D&D General Wizards of the Coast releases pay-for-download PDFs of The AD&D 2E Complete Starter Set, Bloodspawn (Birthright) and both Savage Coast books (Mystara)

[Rune]

Sorry, I'd put this on the wrong thread, but thanks for the answer. Some of my copies are worn, or the box sets are large, taking up more space than I'd like, and I'm now considered whether it'd be worth it to replace some of them with new or slimmer copies. The map situation though, makes me hesitant on some options.

I purchased both the dark sun and planescape boxed sets as pod from dm’s guild. Both came as single soft-sover books that included maps and dm screens chopped up and printed over multiple pages within (on both sides of pages, too) in a fairly unusable format.

Otherwise good purchases, though.

 

[amethal]

They are charging for what had been a free products, unbelievable.

These previously free products have been unavailable for a long time - I think since their website switched to 4th edition?

The cost of making them available on Drivethru isn't zero, so it's reasonable to charge for them. I don't remember WotC making any kind of "free forever" pledge.

 

[The Glen]

These previously free products have been unavailable for a long time - I think since their website switched to 4th edition?

The cost of making them available on Drivethru isn't zero, so it's reasonable to charge for them. I don't remember WotC making any kind of "free forever" pledge.

They've always been available on the vaults of pandius since Wizards gave the site all their Mystara related material after the death of Gleemax. The files are still there plus the Savage Coast Monstrous Compendium.

 

[Stormonu]

These previously free products have been unavailable for a long time - I think since their website switched to 4th edition?

The cost of making them available on Drivethru isn't zero, so it's reasonable to charge for them. I don't remember WotC making any kind of "free forever" pledge.

A lot of the formerly free downloads have been cleaned up, reorganized and otherwise redone. Several of the old downloads were simply text dumps and the ones that were OCRed were done so badly.

I agree they've done a reasonable job of making them available, at a pretty cheap price-point too. Some of the ones that never made it to print (such as the Savage Coast ones and Jade Hare adventure), I'd love to get an opportunity to get them as POD!

 

[Alzrius]

And somehow I never knew there was a 2e starter set until today.

Something new every day!

There were a couple, as I recall. I've still got my old First Quest (affiliate link) boxed set on my shelf.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

These previously free products have been unavailable for a long time - I think since their website switched to 4th edition?

The cost of making them available on Drivethru isn't zero, so it's reasonable to charge for them. I don't remember WotC making any kind of "free forever" pledge.

They have always been free on the official Mystara fan site. These are exactly like the layout a fan produced from the free text files and they are still available for free!

And someone is charging money for them? Did the layout designer of these, Axel Boucher, get a cut?

 

[Ath-kethin]

There were a couple, as I recall. I've still got my old First Quest (affiliate link) boxed set on my shelf.

I remember the First Quest stuff; I guess I never thought of it as a starter set for some reason. All the products I remember thinking of as starter sets were for Basic.

But as we've seen, I clearly didn't know everything!

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Strange dupe.

 

[The Glen]

They have always been free on the official Mystara fan site. These are exactly like the layout a fan produced from the free text files and they are still available for free!

And someone is charging money for them? Did the layout designer of these, Axel Boucher, get a cut?

According to Bruce Heard and other old TSR no he hasn't.

 

[RobJN]

If WotC were to release the Savage Coast/Orc's Head material as it was originally released, you'd get .jpgs and .rtf files.