Tiny PDFs - not a fan.

[nnms]

I'm a fan of small PDFs for cheap. Usually I've found the content to be worth the price and the price per page doesn't have to be worse than longer PDFs at a higher price.

As for referencing them, I just sort them into folders based on game system, setting or publisher and just set up searching within the documents without having to open them. Or I grab some freeware PDF manipulating software and put them together into a single file when they are related.

 

[zegerman]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "PDF Split and Merge", a free tool that allows you to easily merge individual pages from many PDFs into a PDF of your own creation. It would not be legal to distribute it that way, but it would easily allow you to create some structure around a large collection of small PDFs.

If you've made the switch to digital game rulebooks as much as possible, investing in proper PDF authoring software might be worthwhile as well, so you can create a table of contents with links to particular pages, searchable indices, etc. Just a thought.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm a fan of the small PDFs. If your computer is showing its age, sometimes scrolling through lots of pages can be a pain, especially if things like bookmarks haven't been added to the product either. Plus I prefer PDFs that follow a common theme - having several PDFs that are of smaller pages but thematically consistent is better, to me, than if they were merged into a single bigger PDF.

Super Genius Games #1 With a Bullet Point series makes the case for this:

Sometimes rules supplements read like the world-setting bible of frustrated novelists. While solid world- building is a useful skill, you don’t always need four paragraphs of flavor text to tell you swords are cool, magic is power, shadows are scary, and orcs are savage. Sometimes a GM doesn’t have time to slog through a page of history for every magic weapon. Sometimes all that’s needed are a few cool ideas, with just enough information to use them in a game. Sometimes, all you need are bullet points.

 

[zegerman]

Sure, obviously if you're happy with having many smaller PDFs there's nothing that needs changing. I only meant the suggestion to folks that were unhappy with many small PDFs they found difficult to organize and manage.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sure, obviously if you're happy with having many smaller PDFs there's nothing that needs changing. I only meant the suggestion to folks that were unhappy with many small PDFs they found difficult to organize and manage.

See post 22.

 

[Kristopher]

I agree totally with Sigurd

 

[Bagpuss]

I don't really see what difference it makes if a short PDF has a 1-page or 5-page or 100-page OGL appended to the end of it. It's a PDF; it's not like it started with a page limit and everything had to fit in there.

Yeah but if it was advertised on RPGNow as a 125 page PDF and when you buy it, it turns out 120 pages were made up of legal text and credits pages you might be a little annoyed?

 

[Morrus]

Yeah but if it was advertised on RPGNow as a 125 page PDF and when you buy it, it turns out 120 pages were made up of legal text and credits pages you might be a little annoyed?

Yikes, that comment was from March!

I wasn't referring to false advertising. Yes, of course, advertising should be truthful. I don't think that was in contention - at least, if I did, I certainly didn't intend to imply as such.