What PDFs have you bought that revolutionized you D20 Modern Game

[broghammerj]

My question starts with what PDFs have revolutionized your D20 modern game or made you say wow I'm really glad I bought that?

The reason I ask is that I'm not a PDF kind of guy. I've bought very few up to this point and I'll tell you why. For some reason I don't like to pay for information. This makes me a very bad mafioso or international spy. I like to have something tangible with me ala a book. I also am annoyed to buy a 5-10 page supplement. I'll give you an example: LPJ Designs: Haven material looks very cool. I would buy a lot of their supplements if I wasn't being nickled and dimed to death with having to buy so many small files (Note that this is not a criticism of LPJ Design or Haven, but a comment on PDFs in general). I would rather buy one big 100 page file and slap down 20 bucks. That being said, I think PDFs are too expensive.

I took five random PDFs from RPGnow and calculated price per page.
0.1875
0.33
0.23
0.105
0.106
Average of 0.197 per page.

The cost of 4 random books pulled off my self with both hard and soft cover:
0.22
0.197
0.104
0.134
Average of 0.164 per page

Now I am not going to tell you print books are a better deal as these are random samples. My point is that the cost per page is in the ball park and I get an actual book. My dilmenia is that games I love like D20 modern are not being supplemented with a lot of print books. If I want adventures, new ideas, new advanced classes, etc I've got to look to the land of software. If I'm going to make this foray into the unknown, I want to do it with top notched products.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Revolutionized" is a bit strong, but "Treasures of Freeport" and "The Pumpkin Patch" are both very good -- better, in many ways, than most books I own. They're not perfect, though -- one of the NPCs mentioned in the introduction and sales pitch for Pumpkin (two NPCs, actually), don't appear in the book, with no explanation whatsoever.

I hear you on the actual book thing, though. My hope is that the best PDFs will periodically be collected in book form. Monte Cook is doing something like that later this year.

 

[jaerdaph]

Personally, I've never seen any value in a cost per page analysis of RPG products. Some products you can get multiple use out of (core rulebook, for example), others, like adventures, you usually end up using once.

As for a d20 Modern PDF that I think is really "revolutionary" - The Book of Distinctions and Drawbacks Modern from Cryptosnark Games:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1905&

Here's the comments I left:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_reviews_info.php?cid=6662&reviews_id=1331&

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Are you looking for crunch or fluff?

Blood and Circuits has a good reputation when it comes to crunch. I haven't bought it yet, however.

There's also some wonderful adventures and fluff. One of my favorite products involved the American Mafia. When it came to cream, it had everything except assassinations. (It had crunch which I virtually ignored.)

D20 Modern is not a cohesive game - meaning ten different groups can play ten completely different campaigns, making it hard for authors to write products for it. Instead of writing a huge product where 70% of the gaming material might be useless for you, some authors would rather sell the small products where you get to pick and choose.

If you're picky, it's probably a good deal (eg in the long run you won't be nickled-and-dimed). If not, then take a pass on the small PDFs.

 

[Crothian]

Price per page is not a good way to judge books. Smaller books cost more per page, it is a fact of life.

For modern PDFs I'd look toward RPGObjects and Ronin arts. Both have a good selection of modern PDFs. RPGObjects has some great Blood and.... titles. Ronin Arts has a new one called Mercanary Manual all aobut Mercs that I just reviewed and you could read it if the review site was opperational.

 

[BryonD]

Price per page is not a good way to judge books. Smaller books cost more per page, it is a fact of life.

Exactly true.

A 5 page pdf for $1.50 is going to run high on the per page cost. So all that needs to be done is for someone to show me where I can purchase a 5 page print product for $1.25 and I'll agree that pdfs are overpriced. In the mean time, while that fails to occur, I'll point out that the option to buy a quick small focused product for what amounts to pocket change is an awesome PERK of pdfs. Some of those 5 pagers have at least 1/3 as much useable content as many padded 48 page print products out there.

$0.33 per page is a clear outlier and if you toss that one you get a lower cost for pdfs already. (I'm suspicious of how representative the $0.22 one is as well) And this is allowing the apples to oranges of small vs large product comparison to stand. Start looking at honest comparisons and the value swings readily toward pdfs.

For example, I just bought Green Ronins Advanced Players Guide for $17 in pdf. The cover price is $34. That doesn't exactly fit the pattern presented above. Malhavocs products run roughly the same. Compare apples to apples and pdfs will win hands down on raw cost.

WotC products and a few other would again be a bad example because they are specifically pricign pdfs to NOT compete with their print products. Which is perfectly reasonable, but says nothing in regard to the inherent value of pdfs.

I can completely understand wanting a physical item in your hands. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. But getting from that over to bad analysis of bad data makes little sense.

 

[The Shaman]

I believe that The Game Mechanics' Modern Player's Companion, in .pdf or print format, is the best single addition to a d20 Modern gamers library.

I predict that the many strengths of Dog House Rules' Sidewinder: Recoiled Wild West game, again in .pdf or print format, will stand out even more strikingly when d20 Past is released.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

For me the "revolution" in regards to PDFs is being able to copy from the PDF and paste directly into my current project. Ronin Arts seems the most frequent victim of these brutal slasher attacks, with Steam & Steel by E. N. Publishing running close behind...

The Auld Grump, did that very thing just a few minutes ago... I am a serial cut 'n' paster...

 

[philreed]

"Revolutionized" is a bit strong, but "Treasures of Freeport" and "The Pumpkin Patch" are both very good -- better, in many ways, than most books I own. They're not perfect, though -- one of the NPCs mentioned in the introduction and sales pitch for Pumpkin (two NPCs, actually), don't appear in the book, with no explanation whatsoever.

That would be a mistake. Sorry. We try to catch these and deal with them but they occasionally slip through.

 

[philreed]

I would buy a lot of their supplements if I wasn't being nickled and dimed to death with having to buy so many small files (Note that this is not a criticism of LPJ Design or Haven, but a comment on PDFs in general). I would rather buy one big 100 page file and slap down 20 bucks.

And that's why we offer collections. You say $20 for a 100-page file when some of our collections run about 70-pages for $10. As an example:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=4187&SRC=EnWorld

Now, the collection is only useful if you're interested in each PDF that's included. For those that want to be selective, the single PDFs are a better option.