WotC_GregB talks about using a laptop at the game table.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Of course the bad point of the DDI database is you have to be online for that. Not a problem a large chunk of the time, but not everyone is on the internet yet or has good signal. Pdfs of your purchase downloadable w/a code sound great to me. The database makes a nice bonus for a subscription, but still do both

Yeah, I play in my basement and sometimes the cordless phones interfere with the signal from the wireless router upstairs. When that happens, I say to myself, "oh, can't use d20srd.org. Better open the Sovelier & Sage SRD, which is cached on my computer."

Under their current proposed system, it'll be more like "okay, guys. We have to wait for the wireless to kick in again or else I can't look up the rules."

Granted, that won't be a problem when I'm using only 3 or 4 books, but the more books get published, the more useful an online rules database becomes because I don't have to haul them around if I don't play at home, and they don't take up valuable tabletop space (which I find is always at a premium). However, the more useful the online database becomes, the more I'll learn to rely on it as I have learned to rely on the SRD. The more I rely on it, the more catastrophic it is when I lose the ability to access it during a game for whatever reason.

I would much rather have an electronic copy of a book I own, downloadable to my computer, and accessible in perpetuity, than access to every book they publish only when I'm on the internet and only while I continue to pay for the privilege. The one major selling point they had for the electronic arm of 4E has turned into a pretty big deal-breaker for me, at least as far as the DDI is concerned.

 

[MaelStorm]

Sorry this is just silly. WotC isn't pushing anyone to do anything, let alone anything illegal.

Come on now

As Breschau pointed out, if they would let people legally buying ebooks for a cheaper price or if they would offer their customers who buy their book the possibility of having a PDF for a small fee like 5$, their costumers would not look to obtain a PDF on a P2P network or on torrents servers. If you think that is silly, that's what some costumers will do. If you buy a PDF you would think twice before giving it away. But if you obtain one for free you don't care because you didn't pay for it. Instead of rewarding this attitude, they are saying no to ebook ownership, plus if you want to access our digital archive you have to pay 15$ per month. PDF reduce dependancy, do you think their customers will pay 15$ each month just to access their electronic archive and be dependent instead? They have to offer different plans for different need for their idea to be attractive to a broader audience. If they would educate good habit, their customers would not look for illegal options like some did and will continue to do.

Now people buy their MP3, why WotC would not encourage their customers to buy their books digitally too? There's a market for this and it will not go away.

 

[SSquirrel]

I started doing this back in 1998 or so, when I started using horror movie soundtracks for my Vampire games. In 2002, I plundered my copy of NWN for all it's ambient sounds and effects, and I used those for a time to produce atmosphere until my laptop decided that it was time to catch fire. Once I have the funds available, I'm going to buy an inexpensive laptop to be my D&D laptop and start doing that all over again.

You should really guard against this in the future. Keep a stash of unbent coat hangers and marshmallows handy so next time a cruddy laptop goes up in flames yr prepared

I used to help co-ST a mixed world of darkness game (mage/vamp w/occasional shapeshifters and changelings) around 95 and we would sit down and make 90-120 min tapes for each session that would get played on an autoreversing tape deck constantly thru the session.

We learned the hard way when during Skunk Anansise's "Feed" from the Strange Days soundtrack, the double crossing w/the group involving the Technocracy came to a head and the group imploded on each other, rather messily. In character only, the players all thought it was awesome

 

[The Little Raven]

If you think that is silly, that's what some costumers will do.

What he thinks is silly is your claim that WotC is in any way responsible for people choosing to acquire things by illicit means.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

What he thinks is silly is your claim that WotC is in any way responsible for people choosing to acquire things by illicit means.

Perhaps not "responsible," but if they have the choice between:

a) someone scanning a book and uploading it to a bunch of people, WotC makes $0, or
b) releasing a book as a PDF at a sensible price point, someone removes the copy protection and uploads it to a bunch of people, a bunch of other people actually buy it, WotC make >$0,

then b) is the more rational choice. Given that lots of us who think that paying once for an ebook we can keep is objectively better than paying constantly for an ebook that we can't keep, I expect that their business model is probably going to annoy a fairly large subset of the people who are willing to pay for electronic access to the rules. Annoyed people are more likely to feel justified in downloading pirated PDFs of the books they own, especially when they know for certain that WotC aren't losing a sale when they do so, because there was no PDF for sale.

 

[MaelStorm]

What he thinks is silly is your claim that WotC is in any way responsible for people choosing to acquire things by illicit means.

Yes, they are. Because they do not offer them a better alternative. There is no digital ownership with DDI, but with PDF there is. If DDI would stop one day, their archive will vanish and you'll have paid all this money for nothing but bytes to look at.

 

[SSquirrel]

It's all a matter of percieved value. I don't personally see paying full price for a pdf compared to the physical book as sane or something to be a valid expectation. You get to save on printing costs and distribution chains and I still pay just as much for something I will not be able to physically hold? Heck no.

From what I can recall of standard percentages involving distribution, companies make half or a bit under the cover price when selling to the distributor, then the store and distributor share that other half for their profit margins. In which case, selling pdfs for half cover price ala Green Ronin should net the same or slightly better margin than selling physical copies in stores. So WotC is trying to get people to pay full price for pdfs that basically doubles their profit value per item.

Great for the bottom line, yet I know where he's coming from. There are many people out there that would look at that and say that they could maybe see paying 1/3-1/2 for it, esp if they know from flipping thru it that there's only about 20 pages of content they want from it. Those people will just go pirate it and that's a lost sale. Some people would have NEVER bought it regardless and just pirate it to have it. That is NOT a lost sale. But the ones who look at the 1/2 cover price pdfs and find them to be good value? It was a lost sale from them, they would have happily paid that amount. This is something the RIAA needs to understand too

 

[The Little Raven]

b) releasing a book as a PDF at a sensible price point, someone removes the copy protection and uploads it to a bunch of people, a bunch of other people actually buy it, WotC make >$0,

then b) is the more rational choice.

Except your (b) completely ignores the very real relationship they have with distributors and retailers, who will not be happy (and lack of happiness in that field tends to impact revenue) at being undercut by Wizards selling a reduced cost PDF.

And again, the assertion that it is WotC's fault that people steal/pirate/acquire/whatever books is simply stupid.

If DDI would stop one day, their archive will vanish and you'll have paid all this money for nothing but bytes to look at.

If you stop paying your cable bill, you'll have paid all this money for nothing, since you don't get to keep what you watched. Welcome to the world of subscription services.

 

[SSquirrel]

Yes, they are. Because they do not offer them a better alternative. There is no digital ownership with DDI, but with PDF there is. If DDI would stop one day, their archive will vanish and you'll have paid all this money for nothing but bytes to look at.

The funny thing is that the same is true for any MMO, but to be able to play the MMO, I have to be paying and logged on. The online component is the only component, not something strictly to aid me in another function. I think that's why it works in MMOs, but w/DDI you have people who are used to getting something tangible for their money. Having all the Dragon and Dungeon issues downloadable as pdfs at the end of the month is cool and all if you enjoy those magazines and utilize them, but that won't be the full extent of the money you pay for DDI. Personally I would rather buy a physical book and pay a small extra portion to have a pdf as well. Then if I use DDI and it's convenient to utilize the database while playing it's just a bonus, not the only way I will have access to said content.

If you stop paying your cable bill, you'll have paid all this money for nothing, since you don't get to keep what you watched. Welcome to the world of subscription services.

Yes but the only thing to do w/your cable box is to hook it up to a TV and use it to watch things. DDI is coming at people and seems to be understood that it will always be there, at least for the length of the edition. Now if that IS the understanding between WotC and the players at launch and people make their purchasing decisions based on that *skip phys books just use DDI for everything* and they get the carpet pulled out from under them if DDI gets shut down after only a couple of years, I think they have every right to be mad. They would have to put their campaign on hold until they could go out and buy enough of the books they need to play, since they have based all their game on information only found thru a subscription service. Or they would pirate pdfs. Neither is a great option.

 

[Harshax]

I make decent bucks, but I just can't justify paying a monthly subscription for a game I might only play a couple times a month. I paid $60+ for a preorder boxed set of the rules, tack on $10 a month, with an average of 24 games a year, that comes out to $7.50 a game. That's half a cheese pizza, or 1 pack of smokes, or a six pack of cheap beer for every game. Considering I'm likely to do all that anyway, that means my 'cheap hobby' costs me $30 bucks a session. And I'm the DM! ($30 is an overstatement, I don't drink during my games)

I also don't use computers at the table, unless I absolutely have to (traveling). It's to distracting to me. I really don't like gleemax either. It prompts me for passwords on one page, shows I'm logged in to another.

What would be an excellent scenario, is if they offered an offline rules database subscription.

You download the rules db, every month it asks for your username/password (like iTunes), sync's with gleemax, and presto: Offline Rules DB. They can get there subscription, and they can curb piracy because few would be willing to share passwords if they could only sync the offline application once a month. (Or quarterly or whatever)