WotC PDF??? So Morrus Tweeted this

[Shemeska]

Holy hell! Someone in WotC management had a Saint Paul on the road to Damascus moment with pdfs.

I'm shocked (happily so!) that WotC has jumped back into the pdf marketplace and rejoined the rest of the industry.

And is that new and hopefully improved scans of some of the back catalog material? And indexed and bookmarked and such too? They're still adding stuff, but please oh please a nice copy of 'On Hallowed Ground' since that one was never officially scanned, so the market had only a bootleg to offer. I will pay money for a good quality, sparkly pdf of that one so my original can sit pretty and non-worn on the shelf.

Haven't looked much at how much they're charging for newer material compared to the print price.

 

[Piratecat]

[MENTION=11697]Shemeska[/MENTION], I can't talk about what's coming (nor do I really know beyond a handful of titles), but I know they've committed to scanning and selling a large portion of their back catalog. I'll be hoping for all the Planescape material we can get.

 

[darjr]

This is WONDERFUL! And kicking in B1 for free to start things off was a brilliant idea!

 

[am181d]

I did vow never to buy a physical WotC rulebook again when they dropped PDF support, so I'm glad to see this restored before Next comes out.

(I guess I cheated when I bought the 1e reprints, but that was for a good cause.)

 

[Jester David]

Once again the link is: http://www.dndclassics.com/

Totally grabbing the 1e Manual of the Planes later today.

The prices seem okay, as long as the red price is permanent. $15 for the Epic Level Handbook and 3e Unearthed Arcana seem reasonable. But $40 and $35 are highway robbery. Especially as they're part of the SRD. And other books like the Draconomicon also seem like the potential base price might be high. Unless this is like Amazon where it's showing you what a "real" copy would cost to emphasise how cheap the PDFs are. In which case I'll approve.

 

[M.L. Martin]

The prices seem okay, as long as the red price is permanent. $15 for the Epic Level Handbook and 3e Unearthed Arcana seem reasonable. But $40 and $35 are highway robbery. Especially as they're part of the SRD. And other books like the Draconomicon also seem like the potential base price might be high. Unless this is like Amazon where it's showing you what a "real" copy would cost to emphasise how cheap the PDFs are. In which case I'll approve.

That's SOP for DriveThru's products, and since those are all the cover prices, I don't think you need to worry.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Generally fantastic scans, full OCR. Watermarked, not copy protected. And a lot more to come.

Yes, so far I am quite impressed. They clearly put in the effort to get things right.

I especially like the editorial comments from their D&D historian. A very nice touch!

 

[Pseudopsyche]

More information here:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2013/01/dndclassics/

The bit from that article that has me most excited:

The company also plans on releasing "conversion notes" so the older gaming products available on dndclassics.com can be played with newer editions of D&D, including the latest revamp of the rules, what is being called "D&D Next," now in development and scheduled to be released sometime in 2014.

Yes, please!

 

[JeffB]

Generally fantastic scans, full OCR. Watermarked, not copy protected. And a lot more to come.

That is good news. I recently complained about the original (Bastion Press scanned?) PDFs I bought as quality was absolutely horrendous on some modules.

I'll be throwing some money their way once they get the full catalog of items up and I figure out exactly what I need.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Honestly, this is just great. I'm a happy nerd
WotC and DriveThruRPG, please take some of my money.

In related news, DriveThruRPG crashes and burns. WotC to blame! Another of the countless examples of WotC destroying things I love in an effort to be modern

Could this have been a strategy by WotC. Stop selling the back catalog as PDFs during the 4E run. This drives up the demand for the back catalog. When 4E stops producing new crunch, start selling the back catalog again to sustain the division.