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9 months ago ::
Oct 14, 2012 - 6:53PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Oct 11, 2012
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Over the years the pure reference aspects of D&D have had a lot of formats. The montrous compendium with its 3-ring binders, perfect bound, hard cover, trading card binders, all have pros and cons. Which format works the best for you in a campaing and will hold up under years of use? Which provides the best balance of depth of info and useabilty? With the world bibles being developed how much access should be digital?
I loved the Monsterous compendium depth and being able to lay it out flat, but the pages ripped out and with several hundred monsters and many binders they were not the best for finding what I wanted.
I know that this part is a long way off, but it could influnece the depth of info included.
What do you think.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 14, 2012 - 6:59PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Apr 23, 2009
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1. A nice high quality bound book.
2. PDFs
3. Online tools.
All of the above.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 14, 2012 - 7:45PM
#3
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1) Website with full text and hyperlinked. Like the hypertext SRD or d20pfsrd.com
2) Website without hyperlinks like the Compendium
3) PDF with hyperlinks and bookmarks
4) PDF w/o links
5) Book with solid index
6) Book w/o index
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9 months ago ::
Oct 14, 2012 - 10:50PM
#4
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Date Joined:
May 22, 2003
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Book:
- Table of Contents
- Index
- Glossary
- Bolded glossary terms in text
- Italicised mechanic references (spell names, feat names, etc.)
Digital Book:
- All features of book
- Bookmarks
- Hyperlinks
Online Version:
- All features of Digital Book
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9 months ago ::
Oct 14, 2012 - 11:30PM
#5
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2012
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I think I'd stick to books/ebooks with the interweb tools designed to be pure reference devices. The SRD websites are incredibly useful that way and the main reason my group never picked up 4e; they should adopt that model again.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 15, 2012 - 12:13AM
#6
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Date Joined:
May 22, 2003
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I think I'd stick to books/ebooks with the interweb tools designed to be pure reference devices.
The SRD websites are incredibly useful that way and the main reason my group never picked up 4e; they should adopt that model again.
Adopt the model that offered their product up for free, dissuaded customers from coming along for new iterations, and fueled the rise of their greatest competitor? 
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9 months ago ::
Oct 15, 2012 - 12:20AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2012
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I think I'd stick to books/ebooks with the interweb tools designed to be pure reference devices.
The SRD websites are incredibly useful that way and the main reason my group never picked up 4e; they should adopt that model again.
Adopt the model that offered their product up for free, dissuaded customers from coming along for new iterations, and fueled the rise of their greatest competitor?
It only gave rise to their best competitor because they dropped the model. I hardly consider the SRD "their product for free;" there are whole volumes of information that are totally unavailable and there's no explanation for any of it. A new player couldn't possibly start with the SRD and a veteran player can only make use of it with a firm background in the system. If anything, the fact that 4e suffered so much is only evidence of the previous model's success and how foolish WOTC was to abandon it.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 15, 2012 - 4:14AM
#8
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Date Joined:
Oct 11, 2012
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So, so far it looks like the ebook/Online format has become a valuable tool. That is great to hear. Should all of the online content be available in print as well, or do enough people have reliable online access?
Thanks
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9 months ago ::
Oct 15, 2012 - 4:39AM
#9
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Date Joined:
May 22, 2003
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The digital divide is alive and well in America, as well as the world over. Digital materials should compliment the print materials, not supplant them. 
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9 months ago ::
Oct 15, 2012 - 5:04AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2012
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I think that books should be available in both formats, myself. For a couple of reasons:
- The editorial process is far more comprehensive in a printed product. Overall, the quality of publications that see print have fewer errors and will require less in the way of erata and ad hoc web fixes.
- Ebooks, in general, lack certain qualities that make physical books preferable as a reference or textbook. The ability to make notes, fold pages, or annotate are particularly important and the pdf tools to do this kind of marking is inferior (though that could change). Also, I think a lot of D&D players like having books to hold and flip through.
- It's easier to share a book at a table than it is to share pdf.
- It's easier to have a number of books open to various places across a table. Maybe some day they'll invent some kind of gamer table that will cost the earth and actually have a massive table top display for books (my god that'd be cool), but in the meantime most of us don't have enough tablets to keep things open to pages we need at a glance.
- Not everyone will have powerful mobile computers, but almost everyone will be able to read.
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