The future of Rulebooks, Dragon, Dungeon, Fanzines, etc?

[trancejeremy]

While it's easy to make an e-book with a word processor and export it to epub, the trouble with that is that word processors pretty much duplicate a printed out page (from a printer), not an e-book.

So it's hard to see what the final result looks like unless you convert and put it on your e-reader.

It seems to me that this is a WYSIWYG tool - showing what the e-book looks like. The closest thing to that is Sigil, and it's sort of well, amateur. (And it's epub, you want to convert to Kindle, you need to use Kindlegen after its done and the results are often not what you expect)

I often thought that Amazon really needed to make something like this to make authoring Kindle easier. Looks like Apple beat them to it.

 

[Alan Shutko]

From what I understand, to publish with Apple, you can only publish with Apple.

There are better ways to do it, for sure.

This is true for paid books developed with iBooks Author, although free books can also be published on your website. This seems to be a licensing restriction on the tool, not necessarily with the iBookStore (since many books there are sold by many markets).

I don't like this, and I'm hoping the expected stink causes Apple to back off of this.

It seems to me that this is a WYSIWYG tool - showing what the e-book looks like. The closest thing to that is Sigil, and it's sort of well, amateur. (And it's epub, you want to convert to Kindle, you need to use Kindlegen after its done and the results are often not what you expect)

I often thought that Amazon really needed to make something like this to make authoring Kindle easier. Looks like Apple beat them to it.

Exactly. Right now, it doesn't look like Aspose.words, Calibre, Sigil, or writer2epub support epub3. So they don't support the interactive widgets, movies, 3d models, etc.

And looking at the interfaces, they're pretty limited. If you want to do a mostly text book with some illustrations, you're OK. If you want to do something as rich as shown, you can't.

That's ok, since epub3 readers aren't very popular yet either.

Apple's tools and new format reportedly aren't exactly epub3, but are close in many ways.

 

[Aeolius]

So, would you buy a D&D rulebook or 3rd Party supplement from the iBookstore, or is the iPad not the penultimate gaming tablet of choice?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

iBooks aside, WotC is leaving free money on the table if they don't make tablet versions of their next-gen rulebooks available. They don't have to go all interactive; just a readable, navigable version of the rulebooks would probably pay for the costs of converting them pretty quickly.

 

[Alan Shutko]

So, would you buy a D&D rulebook or 3rd Party supplement from the iBookstore, or is the iPad not the penultimate gaming tablet of choice?

Depends on how they did it.

If they took advantage of the features, I'd buy it. I could see things like little roller widgets, one that calculated XP for an encounter. It would be great to run an encounter and tick off any powers/spells/effects that the monsters used. And with iBooks, I can still copy and paste text and reuse things in different ways.

If they just do a simple conversion of the linear text to an eBook, I'd probably prefer a PDF if available. I posted in another thread how PDFs are actually pretty flexible if you have the right software, in terms of pulling out the content and repurposing it. iBooks could be, but the DRM they have prevents these uses.

The main difference between the software discussed in the other thread and the one here is that in the other thread, the publisher builds both the content and the software to view it. In this, the publisher only builds the content and Apple builds the software. I have more faith in Apple getting software right than an RPG publisher, and I think it's more likely for iBooks to open up over time and allow different uses (since it's being used by so many more people) than any individual RPG-vendor's software.

With the other things they announced for iTunes U, things get interesting. If they ever allow private "classes", iTunes U might turn out to be a decent platform to manage information for a campaign.

 

[SSquirrel]

I posted about this in a thread on Arstechnica earlier today. Imagine the 5E PHB built using iBooks Author. They include all the text and goodies and the character sheet in the back is interactive. You can go ahead and make your character and when you're done, export and upload it to the new version of DDI, not built on Silverlight, but using something that is iOS friendly. From there you can do anything else you need w/the character, like upload it into the VTT and switch to your VTT app and you have your own space that is attached to the table, you have your own view and can move your mini and it all syncs up neatly.

As to Transbot9's points about Android and WIndows 8, they can predict all they want. I believe Windows 8 will have a larger base than iOS, but not for mobile systems (phones/tablets). Windows 8 looks awful and Metro doesn't run any legacy programs. If you have an ARM processor in that tablet and it's running Win8, you will only be able to run whatever Metro apps get produced. Android has a larger base than the iPhone. I don't usually see too many charts that include all iOS devices tho and last I saw when you include everything they are still behind iOS.

Yes Apple's method has lock in, but if it's a better method, it will get used. Most current software for eBook creation is terrible. We'll see if today's announcement lights a fire under anyone or not.

 

[grimslade]

The focus in this thread has been on rulebooks but how about 3PP depending on GSL/OGL for D&DNext? Or a Kobold Quarterly, Dungeon or Dragon-esque magazine? Would you buy a 3PP adventure created in iBooks? This could be a nice tool for DMs who want to create a campaign sourcebook or journal. I hope that there will be a similar entry app for Kindle marketplace.

 

[Zireael]

I think pdfs (or other electronic formats) for a low price ($5-25) are the way to go.
I already mentioned in another thread that $10/month for DDI is a little too much.

 

[SSquirrel]

I think pdfs (or other electronic formats) for a low price ($5-25) are the way to go.
I already mentioned in another thread that $10/month for DDI is a little too much.

So choose a longer subscription, that makes it cheaper. $10/month is way cheaper than going out and buying all the 4E books. Add in the magazines and the other web apps and I think it's a pretty great deal personally.

 

[Blackwarder]

I played with iBook author last night, it's a really nifty piece of work and I'm no programmer.

I can easily see how someone with a little bit more programming-fu than me could make some incredible D&D books with this, take for example monster vault: threats to the nenthir vale. First of al all the glossary will just sit in the glossary section and won't need any chapter in the actuall book, the most basic version will have each monster entry in a different section the monsters statics bar will be collapsible and monster static section will have small arrows next to its level so you will be able to adjust the creature level to your liking.

The advanced version will allow you to edit every thing in each creature and add it as a new monster to that section, you will be able to build random encounter tables on the fly (based on such things as locations, climate and threat level ) and save monster static blocks for future encounters.

Honestly, I think that when it comes to iOS, WotC should just use the iBookstore to sell its books with an app that will receive outpot from those books (character sheets, encounters etc) and allow you to use it in your games.

Warder