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Wizards OTC...where art thy .pdfs?
JMP
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ever since Penny Arcade started taping their 4E table-top adventures...I've had an itch to get back into tabletop gaming...something I haven't done since college (5 years ago).
Unfortunately, this itch cannot be scratched because of the mere fact I live in Southeast Asia and I can't afford to add hard copies of anything to my library and maintain my mobility. RPGnow.com used to sell the PDFs, but there was a large copyright snafoo and now I'm stranded...not unlike in an Athas desert...with naught but the torment of Tantalus casting audio mirages in front of me; I'm forced to listen to, but never myself enjoy, the adventures of posterior-kicking psionic pseudo-monks from mp3s made in a land far-far away.
My question is...WotC...why, oh, why don't you let me legitimately purchase your material in .pdf format? And...all you all at Penny Arcade, why haven't you shed some light on this issue?
If any of you know where I can PURCHASE, not pirate, 4E WotC .pdf sourcebooks online, please please please, with whipped cream, cherries and chocolate sauce on top, let me know. Google can't seem to find anything.
Unfortunately, this itch cannot be scratched because of the mere fact I live in Southeast Asia and I can't afford to add hard copies of anything to my library and maintain my mobility. RPGnow.com used to sell the PDFs, but there was a large copyright snafoo and now I'm stranded...not unlike in an Athas desert...with naught but the torment of Tantalus casting audio mirages in front of me; I'm forced to listen to, but never myself enjoy, the adventures of posterior-kicking psionic pseudo-monks from mp3s made in a land far-far away.
My question is...WotC...why, oh, why don't you let me legitimately purchase your material in .pdf format? And...all you all at Penny Arcade, why haven't you shed some light on this issue?
If any of you know where I can PURCHASE, not pirate, 4E WotC .pdf sourcebooks online, please please please, with whipped cream, cherries and chocolate sauce on top, let me know. Google can't seem to find anything.
JMP on
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All indications are that they won't ever again either. There's small talk about it, but it's mostly just lip service. That's why you can't find anything about it.
I still have a hard time believing that in the slightest. The fact of the matter was PDFs were sold for cheaper, for one. So, not as much money earned per sale. Most of the PDFs purchased were WoTC products too. PDFs of older editions were still around, so more people still played and dicked around with older content too... stuff that you couldn't physically buy in the live market. After-market (flea markets, garage sales, etc) don't really count in this regard.
I wouldn't be surprised if the consumption and distribution of illegal pdfs remained unchanged today. Anybody with a scanner and an iron can put a copy out there. hell, if anything it's increased. Even people who owned physical copies of the books may have gotten such files. But talk about such things falls into a grey area as far as forum rules go, so I guess I'll leave it at that. o_o
Wizard's actions were very poorly thought out given the digital age we live in. The DDI Compendium, while it is a great place to get the distilled rules, provides little to no information in regard to actually running a game, which makes a baseline purchase of the DMG/PHB necessary. for those players that do care to partake in the information, a lot of the nuances/fluff isn't there either.
But now if you either don't have the room, or the desire to lug books around (some of my players did that in our irl game, it was not fun for them... especially if you're playing as a commuter in college) you're sol...
Printed to PDF so no scanning crappiness and searchable/copyable text. Linking, bookmarks. mmmm
There's some nice stuff you could do to a pdf to add a ton of value.
The music, film and television industries all disagree with your logic. A person can dig around the net to find a copy of some obscure cult movie from the 80s for free, or they can go to say netflix and purchase a legit copy of it, and that's old stuff. Just the same they could have go to FYE or something to grab a copy of a movie recently released, or get it from netflix or what have you. And a person willing to download it is extremely unlikely to even consider either option so there's nothing ever actually lost in the exchange.
As far as being a replacement for the printed text books DDI is a mediocre solution at best, given its omission of a lot of stuff. The purpose of the compendium is to be a supplement/reference. The magazines also supplement the published content (which they still release as PDFs anyway). I know of more than a few people who've played assassin who haven't even spent a penny on a DDI subscription, heh.
A person entirely new to the pen/paper RPGs who wants to run a 4E game is all but required to buy a physical hardcopy of the books now if they want to do it legitimately. This would make sense if this were the 90s or something... but given that it's not, both what they did and the way that they went about doing it back was very silly. Not everybody has the desire or the space for physical books (See the OP). Given the large number of people who were willing to pay for the electronic product, it was a dumb move on their part.