|
1 year ago ::
Apr 20, 2012 - 8:41AM
#1
|
Date Joined:
Sep 28, 2009
|
I rarely buy physical books, and instead mostly rely on PDFs. This is one of the main reasons I play Pathfinder instead of D&D Fourth Edition. I understand that PDFs are currently not on sale because of piracy, but honestly, a library of scanned Fourth Edition PDFs can be found with a simple Google search. Piracy would be an issue, but if the game is good enough, I believe that fans would WANT to support the Wizards and would buy the PDFs.
My Twitter
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 20, 2012 - 6:15PM
#2
|
Date Joined:
May 23, 2005
|
I rarely buy physical books, and instead mostly rely on PDFs. This is one of the main reasons I play Pathfinder instead of D&D Fourth Edition. I understand that PDFs are currently not on sale because of piracy, but honestly, a library of scanned Fourth Edition PDFs can be found with a simple Google search. Piracy would be an issue, but if the game is good enough, I believe that fans would WANT to support the Wizards and would buy the PDFs.
I do not really see it happening. Within a couple hours of a Pathfinder pdf being made available to the public it is up on the torrent sites. D&D books take several days if not weeks before they hit the torrent sites after release.
Pathfinder is a small company that does not answer to a larger corporate head and can accept those kinds of losses in revenue. D&D can not.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 20, 2012 - 7:53PM
#3
|
|
|
It's a simple rule for me, I will pay $20 for a PDF of almost anything for a game, I won't pay $20 for a physical book I can't carry to my gaming sessions. The core books should be physical with digital copies available for people who buy them, the rest of the stuff I won't look at physical at all.
Pdf for my tablet is about all I look at for textbooks, presentations, manuals and even project files, why would I carry around 20kg of books for gaming?
My thoughts on what works and what doesn't in D&D and how D&D Next may benefit are detailed on my blog, Vorpal Thoughts.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 20, 2012 - 9:42PM
#4
|
|
|
Yeah, another +1 for Pdfs here too.
Pro DnD Member of the Axis of Awesome Fighters: Using socks to kill monsters since 2012 DnD Next: Now with more then 4 minutes of Roleplay per gaming hour Spoiler:
Show
"If you can't make an interesting human fighter, then you aren't ready to play anything else yet" Edymnion
"The idea of resting up between encounters to fill-up on hit points and spells struck my meta-gaming nine-year-old as a distinct possibility. "Are you mad?" says my seven-year-old "This place is full of monsters!" "jamesgrahamuk
All characters have a story. Spoiler:
Show
Sometimes that story is short and sometimes it is long. They can be tragic, comic or absurd. Some teach. Some are just to fill the empty spaces in our lives. Rarely it is a transcendent fugue only half remembered but wondered at. And frequently: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -William Shakespeare
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 21, 2012 - 3:04AM
#5
|
Date Joined:
Jun 29, 2010
|
I definitely think they should be options...I just don't want to see anything digital only, or heavily increased costs to cover digitizing. There have been numerous exhaustive studies which absolutely prove that no form of piracy protection has any impact on piracy, nor does piracy itself have measurable impact on consumerism. It's an absolutely dead horse that only business people, legislators, and lawyers keep trying to ride.
DISCLAIMER - Everything said by anyone is absolute subjective opinion. There are no objective claims being made by me, or anyone else, unless they overtly state 'The following is an objective claim'. At this point if you choose to be offended by anything I (or anyone else) say the problem is ENTIRELY your own.
WotC won't let us give them money because they won't produce a game we want to play.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 21, 2012 - 9:53AM
#6
|
Date Joined:
Apr 23, 2009
|
@Phoenix182
Absolutely true.
I even think some people will pirate something that they would buy if they could. They want a pdf and not a book. They'd buy the pdf but if it doesn't exist they pirate it. Some of those people do buy the book and then pirate the pdf salving their consciences that they paid what they could.
Not everyone is a pirate. I am emphatically not. I would probably still buy the books but I'd definitely want pdfs of things that had maps etc... especially if I played online.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 21, 2012 - 12:22PM
#7
|
Date Joined:
May 20, 2011
|
I rarely buy physical books, and instead mostly rely on PDFs. This is one of the main reasons I play Pathfinder instead of D&D Fourth Edition. I understand that PDFs are currently not on sale because of piracy, but honestly, a library of scanned Fourth Edition PDFs can be found with a simple Google search. Piracy would be an issue, but if the game is good enough, I believe that fans would WANT to support the Wizards and would buy the PDFs.
I do not really see it happening. Within a couple hours of a Pathfinder pdf being made available to the public it is up on the torrent sites. D&D books take several days if not weeks before they hit the torrent sites after release.
Pathfinder is a small company that does not answer to a larger corporate head and can accept those kinds of losses in revenue. D&D can not.
Well if a person download a pdf manual and not buy it, it doesn't matter if it takes few hours or a week, he will download the pirat copy anyway. Not makeing pdf source is not a way to stop piracy.
A pdf source can be usefull, I buy the manuals I use, but many of the people I play with will just get better with a pdf.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 22, 2012 - 4:03AM
#8
|
|
|
The constant request for PDFs, highlights the problems with dealing with gamers. Being completely unreasonable and demanding with an over developed sense of entitlement.
WoTC would love to bring you PDFs. It's the easiest way for them to have digital distrubution. You can also add a lot of features easily to make it quicker to look things up.
They are also the easiest way for WoTC to get ripped off.
NOW, no matter how many times it's explained, it wasn't Joe Fatboooty in his parents basement putting up a scanned copy of a real book on a torrent site, but companies selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of PDFs under the table and ripping off WoTC that got PDFs canned, you still say, BUT I WON'T DO THAT! Good for you. So YOU won't. SOMEONE WILL.
WoTC isn't interested in stopping piracy, they are interested in not letting a distrubutor steal from them.
And then they say, Piazo does! Piazo isn't owned by a publicly traded company, with both corporate rules and laws to follow. Piazo takes that route that someone stealing a book, gets someone playing their game, and eventually they will legally buy some products.
WoTC doesn't need that kind of recognition and grassroots. Regardless of what you think of 4E, WoTC is still the top dog. Even with the embarassing failure of DDi and their inability to be honest about it, they are still top dog.
But all that doesn't matter.
Gamers will continue to demand PDFs!
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 22, 2012 - 7:07AM
#9
|
|
|
The constant request for PDFs, highlights the problems with dealing with gamers. Being completely unreasonable and demanding with an over developed sense of entitlement.
WoTC would love to bring you PDFs. It's the easiest way for them to have digital distrubution. You can also add a lot of features easily to make it quicker to look things up.
They are also the easiest way for WoTC to get ripped off.
NOW, no matter how many times it's explained, it wasn't Joe Fatboooty in his parents basement putting up a scanned copy of a real book on a torrent site, but companies selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of PDFs under the table and ripping off WoTC that got PDFs canned, you still say, BUT I WON'T DO THAT! Good for you. So YOU won't. SOMEONE WILL.
WoTC isn't interested in stopping piracy, they are interested in not letting a distrubutor steal from them.
And then they say, Piazo does! Piazo isn't owned by a publicly traded company, with both corporate rules and laws to follow. Piazo takes that route that someone stealing a book, gets someone playing their game, and eventually they will legally buy some products.
WoTC doesn't need that kind of recognition and grassroots. Regardless of what you think of 4E, WoTC is still the top dog. Even with the embarassing failure of DDi and their inability to be honest about it, they are still top dog.
But all that doesn't matter.
Gamers will continue to demand PDFs!
What's stopping companies from selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of PDFs right now?
Markets change and you have to adapt your products and/or business model to these changes to stay on top.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Apr 22, 2012 - 3:38PM
#10
|
|
|
WoTC isn't interested in stopping piracy, they are interested in not letting a distrubutor steal from them.
If this was the case then why can they not just distribute it themselves via their own web site.
If they can do DDi then then should be able to do pdfs.
Pro DnD Member of the Axis of Awesome Fighters: Using socks to kill monsters since 2012 DnD Next: Now with more then 4 minutes of Roleplay per gaming hour Spoiler:
Show
"If you can't make an interesting human fighter, then you aren't ready to play anything else yet" Edymnion
"The idea of resting up between encounters to fill-up on hit points and spells struck my meta-gaming nine-year-old as a distinct possibility. "Are you mad?" says my seven-year-old "This place is full of monsters!" "jamesgrahamuk
All characters have a story. Spoiler:
Show
Sometimes that story is short and sometimes it is long. They can be tragic, comic or absurd. Some teach. Some are just to fill the empty spaces in our lives. Rarely it is a transcendent fugue only half remembered but wondered at. And frequently: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -William Shakespeare
|
|
|
