D&D 5E Where are the PDFs?

[Bugleyman]

The issue you're struggling with is that contrary opinions *are* welcome here. Including those contrary to yours. Like mine.

If you feel that someone offering a contrary opinion to yours is a problem, a blog might work better, so you can control the responses. Perhaps only allow those who agree with you to reply, or somesuch. Many blogs operate very successfully that way, but it's not how EN World works, I'm afraid.

(Actually, EN World does offer blog functionality, too, which you're welcome to take advantage of!)

Feel free to continue offering your opinion, but I will not be engaging with you further. I'm sure there are others here who will gladly discuss the topic with you.

Well, I do have to give you credit for not just removing my posts or banning me. Seriously, that speaks very well of you, and I do appreciate it.

But I don't have a problem with people disagreeing with me. I have a problem when people express their disagreement with sarcasm and mockery, which is how your initial reply felt to me. And in fairness, I did ask you to explain if I had misunderstood, but you declined to do so.

That said, I'm sorry for misquoting you and making you feel attacked. I should have simply and calmly expressed my feelings, and instead I became defensive. My apologies.

 

[Pandamonium87]

The problem with selling unencumbered PDFs is that there would be a huge incentive for groups to just share one person's copy, and probably even consider that tacitly encouraged by the format. I mean, if I just paid $30 or $50 for a PDF of the PHB, am I really going to even ask my friends to do the same on principle, or am I just going to email them the PDF? If it's a locked format (hopefully with lots of cool interactivity and extras in the dungeonscape tools to make it feel better than a normal PDF), I can at least shrug my shoulders and let them either find a pirated scan or pay for it themselves.

Now, that phenomenon of sharing within the group doesn't matter for adventure paths, because often the DM is the only one who would purchase a copy anyway. It doesn't even matter that much for splatbooks, since in my personal experience only one or two people in a typical group will really care enough to pay for any given splatbook. But the core books, almost everyone will want, so I'm not going to complain if they don't go out of their way to publish beautiful professional PDFs with absolutely no copy protection.

Well in my experience the fact that the book is easily accessible through a PDF leads to an increasing interest in the product itself. Together with my friends we bought a lot of PF stuff in PDF format, we bought a single copy but then we figured out that the book was great and we bought our hardbook personal copy. In a group of 8 people, 6 of them bought a harbook copy of the Core Rulebook. And I believe that the would have never bought it if they weren't able to read a shared PDF copy to test if the product matches their idea of gaming. I think that what you're saying is true, but you seems to forget that gamers like gaming books and if they can be sure that they will like the game they are going to buy, they will easily spend money for it.

 

[prosfilaes]

I am not understanding this objection. I am willing to bet something will always be out there that can function like DungeonScape, whether it is someone else keeping a copy of the install files around, or something compatible with it after it goes away...just like if Adobe and other PDF readers went away, you'd always find someone who would put out another reader in some way.

How are PDF readers going away? PDF is covered under ISO 32000, which means that for a couple hundred bucks, you can have the official instructions for how to write a program to read PDF files. And because of the clear documentation and the demand, there are quite a number of programs that will display them.

On the flip side, DungeonScape has zero third-party support. A third-party program that can view the files can make copies of them, which means that Hasbro will likely at least threaten with the DCMA against any program that does view them. That's a big part of the point of going proprietary, after all. It's going to want to tie books to hardware to prevent them from being copied, which means that it will be hard to copy it to your new tablet. Or it's going to tie books to an account, and then if the online system that holds that account goes away, it's going to get grumpy. At the end of the day, preserving access to books only available through DungeonScape after WotC has canceled the service is going to be worlds harder then just saving a simple PDF file.

 

[Hussar]

How are PDF readers going away? PDF is covered under ISO 32000, which means that for a couple hundred bucks, you can have the official instructions for how to write a program to read PDF files. And because of the clear documentation and the demand, there are quite a number of programs that will display them.

On the flip side, DungeonScape has zero third-party support. A third-party program that can view the files can make copies of them, which means that Hasbro will likely at least threaten with the DCMA against any program that does view them. That's a big part of the point of going proprietary, after all. It's going to want to tie books to hardware to prevent them from being copied, which means that it will be hard to copy it to your new tablet. Or it's going to tie books to an account, and then if the online system that holds that account goes away, it's going to get grumpy. At the end of the day, preserving access to books only available through DungeonScape after WotC has canceled the service is going to be worlds harder then just saving a simple PDF file.

Ok, I'm still having a bit of trouble following the issue here, so, let me walk through how I understand things.

1. I download the Dungeonscape program (which the devs have declared will be a free download).

2. Through the Dungeonscape program, presumably, or possibly from some other source iike the WOTC site, I will buy an electronic copy of whatever book du jour that is available.

3. Using the Dungeonscape program, I can view those files, just like I need an EPUB reader, or a Kindle reader to read the proprietary files.

4. I back up my hard drive fairly regularly, meaning that loss of data is very unlikely.

5. Dungeonscape goes bust and I can no longer download the program, nor will I be able to download new book files. But, since both Dungeonscape and the book files reside on my hard drive, I have them forever.

What am I missing? Dungeonscape is not like the DDi, it is not 100% web based. It can't be since there will be offline apps. Even if the Dungeonscape company goes away, and it is a web based app, only the reader would be an issue, and likely there will be other readers available, just like I can read Kindle files without a Kindle reader, PDQ. If nothing else, I would imagine WOTC would make one available, simply to solve all these issues and keep goodwill anyway.

So, what am I missing?

 

[Iosue]

So, what am I missing?

While I personally think that the DungeonScape model is perfectly cromulent, it strikes me that the issue is primarily one of uncertainty. The devil you know versus the devil you don't. It's conceivable that the DungeonScape model will be without problems and viable 10, 20, 30 years down the line. But there's no guarantee. No one knows how it will work out or what circumstances may change in the years to come. PDF is a known quantity. They are viewable across platforms and with many different readers, including Open Source ones. The circumstances that have to come about to render one's PDF unreadable are far more unlikely than the ones that may render DungeonScape e-books unusable.

I mean, just as an example, your last point. It may be possible, one could even go so far to call it likely, but it's already a solved issue for PDF. PC, Mac, Linux, iPad, Android -- there is no mainstream platform that doesn't read PDFs.

 

[dd.stevenson]

So, what am I missing?

I think it's very simple: there are risks associated with propitiatory formats, which aren't associated with non-propitiatory formats. Some people will be unhappy about these risks, because the emerging industry standard is to not ask customers to undergo these risks when they purchase an electronic product.

Side note, unless I'm mistaken, we don't yet know for a fact that the data format will be 100% propitiatory?

 

[Torg Smith]

While I personally think that the DungeonScape model is perfectly cromulent, it strikes me that the issue is primarily one of uncertainty. The devil you know versus the devil you don't. It's conceivable that the DungeonScape model will be without problems and viable 10, 20, 30 years down the line. But there's no guarantee. No one knows how it will work out or what circumstances may change in the years to come. PDF is a known quantity. They are viewable across platforms and with many different readers, including Open Source ones. The circumstances that have to come about to render one's PDF unreadable are far more unlikely than the ones that may render DungeonScape e-books unusable.

I mean, just as an example, you're last point. It may be possible, one could even go so far to call it likely, but it's already a solved issue for PDF. PC, Mac, Linux, iPad, Android -- there is no mainstream platform that doesn't read PDFs.

This is quite correct and there is a license between TrapDoor and WotC. It is likely that WotC will not make the restrictions in the license public. I believe it is unlikely that WotC will take up maintenance of the application and authentication server at termination of the license.

I believe WotC will release PDFs later. I will just play other games until then. I suspect that WotC has the most RPG books on DriveThruRPG than any other company.

Let’s face it. The game is in early development, and they are not going to be churning out books. It will be a while before there is real meat out there for the game.

 

[Jack99]

Well, I do have to give you credit for not just removing my posts or banning me. Seriously, that speaks very well of you, and I do appreciate it.

But I don't have a problem with people disagreeing with me. I have a problem when people express their disagreement with sarcasm and mockery, which is how your initial reply felt to me. And in fairness, I did ask you to explain if I had misunderstood, but you declined to do so.

That said, I'm sorry for misquoting you and making you feel attacked. I should have simply and calmly expressed my feelings, and instead I became defensive. My apologies.

That's because Morrus doesn't ban people.









He has moderators to do that for him

 

[Mistwell]

How are PDF readers going away?

How is DungeonScape going away? This was all under some weird hypothetical "thing that exists now somehow won't exist in the future" scenario.

On the flip side, DungeonScape has zero third-party support.

You know this how? You don't even know what the file format will be, and you've already analyzed that format, figured out it's not compatible with anything else or even potentially so, and declared no support? Come on man, at least wait until the thing exists before you make declarations about what it is and isn't.

It's going to want to tie books to hardware to prevent them from being copied,

Why? First, it's not hardware it's software. Second, they've said once you buy content it's yours forever, and not linked to being online. So in what way does this jive with what you just said?

which means that it will be hard to copy it to your new tablet.

Why? What have they said or implied that leads you to believe this?

Or it's going to tie books to an account, and then if the online system that holds that account goes away, it's going to get grumpy.

They've already said outright that is not the case. Seems like you're just making up strawmen to complain about now.

At the end of the day, preserving access to books only available through DungeonScape after WotC has canceled the service is going to be worlds harder then just saving a simple PDF file.

Why, because once you've made up things that don't exist, made false assumptions about them, and then put it all together in a way we already know is not the case (unless they're all just a bunch of liars over there) then it would be harder?

 

[Torg Smith]

I think it's very simple: there are risks associated with propitiatory formats, which aren't associated with non-propitiatory formats. Some people will be unhappy about these risks, because the emerging industry standard is to not ask customers to undergo these risks when they purchase an electronic product.

Side note, unless I'm mistaken, we don't yet know for a fact that the data format will be 100% propitiatory?

TrapDoor has stated in Twitter that the library will be internal to the application and you will not be able to export it. That is pretty much proprietary.

They have stated that they wanted to link the physical books purchase to the library in the application but there were obstacles to that. If you extrapolate from that comment, you could imply that they might bundle PDFs with the library data files purchase. As to why they might want to do that, they could simplify adventure creation if they had the books stored in a format that the application needed to use, and we would have a format that we know will last a long time.