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All D&D Books To Be Available As PDFs

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jun 16, 2006 07:28 AM
from the yay-for-synergistic-marketing dept.
Role Playing (Games) Books Media
sckeener writes "DriveThruRPG has just announced that it will be selling all of WotC's 3.5 Edition D&D products in e-book format - over 90 books. Wizards has elected not to make the three core rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons available as eBooks at this time, but almost every other current Dungeons & Dragons title will be available from DriveThruRPG. New titles are scheduled to release one each weekday on DriveThruRPG: Some of the titles to be released first include: Book of Vile Darkness, Heroes of Horror, Arms and Equipment Guide, d20 Apocalypse, Champions of Ruin, Complete Arcane, Unearthed Arcana, Masters of the Wild and Book of Challenges. The books are still full price and are DRM protected." I'd be happier about this if they were even slightly discounted, but it's a good step. Heroes of Horror is worth every penny.
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  • D&D Books in PDF is awesome. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kranfer (620510) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:31AM (#15547787) Homepage Journal
    I love this idea. While I like having my nice tidy bookshelves full of books, being able to have my laptop right there with a PDF to search for Rules or concepts would make people who are rule whores like me be able to find the specifics quickly without spending 20 minutes looking. I would like to see the PDFs discounted though, that would be a kicker to have to pay full price for the PDFs again just to have them on my laptop and not have to have 09571340987 books to look through. It would also be nice to see the Fantasy World books put out by Wizards to be in PDF too. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, etc.

    • Re:D&D Books in PDF is awesome. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lacota (695046) on Friday June 16 2006, @09:58AM (#15548806) Homepage
      You don't need these. Aside from the lovely consept art, most of the D&D content can be found in the SRD (System Reference Document). Which encompasess the core rulebooks, as well as some of the fringe 3.5 content (Psionics, Divine feats, etc) You can download it in chunks or the whole thing. They are in unencumbered RTF files. Totally free too! In Wizard's own words, here is the missing content from the SRD: Q: What's missing from the SRD compared to the core D&D rulebooks? A: Mostly the "flavor" elements. There are no named gods, none of the spells have significant NPC names, there's no mention of Greyhawk, etc. You'll also note that there are no rules for character creation, for advancing characters in level, calculating experience, or anything else related to the topics forbidden by the d20 System Trademark Guide. Here is the D&D SRD: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/s rd35 [wizards.com] Here is the D20 Modern SRD (MSRD): http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/m srd [wizards.com]

      • Re:Cool... but... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Kranfer (620510) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:46AM (#15547867) Homepage Journal
        I don't think you're trolling and I agree. 3rd Edition is perfect rules for Video Games. I always liked the 2nd Edition rules with THAC0 and such. Hopefully they WILL put 1st and 2nd edition into PDFs. I would definately buy them.

        • Re:Cool... but... (Score:4, Informative)

          by lytlebill (659903) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:55AM (#15547919)
          Actually, you can already get a ton of them as pdf. And not too expensive, either.

          http://paizo.com/store/downloads/wizardsOfTheCoast /aDAndD2/ [paizo.com]
        • Then how come most 3rd ed. d&d game have performed poorly while Baldur's Gate 2 (AD&D - the "worst" ruleset according to a good many!) is widely hailed as a spectacular CRPG, if not one of the best games of all time?
          • Remember a little game called Neverwinter Nights?

            (Oh, and Baldur's Gate 2 was based off of 2nd Edition rules, not AD&D)
          • The plot. It was the plot. The rules where clunky, but the plot was engaging.

          • Re:Perfect for video games? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by tbannist (230135) on Friday June 16 2006, @08:46AM (#15548255)
            I think that's obvious, there are three groups of players who like 3rd Edition: newbies, fanbois and powergamers. It suffers from 2 steps forward, one step back syndrome. Most of the game mechanic changes are reasonably good, I always liked the more intricate miniature rules for combat, for example. However, I loathe the new multi-classing rules, prestige classes are terrible, and some of the weapons are just retarded. Spiked Chain? Mercurial Sword? Cabers?

            Couldn't stand the new system.

            • As an old-school (1977 blue-box) life-long RPGer, I disagree on several points. 3E rulset (or 3.5E, same thing, really ought to be 3.1 from a versioning standpoint) is substantially cleaner and more sensible than any previous DND. 1E/2E multiclass rules were annoying and arbitrary, and dualclass was just plain absurd.

              Your post was the first I heard of mercurial sword in a DND context (I don't own any 3E books, just read the SRD. Also, I haven't played PNP in years, and if I did I'd use Fuzion, FATE, or so

          • Because the failure or success of those games had nothing to do with the ruleset behind them? There is no causality there. Making that assumption is stupid.

            The reason ToEE failed was because Atari should never have produced it and drove it into the ground like they do with just about everything they've touched lately.
            In the meantime the fans have gone on to completely draw new maps for that engine and create all new content and are well on their way to releasing B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.

            They also rel
            • How is "many" claiming it to be the best contrary to "many feel it the wordt"? These statements can coexist. Baldu's Gate 2 is indeed based on 2nd edition rules - but it's AD&D 2nd edition. This is the most complex ruleset there is and a lot of players complained it was too complex - hence the simplifying andadoption of a simple d20 system for 3rd edition.
      • Wow, has math education in this country really that bad? (Even among geeks/nerds?)

        3rd edition has the easiest math from any edition yet. Thaco was much harder to explain to a newcomer than the current BAB/AC rules. And there is no 11.474m ranges, everything is in 5ft increments. To my knowledge there are no rules for anything in the entire game that is in less than a 5ft increment.

        I never have problems with the math in 3rd edition DnD. And neither have any of the players I have ever played with. 2nd e
      • If you are looking for an electronic 'legit' version of the earlier stuff, see if you can find a 'core rules' CD ROM. They had a bunch of character editors, etc - but the real gold was the books were in RTF format! Easy enough to turn into PDF, but even better, you could mark them up with your notes, carve out sections you needed as player or DM.

  • Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)

    by sunrise.kid (931504) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:32AM (#15547793)
    No all I need are some friends to play with :-(

  • yeah but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by i.r.id10t (595143) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:34AM (#15547804)
    ... They won't have Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwells, or Gary Gygax's signatures on them like my old copies!

  • Boo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by giorgiofr (887762) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:38AM (#15547822)
    There they go and take a perfectly cool idea and corrupt it. These books should be sold with a huge discount because lots of costs have been cut by distributing them online as PDFs. And don't they realize that the very value of a PDF is intrinsically lower than that of a hardbound book? I might as well just buy the real thing and be done with it.
    Besides... PDF DRM? I've been given tons of supa-dupa-drm-protected PDFs in the past and usually they gave up in under 10 seconds. As usual, determined attackers will get what they want, while people who are obviously loyal to the brand and good customers get shafted by having their book usage restricted.
    (OK, I have an axe to grind... I never really forgave them for the switch to d20... or for buying RTS at all)

    • Re:Boo (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Red Flayer (890720) on Friday June 16 2006, @08:17AM (#15548063) Journal
      "And don't they realize that the very value of a PDF is intrinsically lower than that of a hardbound book? "

      Absolutely false. The cost of production might be lower, but the value is determined by the consumer, not directly by the characteristics of the item.

      To me, the PDF would actually be MORE valuable, since I commute a long distance and would be able to read them on my laptop without lugging around some heavy tomes. Easier to tag, cross-reference, etc. How about indexing the books and being able to instantly (well, near-instantly, these are pdfs after all) call up all references to a certain spell in all the books?

      In short, value is ascribed by the perceived utility of the object, not by production and distribution costs.
    • Do you game strictly at home, or do you ever go to a game store that provides places for gamers to game?

      If you ever go into a store, how many copies of the DnD books does the store carry?

      Have you considered how much of the store's capital is tied up in those books as a percentage of their total inventory?

      How about the square footage to display the books?

      Now how do you expect the store's owner to feel if those books were available as eBooks for one fourth of the hardcopy retail price? (Game stores generally
      • That's an excellent point, one that's often referred to as "channel conflict" in the wholesale biz. You don't to piss off your current customer base (bookstores and gaming stores) unless you're sure the new form (PDF's) will bring in more profit than you lose with the existing base.
  • While I do love electronic distribution, trying to read something as long as the Spell Compendium in a PDF makes me shudder. I love being able to physically flip pages, pass the book around and read without a computer. There are certianally things that are nicer about an electronic distribution, but when they try to recreate a book on a computer, it loses a lot of what makes reading on a computer better. When I can do a spin-find, resize the window and have the text rewrap, change fonts for maximum readability, etc., then I'll give it some more thought. Until then, I prefer that my books are in fact books, and that my files stay delightfully DRM-free.

  • Good Idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Thyamine (531612) <thyamineNO@SPAMofdragons.com> on Friday June 16 2006, @07:39AM (#15547833) Homepage Journal
    This is certainly a good idea since a large number of computer geeks (yes, admit it.. you are, and so am I) play, and we're the most likely to adopt e-books or books in PDF form. However I personally prefer to have a book in physical form for all things, so unless there's some motiviation to purchase the book in this format (financial or otherwise) I'm not going to be doing this.

    The one benefit that is very clear though, is the ability to purchase books and have them immediately, and not be limited by what the bookstore happens to have in stock today.

      • Re:Good Idea (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pla (258480) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:57AM (#15547931) Journal
        I just hope they allow eventually you to roll your own rulebooks with the elements of individual PDFs. That would be especially handy.

        Psst - You can break the rules!

        Really!

        If everyone in your gaming group agrees a particular rule sucks - ignore it. If you hate using spell memorization rather than per-level MP (my own biggest peeve), just use MP and to hell with memorization. If you think a fixed exp per kill leads to mindless killing sprees and dungeon crawling, make better use of roleplaying-based advancement.
  • This is definitely a good thing, as I've known GMs who need the convenience of e-books badly enough that they either scan the whole thing themselves or (ahem) find another source of a scanned copy It's definitely one of the reasons I mainly GM from digital source material. But, why no discount? That's pretty inexcusable.
    • This is definitely a good thing, as I've known GMs who need the convenience of e-books badly enough that they either scan the whole thing themselves or (ahem) find another source of a scanned copy

      I've tried GMing with PDF versions of the 2e manuals (legally bought), but I just found that it's not as convenient as having the book in front of you. I'm back to the good old paper manuals now.

  • PDF, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pla (258480) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:49AM (#15547878) Journal
    Cool, so the DRM comes pre-cracked, and these should appear online within a month or so. ;-)


    On a more seriously note - I think RPG rulebooks work better in physical form. Granted, you can't drag an entire shelf of books around with you, but the players guide, DMs guide, and whatever setting-specific guide applies to your campaign, doesn't really take that much effort - The Dew and snacks for the evening probably weigh more than the books you need.

    And as for looking up a particular rule... C'mon, admit it folks - you have the rulebooks all but memorized, and just need to check whether half-ogre gets a 15% or 20% racial modifier to damage with a double-handed flail...


    Sigh... And after writing the above, guess what captcha I get? "losers". Not so subtle hint, oh Gods of Slashdot?
    • Most of these are already online as PDFs with no DRM. I have quite a few of them. Mind you I have quite a few books in hardcover, but I also download a PDF version since so many damned players kept borrowing books and never returned them. When I play, I want a book infront of me. If a player wants a book, I email them a PDF version.

      And there is no reason why the PDF versions should be full price.
    • these should appear online within a month or so

      They've been online for some time now. alt.binaries.e-book.rpg. 'Nuff said.
    • Sigh... And after writing the above, guess what captcha I get? "losers". Not so subtle hint, oh Gods of Slashdot?

      Why did you get a captcha? I never get that when logged in.
      • Why did you get a captcha? I never get that when logged in.

        I usually don't log in until ready to post... So, for my first post of the current browsing session, I get a captcha.
  • There's no printing, storage, or shipping costs associated with the PDF versions. I'd cheerfully start purchasing every one of the books, but no way I'm paying that much for an electronic download. I think my price point for this would be no more than $10. And what about upgrades? Errata? What's the policy on that?

  • Here's how new gaming sessions will go... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MagicDude (727944) on Friday June 16 2006, @07:57AM (#15547930)
    DM - As you enter the dimly lit room, you see a creature lurking in the corner, laughing in the corner. As you approach it, things to dark for a second and then the entire room is illuminated with a bright azure light. You have encountered - A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!

    Fighter - I punch the the screen with my fist.

    Rogue - I sneak around back and attempt to unplug it.

    Wizard - I cast "Bigby's Typing Hands" to press Ctrl-Alt-Del

    Cleric - I cast "curse" on Bill Gates

    Sorceress - I summon Tech Support
  • "Wizards has elected not to make the three core rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons available as eBooks at this time,"

    Perhaps the title should be reworded to say, all but the best selling ones.

    -Jason
  • I guess the good side of this is that they'll be a lot more D&D books available for pirating, and they'll be easier to find.

    D&D was the one thing I never pirated materials for but ever since this 3.5 bullshit I've wanted to do nothing but download their books.

    Its such a shame the Gygax's got so screwed from what D&D has become.

  • Pay a premium for digital goods? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Alan Shutko (5101) on Friday June 16 2006, @08:13AM (#15548044) Homepage
    I just checked, and for Frostburn (for instance), I could save $13 by buying it in hardcover form from amazon rather than buying the PDF. Sure, a PDF is more convenient in some cases, but this is ridiculous.

    Ideally, I'd want some kind of subscription service. Let me sign up with DTRPG, authorize my credit card, and whenever a new book came out $5-$10 came off my card and I got the PDF right away. If they're worried about people pirating the PDF, a lower price would help that to... for $5 bucks I'd just give books away if I wanted to share the rules.
  • Our version of Role playing has been available in PDF format since 2000. And it is not DRMed, and it is discounted in that format, since most of the cost of the paper version was always printing costs.

    https://secure.slickwebsitedevelopment.com/bunkerh illgames.com/description.php?II=1082&UID=200606160 823464.21.222.125 [slickwebsi...opment.com]FRP Made Easy: A Real Fantasy

    A complete game system in 1 volume at 10$, what more could you ask for?

  • Saving Costs... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrLizard (95131) on Friday June 16 2006, @08:32AM (#15548166)
    A lot of people here seem to be sans clue about the 'costs' of physical books. Books are sold to distributors at about 25% of retail cost (and there has to be a small profit on that), so, if you just cut out the physical costs of the books, you will save about 15-20 percent. Furthermore, if PDFs are significantly cheaper than physical books, this undercuts retailers, who get angry, and stop ordering the product. If brick-and-morter stores stop buying, this cuts out the main source for new players entering the hobby. Keeping the physical distribution chain alive is key to the long-term survival of the genre.
    • I've worked alongside the publishing industry before. The big win with an electronic format is lack of risk. They already have the content and they have a marginal printing/storage cost. They do not have the risk of printing 1000 copies that sit in a warehouse or get returned by the retail chain. That is why many publishers (e.g. Baen Books, O'Reilley with some titles, AWL with some titles, many small publishers, etc.) give away the PDF or HTML versions of their books now. As other posters have said, many p

  • Here's the deal. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2006, @08:33AM (#15548171)
    If they're going to load them up with DRM and make it all crippleware, I'll pay 1/10 of the price of a hardbound copy.

    If they remove the crippleware and sell them as straight PDFs, I'll pay 1/2 of the price of a hardbound copy.

    If they sell crippleware versions at the same price of the hardbound copy, then I'll wait until someone cracks the DRM and posts them on the internet, and I'll get them for free.

    That's how it works. It would be refreshing if some publishers realized that, but it's no big deal from my end.

  • Another media company fails to get it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lilnobody (148653) on Friday June 16 2006, @08:42AM (#15548223)
    This shows foresight, as WotC hasn't had to deal with piracy for as long as the music companies have. They must be aware just how freely their books are available on limewire, and as long as people want them digitally, they'll sell them instead of not even have a piece of the action. Good! I imagine we'll even be able to search the text, once the DRM is cracked--most excellent.

    What they don't get is that I download copies to supplement the physical copies I own, so I can look up something on the road from a book I don't have as I prepare the next session for my group. They are seeing it as a replacement, as it costs as much as a book.

    I'm not planning to pay as much as a book costs to get something that isn't as good as one. Back to limewire for me. But their quick acceptance of digital distribution, unlike that of most media companies, leaves me hope that they will get it before 4.0...

    nobody

  • Roll your own (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sckeener (137243) <sterlingNO@SPAMtexaskeeners.org> on Friday June 16 2006, @10:19AM (#15548991)
    (I'm buzzing. I always love it when I submit something that is accepted.)

    I recently looked into rolling my own PDF copies of my gaming books. Here is the thread on Enworld [enworld.org].

    For those that don't want to click on that link, I basically talked to 3 IP lawyers about how to do it. It all comes down to the receipt. You have to have the receipt to prove purchase. A scanned receipt is fine as long as it shows your name and the product. Basically you are making your own watermarked pdfs. One IP lawyer with 20 years in the software IP field told me a horror story about how you could have the original software CD, license #, have the software registered with the vendor, and you would still need to produce the receipt to prove ownership. Without the receipt it could be stolen.....
  • Steve Jackson Games has been doing this for a while now [sjgames.com], with their own games as well as others.

    This may be a big deal for D&D fans, but for people who play RPGs in general it's nothing new.

  • Reason for DRM, same price, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Psykechan (255694) on Friday June 16 2006, @11:02AM (#15549312)
    OK, I see a lot of people complaining that these are DRM encumbered and that they are the same price as the hardcover copies. There is no benefit to purchasing these over the printed books. Well there are slight benefits such as serchable text but that's about it.

    I agree though, it's not worth it. The solution is to not buy it.

    I am sure that people have been demanding a PDF release for quite a while. This is pretty much the only way to do it. Release it as restricted PDF to cut down on "sharing" of the files is obvious but why make it the same price as the paper material? Simply to not piss off the small game vendors.

    Yes the local RPG outlets are usually Mom & Pop style stores owned and operated by fans. They have a few rooms in back where you can get together with other players and play a game; if you need more players or are looking for a group, they offer a bulletin board. This is where new players learn how to play.

    They have been slowly going the way of the video game arcade. The difference is that video games could easily move right into the home. RPGs, a social experience, aren't so lucky. Role-playing cannot survive in an online only world. I've tried dozens of times including currently with WoW but it isn't the same. It's like online poker; the mechanics are there but the social aspect is gone.

    Now I personally hate D&D, as well as the whole D20 system, but it does bring new blood into the hobby. (So does LARPing but that's another story) RPG based video games also do but afterwards players need a place to meet up with others. These game stores are exactly that.

    If people purchase their books and resources online exclusively, the struggling game stores lose even more money and close. Once they close, the gamers either play in their homes or leave the hobby entirely. Either way, there is no new blood infused into the hobby. No people to buy the RPG books be it printed or PDF and the game industry suffers.

    So if you like the hobby, go support your local game store. Buy your overpriced splat books there instead of online. Have a chat with the owner, he's probably there. I don't think that his story will differ much from what you've just read here.
    • I am also a very big fan of Malhavoc. That is how I became a fan of PDF books for roleplaying in the first place. I also think Monte Cook's classes are better than the core classes.

    • Re:Been using PDFs for a while (Score:4, Funny)

      by Red Flayer (890720) on Friday June 16 2006, @09:14AM (#15548465) Journal
      "PDFs are not as handy for a casual read, like when you are in the bathroom."

      Yech. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to be flipping through a book that my GM's been reading on the crapper. I know, the book is probably perfectly clean, but given what my current GM looks like, the visual is disturbing.

      Besides, now I'm going to be thinking of unique items like Ragnar's +2 Plunger of Clog Slaying, or Charmin's +5 Vorpal Toilet Paper.
    • There are few people who can afford D&D books but live in an area where the electric routinely goes out for more than a few minutes. If you're one of them, buy the dead tree versions.
      • Kragnar the Barbarian cares not for spoiled milk! Kragnar the Barbarian smashes his enemies! Kragnar the Barbarian laughs at his fallen foes and drinks spoiled milk with glee!

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