn't realize. Have you looked at Amazon? They have something, also Microsoft. Access from your tablet via dropbox or google drive is easy, there is an app.

Also there is a way to push those files into a gmail account and access them. In fact for archival purposes I'd recommend that.

Dave.

 

[ccs]

I've got my PDFs on my desktop, two external hard drives, and on my tablet, but if there's a fire or a burglary, I'm screwed...

Better to be screwed that way than have the company you bought them from essentially steal them from you.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Try Mega. They're free and the storage is massive. I also use multiple Google drive accounts so that I don't have to pay (as well as Mega and Mediafire).

 

[delericho]

I recently visited DriveThruRPG to check out my account. It contains five of the PDFs I purchased.

If you have the confirmation emails, you could consider emailing DTRPG about any of the others they sold you? Though they won't be able to help with PDFs you bought from the other suppliers, of course.

Does anyone know what was the other site that was selling PDFs back in the 2002-2005 time frame?

According to Talien's column on PDFs, it was RPGnow.

 

[Random Bystander]

I would check with DrivethruRPG. If you have any sort of proof of purchase, they should be able to restore your orders. Unfortunately, it's entirely possible that the order data for most of your orders was lost at some point; even professionals are subject to Wandering Data Damage.

 

[darjr]

There is another thread. In that it was discovered that many (most/all?) of his missing pdf's were from a defunct store. SVGames.com

 

[Pragmatic]

Yup.

Not happy about it. So I'm now deciding on how to perma-save my collection, so one fire or one burglary doesn't take it away forever.