No More D&D PDFs, Wizards of the Coast Sues 8 File Sharers 501
An anonymous reader writes "On April 6th, Wizards of the Coast took all of their PDF products offline, including those sold at third-party websites like RPGNow.com. From the RPGNow front page: 'Wizards of the Coast has instructed us to suspend all sales and downloads of Wizards of the Coast titles. Unfortunately, this includes offering download access to previously purchased Wizards of the Coast titles.' Wizards of the Coast also posted a press release to their website that states they are suing eight file sharers for 'copyright infringement,' and WotC_Trevor posted a short explanation about the cessation of PDF sales to the EN World Forums."
[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Point gun at foot and pull trigger.
Step 2: Open yourself up to lawsuits for breach of contract.
Step 3: Ignore all evidence and make assumptions in an effort to piss off both the users and the publishers.
Step 4: Lose all profits!
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think as people in this economy are becoming increasingly desperate, people are grasping at straws while they fail. Could this be considered a sign that there is failure approaching when a company starts resorting to litigation for income?
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Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up... that had me cracking up
Seriously though, is there a business conference that happens annually now where presenters try to sell the audience on the benefits of alienating your customers by providing sub-par purchasing and product use options? Do they start the whole thing off with a keynote on how to use copyright to extort and sue your customers?
I think, in recent years, its become readily apparent that a company's true customers are it's stock holders and board members. The consumers are just raw material to be milked for money in ANY way possible.
Sorry if that went slightly off-topic, it's just frustrating to see so many product/media providers jump on this bandwagon. Whats next? Some sort of physical DRM for printed copies?
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I think, in recent years, its become readily apparent that a company's true customers are it's stock holders and board members. The consumers are just raw material to be milked for money in ANY way possible.
Did you read the same summary I did? They stopped selling pdfs. The only alternatives now for a digital copy are to buy the books and scan every page yourself, or piracy. They aren't milking their consumers; they are throwing their money back at them.
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This is Bruno. He comes free with your purchase. Don't make him mad. He is non-refundable.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
Whats next? Some sort of physical DRM for printed copies?
If you dig back into storage and find some of those early 1st edition dungeon crawls, you'll find that they were printed in a lightish blue ink.
Mimeograph machines and black and white copiers at the time (I don't think color copiers were commercially available yet) had real trouble with that color ink.
This was intentional. It was, in effect, DRM.
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How many sales do you think you would make with out the 5,000 (I assume happy with your product) pirates?
$500 is still more than what you would make if only 20 bought your game because of the other 30 never hearing about it from the pirates, or not buying it because they didn't have a chance to try it out for free first.
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Yeah, because piracy is the hallmark ad campaign of the 21st century. And it's free! YAY PIRATES.
Nice try, guy. I've never had a pirate pitch a product to me that I didn't already own through monetary exchange elsewhere.
I have plenty of NO-CD cracks, etc, sure. I hunted those down for my convenience to preserve the media I'd already purchased, not for dubious "try-before-you-buy" practices. There's usually a "if you like it, buy it" disclaimer in there somewhere, but to me those always seem flat, half-a
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Funny)
This D&D guide will self destruct in 60 seconds.
... unless you can successfully roll for save vs. lawyers
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Wow. I've been toying with the idea of getting PDF versions of the 1st Edition AD&D books to suppliment my paper copies, but I guess that's not happening...
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup.
And it's the only way you can get Gods, Demigods, and Heroes where TSR violated a lot of OTHER people's copyrighted material.
I started with the three book set, greyhawk, and blackmoor after hearing about the "DND" room at a convention.
ADND (i.e. 1st edition) killed my campaign when the DMG came out. Can't remember why. The PHB and MM were both compatible.
2nd edition wasn't my cup of tea and i stumbled on the Cyclopedia version and fell in love.
Lots of home rules later, my 26 year old rules set and Rev 4.0 are actually a lot closer together. I guess we both grew in the same direction. My rules are formatted Cyclopedia style (and probably still have about 40- pages or 10%-15% of Cyclopedia material).
If I had it to do over again, I think I would simplify things and reduce a lot of these feats (like cleave) to the basics: Unless it is a special squirrelly ability (like flying) then it points down to taking more hit points or doing more hit points.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Informative)
Minor note: The Cyclopedia is actually not 2nd edition AD&D, it's a republishing of the alternative line they had going when AD&D came out.
It was originally meant to be the 'intro to D&D' rules which would transition to AD&D but ended up being it's own separate line entirely. Prior to being released as the Cyclopedia, it was called the Box Sets as unlike AD&D, the Box sets were sold as paired Player and Dungeon Master guides based on level ranges.
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The "alternative line" had a name: "Dungeons & Dragons", as distinct from "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons".
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's basically what makes me shake my head in disbelief.
First: Those books are no longer in print and WotC is not losing a dime if they get copied. Unless, and I'd consider this highly unlikely if anything, they want to roll the printing press for those items again.
Second: It's anything but hard to get a hand on that copy. Instead of paying WotC for it, you have to hunt for it on torrents. Yeah, you could get sued. How well that works as a deterrent is evident. Not to mention that people will have zero problem with their conscience, since they could not even buy it, even if they wanted.
Finally, and most importantly: P&P RPG enthusiasts are, if anything, packrats. They want the printed copy if there is one available, if the book is good. I've seen books that are readily available in PDF form (from other publishers) go for three and four digit sums on ebay because they can't be bought anymore. I'm in a similar boat, I want my book in my hand (ever tried bringing a laptop to a fantasy RPG session? Talk about mood killer). I won't pay 300 bucks for it, but I'd certainly go to my shop and get it if I could! So any PDF being "ripped" is not a lost sale by any measure. It's about the best advertising you can get. Players don't read the book and then toss it away like a novel. RPG books are used more like encyclopedias, perused and consulted regularely to look up details. And gamers want that in book form. Not laptop, not a copy they tossed through their printer, they want a book!
So where the heck is the lost sale? Where is the damage?
Or does WotC fear that people could find out their latest edition sucks even more than the previous ones and people refuse to buy it entirely, and stick with AD&D 2nd forever?
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
They want the printed copy if there is one available, if the book is good. I've seen books that are readily available in PDF form (from other publishers) go for three and four digit sums on ebay because they can't be bought anymore. I'm in a similar boat, I want my book in my hand (ever tried bringing a laptop to a fantasy RPG session? Talk about mood killer).
Allow me to offer up some counterexamples. I was just at an annual gaming retreat with friends last weekend, where we played classic D&D and other games. (a) I ran an OD&D game, and to my great pleasure, one of the players had bought the OD&D PDFs and printed and bound his own little books from them. (b) I also ran an AD&D game, and instead of hauling the big hardcovers with me, I did indeed have them on a laptop, as I've done before, and it didn't bother anyone (kept below table height on a chair next to me).
Here's the upshot: I was just today going to write my player and recommend he also buy the Supplement I PDF to add to his OD&D books. But now he can't do that. Bizarre.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy has it exactly right.
One of my friends had a CD of most of WotC's books in PDF that we passed around. As far as I know, nobody actually used the pirated copies for anything but sneakily reading them in class on a laptop. We *all* trouped down to the store at least once a month to buy another book.
Who wants to stare at a crappy PDF when you're rolling dice to kill the dragon? WotC is doing nothing but alienating their paying customers.
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First: Those books are no longer in print and WotC is not losing a dime if they get copied.
Yes they are, at least as they see it (which is what's going to drive their business decisions). If players can't get hold of the 3.5 material it forces them to buy the shiny new version 4 material -- and everyone who wants to join them in games, so it pushes people who already have 3.5 to buy 4. Or go play some other RPG, of course, but I expect WotC discount that possibility.
OSRIC! (Score:4, Interesting)
If it's 1st edition rules you want, OSRIC [knights-n-knaves.com] is an OGL'ed clone of them, and you can either use old 1e adventures or there's also now a small ecology of new supplements out that go with it. I wish it'd get more attention.
-=Steve=-
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People who play D&D don't seem like the kind of people who will forget a perceived slight against them or their wallets easily and every time someone mentions purchasing a PDF D&D rulebook, they'll be reminded "You remember when WoC cut off access?"
And then they'll fire up bittorrent for something that they would have paid for before.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
WotC is such a small part of Hasbro that there is very little that they could do with through WotC that would be shooting themselves in the foot (and shooting WotC in the foot is meaningless, WotC isn't an independent entity.) I suspect, also, that WotC, or at least D&D, has been disappointing to Hasbro since the acquisition, and has never been profitable enough, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are at the point where desperate moves that are perceived as having some (though low) probability of improving the profitability in that area are warranted prior to simply cutting their losses and moving the resources elsewhere or simply not expending them at all anymore in a cost-cutting move. IOW, this may well be a natural part of Hasbro proving to themselves that D&D (except, perhaps, in the online-game form) simply cannot be salvaged as something profitable enough for them.
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Yes, I do.
Quite.
Yes, it means if any operation conducted by WotC don't perform as well as an application of equal resources by Hasbro in other areas would be expected to, that operation (in a kind of ideal profit maximization theory, which firms tend to attempt to approximate in practice) gets cut.
If D&D (as a traditional RPG) is already performing near or below that bar, then ta
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Funny)
Incomprehensible sentence hits you for 1d6+1!
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assuming everything that appears more likely to succeed which has equal or less cost has already been tried,
Crux of your argument is pure speculation. Anyone can make up additional parameters to justify a bullshit argument. You might as well have said that the queen of the drow gave them an ultimatum - stop selling PDFs or her she will teleport the corporate headquarters to one of the planes of hell.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Funny)
That BITCH!
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is their second salvo, of course. The first was when they decided to yank the rights to Dragon and Dungeon magazines from Paizo, the company that salvaged those two titles from their late-1990s slump and made them popular and useful again. Wizards is no longer the cool company that Richard Garfield and crew took from obscurity to gaming geek super-stardom. Since the Hasbro buyout, they've moved further and further into a campaign of systematically alienating and angering every one of their customers, partners, authors and fans.
It's sad, really. There were (and probably still are) some good people there. Oh well, Steve Jackson [sjgames.com] will enjoy the business, anyway. They still have plenty of PDFs [sjgames.com] for sale, and even a few for free [sjgames.com]!
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
Steve Jackson? gah. Screw GURPS, too many damn specific rules, combat takes to long, and running on a bell curve with their point system make no sense mathematically.
I gave up on that pile of needless complications 4 years ago.
Try savage worlds [peginc.com] and have some fun. Play characters that can actually be cool right out of the gate, and only get cooler. There rule book cost 10 bucks.
What's that? 10 bucks too much to try a new game? well then, I suggest you take it for a Test Drive [peginc.com]
Do I sound a little fanatical? probably, but I ahve played it since it's release, and still enjoy it, and have played and ran in almost every Genre available.
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Or you could just go with Fudge. The core edition is completely free, and available in PDF and plain text.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
SJGames is an example of someone "getting" gamers.
GURPS is about the most flexible and adaptable game system. It allows you to build your own game with just the basic rulebook. Yet there are quite a lot of books, and funny enough, they also get bought. You don't need them. It's not like in other systems where you can't play a ranger without the ranger book because the info you need to make one isn't in the main book. It's not even that those books give you many new rules.
Most of the time, they give you background information.
As an example, take the "high tech" book, dealing mostly with firearms through the ages, from medieval times to now. Instead of just noting down a list of weapons and what stats they have, you get background information how those weapons worked, when and how they were used, generally you get a book about guns. More as sidenotes, you also get their stats and some suggestions how to convert their behaviour into game terms. Instead of "it is this way, take the rules and shut up" you get "this is how it works, and that's how we think this is reflected by stats".
Personally, I feel I get a lot more out of the book that way. I get to know why and how things work, and I get a feel what could work in a given setting and situation and what could not.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Informative)
Savage Worlds (by Pinnacle Entertainment Group) is even more flexible and adaptable, easier to learn, and in my experience offers more roleplaying and more combat options.
It has many good things going for it, including many 3rd party publishers jumping on board:
* Core rulebook is $10 small-format full color book, has rules for nearly any situation, and these rules all follow the same core concepts. Also includes basic equip and monsters for several generic settings (its easy to make more).
* Easy to learn, yet offers a lot of depth and variety
* Easy to GM
* Combat can be tactical w/ minis, or not, at your discretion; it goes fast even if there are lots of combatants.
* Pinnacle sells all of their products as PDF as well; the Settings books are offered in Full and Player Only versions, and have site licenses granting permission to print copies for your players
* Lots of 3rd party publishers are jumping on board Savage Worlds; the next Cthulhu RPG will be Savage
* Lots of homebrew settings available, and it's pretty easy to make one
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have every DnD 4e PDF book. I downloaded all of them without paying for them.
I regularly run a DnD campaign, I'm a DCI member, I run RPGA events, etc. I do own the 4e PHB, but that's because I damaged one at a store and felt obligated to the store owner.
Here's why I pirated all those books, and why I am going to pirate the rest of them:
Because fuck you, Wizards of the Coast, fuck you. When you brought out 4e, it was supposed to be a self-contained series of books. There were three books - the DM guide, the Player's Handbook, and the Monster Manual. I pre-ordered them from my local store (significantly more than at Amazon, but I wanted to support my local store.) and was ready to try out the new system. I was ready to pitch all my dead tree 3.5 books to see what you'd learned from 3 and 3.5.
Then you wanted $15/month to access your online content.
Then you announced that there were more CORE books coming out. There's a release party every month now. Twelve books a year? Are you insane?
Then you killed the SRD.
You see me as a cash cow. Fuck you. I'm not paying you a thousand dollars to get all the books when the full set was supposed to be a hundred - or just fifty online.
If you had released all this content as one package and said, "this is fourth edition", I would have bought the set.
You're liars, you're fuckups, and I do not reward incompetence with my cash.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice job being a dick.
There's nothing preventing you from playing 4E with just the original three core books, just as with previous editions. In fact, thousands of gamers are doing just that, myself included.
And how is it wrong for WotC to charge $15 a month for access to all the new optional content they put on their website? It's not like Dungeon and Dragon magazines were free either. Plus they had ads and came out once a month instead of every couple of days.
Yes, WotC is releasing multiple core books for 4E. So what? You don't need them to play the game. And I suppose you just forgot that 3E had 2 PHBs, 2 DMGs and 4 MMs. Plus another one of each if you count 3.0 and 3.5 separately. Also, why is it a problem that WotC releases products every month? (The vast majority of which are not, in fact, core books.) You don't have to buy them you know. Are you also complaining when Nintendo is releasing a game every month? Most gamers would be delighted.
Granted, 4E is not nearly as open as 3E/OGL/d20 was, but there is still a 4E SRD [wizards.com], and 3E is still open source.
You had to pay thousands of dollars to get all the books for 2E and 3E too. 4E is no different in that. But just as with those previous editions, you don't actually need any books beyond the 3 original core books. I know I'm having a blast playing with just those and I did pay just $50 for them.
You're either a liar or an ignoramus, a copyright-infringer, and you have a twisted sense of entitlement.
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Funny)
>>>Step 4: Lose all profits!
What's D&D? Was that some kind of Final Fantasy spinoff?
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Thousands of fans who enjoy their legally-obtained pdf copies would disagree with you on the "no harm" part.
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At least they didn't rename IPI to B4by R4ping or the like...
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Money has to be in limited supply. It is a proxy for material goods that are by necessity in limited supply, so that we don't have to resort to barter. That money itself can be printed in practically limitless quantities is beside the point. If it's too easy to copy, then it must be changed.
The technology today makes it very easy
Get your head wrapped around that idea. And think, copying will only get easier. DRM is hopeless. They used to call it "copy protection", and it didn't work then either. Copyright is dead, and it's time people und
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire post is based on a truckload of faulty assumptions. I know people who bought legal D&D PDFs, they're spitting nails. Anyone who likes D&D should be spitting nails.
Hasbro, through WoTC, is not just attacking the illegitimate PDFs but they nuked from orbit all the legitimate ones.
You blabber about DRM - but as someone else pointed out it wasn't users who bought the PDFs that shared them on torrents, etc - it was PUBLISHERS EMPLOYEES: they all had publisher watermarks.
DRM wouldn't have stopped that. DRM cannot stop piracy: it never has and it never will. DRM can only stop technologically inept users from making fair use. Anyone who knows any technologically inclined person (and how many D&D people don't know a technologically inclined person) can get around DRM like the DRM wasn't even there.
4e is nothing but table top World of Crapcraft.
Ho-hum (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't make an argument against this attitude that is anywhere near as eloquent as Eric Flint posted on Jim Baen's free library site.
http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]
Jim put his money where his mouth was, and GAVE AWAY book, after book, after book. More, if you happen to be disabled, you can contact Baen Books, and they will give to you NOT ONLY the books from their free library, but their mainstream books that are in print.
Baen books had a lot of money at stake on this gamble. But, they PROVED CONCLUSIVELY that giving stuff away free MAKES MONEY for them. Every time they released a title that had been out of print, sales of that book skyrocketed.
Over at Baen, the author has to approve his title for the free library, and some authors don't seem to use it. Those authors who have jumped aboard the free library enjoy an increase in income.
Baen books puts the lie to all the DRM crap, and proves the corporate lackeys to be totally wrong.
In the case of D&D stuff - if they had any brights at all, they would allow the stuff on P2P to continue, but add some cool stuff that is NOT readily downloadable via P2P. Any intelligent individual can come up with schemes for that. In fact, it would be a small step to release P2P ready material that at the very least promotes the non-P2P, and possibly even DEPENDS ON other non-P2P material.
It constantly amazes me that lackwit idiots run the corporate world.
Traveling salesmen and tinkers learned this lesson before electricity was discovered, for God's sake!!!
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Baen books had a lot of money at stake on this gamble. But, they PROVED CONCLUSIVELY that giving stuff away free MAKES MONEY for them. Every time they released a title that had been out of print, sales of that book skyrocketed.
While I congratulate them for their success, I have some doubt about that business model for the future, since it works under the assumption that the digital version is a degraded one and printed one is the 'real deal'. That assumption won't work forever when ebook readers become cheaper, better and more common place, people won't continue to carry books around when they already have a ebook reader with them. And the ebook reader also either already is better or at least has the potential to become more com
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Ahhh - but - it seems that you miss the underlying premise. Baen reacted to, and adapted to, the existing market. Such actions reap profits. (accurately anticipating, and adapting to the FUTURE market would be even more lucrative, of course) Those who are so strongly opposed to P2P and other technologies are resisting market change, and refusing to adapt. Such opposition fails to reap rewards. Worse, if they resist long enough and hard enough, they will find themselves bankrupted, and cast off from the
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Considering reaction of typical slashdotter (which shattered some illusions about this crowd) to this news, i think i am entitled to little rage. ANd its not nerf hate, its self righetous pirate hate.
Yes, d&d is overpriced crap. But:
There is business competition all over the place.
There are even great free rulesets.
Hell, people can play games with homebrewn rules. No books needed.
Sumplemental materials from any ruleset can be converted to any other ruleset with little ima
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Yet people still want D&D while they have plenty of options (and are not shy to rationalize torrenting it)
And so, logically, they should respond to piracy by removing the ability to pay for a legitimate copy? And you think this will put the djinni back in the bottle and there will no longer be any pirated copies on the internet?
Yes, they will add DRM, just like your library. And people here will cry and conveniently forget reason why it was added.
I'll remember why: Because they were too thick to reali
Re:[Don't] Profit! (Score:4, Interesting)
Old copies? They will be there, sure. But they will not release new stuff as it was obvious that new stuff will be either leaked or just pirated by "customers". Why continue giving them freebie? Why continue competing with "free as beer" P2P while supplying em with new content at same time?
So you think there's more money in not competing at all, eh? Yeah that's smart. People were buying the .pdfs. And let me repeat, the leaks came from publishers, who could easily create a .pdf to leak to p2p networks when given the book to print in dead-tree format. And barring that, digital copies will still be made. Face it, they will be online and there's nothing you or Hasbro can do about it.
Given that, why would you make the illegal copies the only copies online?
What would you propose, keep current service as "legacy"? To compete with piratebay? With no future? No profitability? Waste of manpower.
Today, you have some people getting copies off of p2p, and some purchasing them legitimately. In the future, everyone who wants a digital copy will pirate it because that will be their only recourse.
How much effort do you think there is in creating a .pdf to throw online once you've already created the book? Is some money more or less than no money?
In their rush to prevent piracy, they are pushing their legitimate customers to it. This is a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Does that mean... (Score:2, Funny)
D&D is dead (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:D&D is dead (Score:5, Funny)
Re:D&D is dead (Score:5, Funny)
I'd attack them with a cluewand, but it doesn't work on anyone with an int of lower than 3 or corporations.
Re:D&D is dead (Score:4, Interesting)
I kind of hoped that 4e was going to embrace the Internet and allow people to create tools for it... I was trying to have high hopes for the future of D&D, but now I wish I could get a refund for my rulebooks.
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Re:D&D is dead (Score:5, Interesting)
While I hate buying the books over and over again I also realize that WoTC needs to do that every so often to get more sales. I was annoyed from 3.0 to 3.5 because that was a sham (3.5 was fixing 3.0), but 4.0 is a complete revamp so warrants it. There is still plenty of 3.0/3.5 material that you can play that. There are some companies that didn't even change and will continue with 3.5 material.
Re:D&D is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
Hasbro/WotC completely dropped support for their OGL that they developed with 3rd edition, but many people still use that. There are many other new, creative RPGs that can easily give D&D a run for its money, and the old powerhouses like Palladium are still going strong.
It's funny that everything you mention about 4e is in the sense of a dumbing-down or simplifying. WotC has always been obsessed with that concept but it is just not in sync with reality. Gamers love complexity and they want a system that has rich options. Why do you think WotCs attempts to turn RPGs into a kids oversimplified boardgame always fail, and the system inevitable ends up becoming more and more complex?
As for the actual content, well WotC will never be able to top the greats of 2nd edition; that is when there was true creative talent in the AD&D universe, with settings like Planescape, Dark Sun and Spelljammer as well as the more "traditional" fantasy settings on Toril, Krynn and Greyhawk. WotC has just been living off those great masterminds and reprinting books of lists (feats, skills, equipment, classes, whatever), not creating anything of its own.
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there was a lot of 3.0 -> 3.5 errata, and in fact you did not nede to buy new books becasue the difference were all laid out on TSR's web site.
Except there was so much errata try getting it all into the correct place. Imagine if you bought Windows XP and MS said "we have patches for it, it's on our website. You can d/l it, but you are going to have to drop the files into the correct sections. You will have to delete the appropriate files before you drop in the new files. We won't help you with this. Or you could buy our NEW version which is really just the fixes to the OLD version". I would have been happy if they offered some discount "send us
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Actually, 4th edition breathed new life into our gaming table. We are very satisfied.
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Re:D&D is dead (Score:4, Informative)
Athas.org is still making sourcebooks (for free) [athas.org], so is Birthright.net [birthright.net].
Re:D&D is dead (Score:4, Informative)
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4e rocks.
And yes, I have played all other version, a lot.
The brought back the 'war game' aspect and maintained the original feel, and improved a lot mechanics.
And I'm a die hard THAC0 fan.
How embarassing.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Won't stop illegal downloads (Score:5, Interesting)
The moment you release your information to the public you open it up to be copied.
BTW their 4e application (a nice piece of software) requires a subcription to update it (that is fine) my beef with it is if your computer gets reformatted you MUST resubscribe (pay money) to get a full version of it. I think that is crap. If I paid for the software to utilize and decided not to pay for my monthly subscription renewal then I should not have to pay again to reinstall the software.
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Your failure to back up your downloaded software is not their problem...
If you break/scratch your physical copy, would they have any responsibility? Why should they waste the bandwidth without charging you?
If you want a better piece of software though, talk to Wonko... Excel 2007 active spreadsheet and database for DnD4e. includes everything! (about 30 days behind release schedule). It can be found at enworld, rpgsheets.com, and a few other places. I'd link, but I'm blocked from that here at the office
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Actually, per the back inside cover in the new DnD 4e books, and per the DnDi website, you're supposed to get a free PDF copy when you buy the hardcover, plus as a subscriber (this part of the service isn't active yet) all the people in your registered game group (who themselves do NOT have to subscribe) can have free online access to ALL the PDF copies anyone in your group owns. They're calling it virtual game table. We're hoping it's up and running this fall. So far, only the character generator is up
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I don't mind the subscription model for the software (they come out with updates once/month) I mind that I have to resubscribe to get material that I previously got...Also backing up is not possible since when you reinstall you have to subscribe to make it a full
Re:Won't stop illegal downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
I love it when people scream "sue" without knowing the facts.
They might claim it is about infringement (Score:5, Interesting)
They lost me a long time ago when then current head of the AD&D product line tried to assert ownership over all third party content, including homemade settings that weren't tied to any particular rule system, claiming that anything that used the AD&D rules was a derivative work.
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Here are a couple [google.com] links [google.com] to threads from around that time.
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But if you read through the entire threads on the issue at that time, Dancey was definitely strongly implying a whole lot of "if it uses AD&D rules, we own it." Dancey even tried to claim copyright on the game mechanics (which everyone knows aren't copyrightable... the expression of the rules, yes, but not the rules themselves).
Not being able to afford a lawyer s
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Read the Open Gaming License carefully. It talks about derivative works in the definitions, and then says this:
(d)"Open Game Content" means the game mechanic and includes the methods, procedures, processes and routines to the extent such content does not embody the Product Identity and is an enhancement over the prior art and any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor, and means any work covered by this License, including translations and derivative works under copyright law, but specifically excludes Product Identity.
So it's not entirely clear but one could claim that under these terms, any game played with any DnD book that used OGL material is in fact OGL licensed, kind of like the GPL.
Two points to make on top of yours (Score:3, Interesting)
#1: Their new license basically rapes you if you want to publish OGL content. It's explicitly designed so that publishers supporting 4e must throw away their 3.xE content, including anything based on OGL, and start over. I read it as "ha ha, fuck you publishers, upgrade bitches." So you're absolutely right that this is not about "piracy", this is consistent with a strategy of wizards desperately trying to scramble for more control of the game. It's about kicking out everyone who might make money off the
This will yield opposite results (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes perfect sense (Score:4, Insightful)
All future unsanctioned copies will bear the same (at least) 8 watermarks losing TOS abusers in a sea of anonymity.
Best viral marketing move for an RPG ever.
----
And just when you thought they 'got it'...
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WotC wants 3e DEAD! At any cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently I went looking for some 3rd edition books, since I thought they'd be getting scarce soon.
Scarce? I was mistaken. 3.0 and 3.5 are GONE. Every local gaming store, every local used book store, every online store in Canada, and everywhere else I checked were out of old editions.
Especially curious was the fact that one of the gaming stores had about 15 full sets of 3.5 at Christmas, but by the second week of January, didn't have a single copy of any sourcebook from that era. Nada.
Does anyone know if WotC has done a big buyback? It almost seems like someone has been scouring the bookstores methodically, snatching up everything that would suggest an older edition ever existed.
Ah well, screw 'em. I'll play what I want, and if I can't buy the material, I _will_ download it. Way to go, Wizards!
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You may want to try ebay, amazon, borders, etc. Doing a quick search on amazon dungeons and dragons 3.5 [amazon.com]
There are no shortages of books. You can also get it cheaper online.
Re:WotC wants 3e DEAD! At any cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to take things off the internet is like trying to take piss out of a pool.
The sooner companies learn that, the better.
Re:WotC wants 3e DEAD! At any cost (Score:4, Funny)
Huh. Here in Portland Oregon I see them in every hobby store, and in used book stores. can't get rid of that crap fast enough.
I mean..um.. yeah there scarce how much, exactly, would you pay for these 'scarce' books?
Sword of Litigation +1 (Score:5, Funny)
WotC attacks the gazebo!
EUREKA! (Score:2)
They found the universal solution to copyright infringement!
Stop selling the copyright protected content!
How could we miss such an extrardinary solution! ...
Oh. Right. Because it's a complete idiocy. I knew there had to be a reason.
Hubris (Score:5, Informative)
Back when Wizards of the Coast took over D&D, one of the striking things then-Vice President Ryan Dancey said was that TSR (the former publisher) has obviously not listened to customers and had lost relevancy for that reason.
Now, Ryan Dancey is no longer at WotC, and WotC is not listening to customers, and what do you know? WotC is losing relevancy. People are going to buy the products they want, in the format they want, from the retailer they want, and you can never make them buy something different. It's as simple as that.
Fortunately the 3.x rules are open source [opengamingfoundation.org] so D&D can never die, in spite of WotC's seemingly intentional efforts to run their business into the ground. It just can't be called D&D for trademark reasons.
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It's only the rules that are open source, not adventures and campaign setting material. So, for example, the Forgotten Realms (most popular RPG setting of all time) is WotC's intellectual property and under their total control.
However, WotC cannot stop other companies making D&D-like games, settings, adventures, and products for 3.x rules -- as long as they're not called "D&D". Several companies are still doing that. Which makes WotC's move to take themselves out of the 3.x market especially stup
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However, WotC cannot stop other companies making D&D-like games, settings, adventures, and products for 3.x rules -- as long as they're not called "D&D". Several companies are still doing that.
I am in the industry and have co-authored several products published under the OGL.
Nontheless, if WOTC decided to file suits against OGL publishers on narrow technical grounds (improper referencing, use of the d20 mark as seen at http://www.d20srd.org/ [d20srd.org], etc.), the will or ability to defend against such suits w
It's not about piracy.... (Score:2)
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Illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do these arrogant companies think they can take back what they've sold without compensation? This is ripe for a lawsuit.
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Probably buried in the contract somewhere, that 50 page (or whatever) monstrosity you agree to when you buy. Does it make it legal? Possibly. Does it contain a "binding arbitration" clause? Certainly. Is that legal? Possibly.
But is anyone really going to sue? Naah. If I did D & D, I'd just go back to bittorrent, or just stop playing altogether.
Who can afford litigation anyway, in terms of time if not money?
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Why do these arrogant companies think they can take back what they've sold without compensation? This is ripe for a lawsuit.
Your statement makes no sense. If they sold you a PDf you still have it on your computer. WoTC is not demanding you delete it from your computer. They are telling stores they cannot continue to sell the PDFs. Typically places that sell PDFs pay royalties to the company which owns the information (in this case WoTC). So for every PDf they sell they give x% to WoTC. WoTC is now saying "no more". They are not taking what a customer paid for away from them. Is their decision smart? I don't know - time will t
Noticed at WotC website. :-D (Score:2, Funny)
Free Business Hint (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey Publishers! PDFs cost too much! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Publishers! (all of them!)
You have a problem with piracy? Perhaps it's because all of you sell the PDF at pretty much full cost of a real book. Why do you do that?
PDFs don't have printing costs. We know you can sell them for less.
It's handy to reference a book while playing. It's still kind of cumbersome to reference a PDF while playing... the PDF is less valuable to us.
If you greedy BEEP would sell good quality PDF files for say.... $3, I'd drop $100 right now. If you would make old books available, I'd drop another $100 right now.
No Way am I paying $25 for a FILE.
You brought it on yourselves.
-Tony
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I don't know why I'm bothering to correct this fallacy yet again. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. Prices are set by supply and demand, not by direct cost per unit. Allow me to illustrate in terms of something you sell: your labor. This is your employer or contracted customer speaking, whatever the case may be.
Copyright failure (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, market competition pushes price toward the marginal cost of production. At least that's the theory, and it's part of the justification for copyright. In practice it seldom works out that way. In any case, they have have a copyright monopoly, so they have complete control over supply and they don't have a whole lot of worries about competition.
What we have here is copyright failure. Copyright was created solely for the benefit of society the public. (At least that's the case in the U.S.: other countries have moral rights. But in this case we have work-for-hire for a company legally required to place profit above all else, so the moral rights issue is moot.) Here we have copyright working to do the opposite of what it is intended to do. Copyright failure.
Mind, with illegal filesharing their control over supply is illusory. They're acting as though they had a monopoly, but they don't. Which, as so many have pointed out, is why this is so stupid.
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But the information in the book didn't "cost next to nothing to produce"
Yeah, because servers and bandwidth are free, right?
Ever hear of a printer?
Passing around a laptop is no harder than passing around a book, especially if you put the laptop in the center of the table on a "lazy susan".
And, pretty much every gamer I know has their own s
Annoying and stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
And who the hell at WotC came up with this idea? Combat piracy by making it impossible to get the products people want through legal means? Yeah, that sounds brilliant. The only thing that could top that would be to cut off access to the content they've already purchased with very short notice. Oh. Oh, yeah.
I did like Paizo's response to this, though. They announced a 35% sale on all of their pdf's for the rest of the month, and that all purchases of their printed products would include a pdf version at no extra charge.
Re:oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
realizing people pirate anything not nailed down
Great you just gave WoTC a new business model. Whenever you buy one of their books you must buy the installation package which will have a WoTC technician come out and nail the book down into your coffee/gaming table.
Re:Quite a shame... (Score:5, Interesting)
TSR was the love child of two people with a creative idea and the willingness to put it on the line to see it bloom.
Unfortunately, like most companies formed this way, the business aspect was ignored in favor of the 'beloved product'.
They never really had a business plan, and if you viewed the history of the company since it's inception, you'd notice that the way they 'made money' was simply coming up with new ways to repackage their idea. And then the founders got into a fight and lost pretty much the whole deal to a numbnut who didn't even like gaming.
Is it any wonder, when they were purchased by Wizards of the Coast, a company that had a similar history, that the business plan never changed?
And when Hasbro purchased WoTC, they weren't doing it for D&D they were doing it for Pokemon and to a lesser extent, MtG. They also haven't put any thought into what they should be doing with the older, legacy, properties that came along with the purchase.
Unlike TSR or WoTC though, Hasbro is a bona fide corporation, they have cube farms and quarterly meetings, middle management and legal divisons. And unlike TSR or WoTC, Hasbro isn't in this for any 'love' of anything other than money. It shouldn't be any surprise that of the three, Hasbro has been the most willing to screw over fans and partners while doing it's double takes and meandering in an attempt to realize a profit on D&D. Not that TSR or WoTC have ever had a history of not doing so, simply that their actions were usually the result of infighting between people who actually felt they had a stake in things instead of some impersonal jackass looking a bottom line on a report.
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Are you kidding? TSR were a litigious bunch themselves, probably the very worst of the gaming companies in their time. I remember people having to distribute their own modules on BBSs having to do strategic name changes out of fear of being sued into the ground.