Printable Version of Topic

Click here to view this topic in its original format

Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Bull's Origins' Report

Posted by: Nath Jul 12 2004, 08:08 PM

I don't remember seeing it anywhere on the forums, and at least me don't check very often what's happening on ShadowRN mailing list. And my guess is that what Bull had say may interest some people here.

QUOTE (Bull - Mon @ 28 Jun 2004 01:53:14 -0400)

Back from Origins. Long convention. Much fun. Too much booze

Shadows of Europe was there. It's huge, 240 pages, $30.00. Looks nice. Have only barely skimmed it, so can't really give an opinion on it yet beyond "Looks kinda cool".

SOTA 2064 and Mr. Johnson's Little Black Book will hopefully be available at gen Con, according to Rob at the What's up with Fanpro seminar.

Running Wild and Loose alliances will follow over the next few months, and Shadows of Asia is shooting for maybe early next year some time, probably Springish.

Next year there's an adventure set and what I believe will be a metaplot heavy sourcebook that will finally wrap up Deus storyline, as well as "other stuff". Rob was keeping this info close to the vest, so there wasn't much info to share with this one.

Overall, looks like after the SoE snafu, things are back on track, and rather than complaining about no books, people can complain about too many

Things were heavily backlogged due to SoE's delays, but getting worked on still, so there's a pile of books in the "almost done" stage.

Also, FanPro has worked out a deal with WizKids, and chances are that we'll see PDF's for older sourcebooks sometime in the relatively near future (a few months is what Rob said), probably released through online PDF sale sites like RPGNow or DriveThruRPG. Newer books probbaly won;t be avilable via PDF for at least 6 months after they are initially released.

Bull

Posted by: shadd4d Jul 12 2004, 08:38 PM

Pdfs in the future? Now that's great. Time to get old adventures. Seriously, adventure pdfs for some companies are through the roof. Online buying is also through the roof, which really tweaks off your FLGS.

Don

Posted by: Zeel De Mort Jul 12 2004, 09:22 PM

When's GenCon? and how much do pdfs like that typically cost?

.. I think that's all my questions for now.

Posted by: Adam Jul 12 2004, 09:31 PM

Gencon is August 19-22 this year.

Pricing on any eBooks has yet to be determined, as it still depends on contracts being hammered out between FanPro and WizKids, and still may not happen.

Posted by: Plastic Rat Jul 13 2004, 06:17 AM

Ooh, *warms up shiny new credit card* You and me gonna go spread some looove baby. Thoughts of Brainscan and Bug City leave me tingling...

Posted by: mfb Jul 13 2004, 06:31 AM

mmm, pdf's.

Posted by: Paul Jul 13 2004, 08:59 AM

Add me in to the drooling mass of fan boys. I can finally start getting them all onto a laptop,and stop hauling three 55 gallon tupper ware tubs of books in my trunk with me to play....

Posted by: shadd4d Jul 13 2004, 09:12 AM

Me, I'm looking at picking up modules and stuff I might have missed, like Lone Star, Queen Euphoria, and UB, PoaD, Super Tuesday, etc.

Don

Posted by: Kesh Jul 14 2004, 07:27 AM

PDFs would rock my world.

Here's hoping Shadows of Asia also includes Pacific islands such as Hawaii. Any idea what SotA 2064 is going to be? Just an update of 2063, or a whole slew of new information?

Also hoping Running Wild replaces the Critters book, as it's a pain to try and find that thing.

Posted by: Synner Jul 14 2004, 07:41 AM

QUOTE (Kesh @ Jul 14 2004, 07:27 AM)

Any idea what SotA 2064 is going to be? Just an update of 2063, or a whole slew of new information?

As Rob mentioned and has been posted previously on this board, SOTA64 is to include all-new Adept material, espionage, law-enforcement, Euromagic and the regular Culture Shock feature with all new material.

Posted by: Bigity Jul 14 2004, 12:58 PM

I also hope that if it does, we get the pictures added back in.

Posted by: BIG BAD BEESTE Jul 14 2004, 02:54 PM

QUOTE (Kesh)

Here's hoping Shadows of Asia also includes Pacific islands such as Hawaii.

Me too.

*Bites Tongue & Twiddles Thumbs*

Posted by: FlakJacket Jul 14 2004, 03:03 PM

Hawai'i? I'd much rather prefer they missed that and concentrated on Asia/SE Asia and places like the Chinese warlord states. Since Hawai'i already got a- smallish- book and they're talking possible .pdf releases, much rather they not cover old ground. But that's just me.

Posted by: Kesh Jul 15 2004, 07:06 AM

Except from what I heard, the Hawaii book was more like an adventure with a little (real world) history thrown in. Not much to help out for SR.

Posted by: Bull Jul 15 2004, 01:14 PM

Regardless, Hawai'i is not Asia... As it is, Asia will likely be missing sections... Sadly, namely Western Asia. Chances are SoA will focus heavily on Oriental Asia, according to Rob.

As I said in the Hawai'i sourcebook thread, if Hawai'i gets any sort of update, it'll be in a Target Book, if at all. Not really a huge amount of interest in it as it stands...

And yeah, I apparentoly forgot to crosspost this info, so thanks for reposting.

Bull

Posted by: Bull Jul 15 2004, 01:17 PM

QUOTE (Kesh)

Except from what I heard, the Hawaii book was more like an adventure with a little (real world) history thrown in. Not much to help out for SR.

Actually, most of the Source Material for Hawai'i is new information. It's true that it's not that big, overall, just like 8 or 12 pages. <shrug> But the fact is, there wasn't much needed. Some history to bring it "up to date" (As of 2054 or so, I think), some basic info on the current state of affairs, and that's about it. Hawai'i in 2054ish wasn't really much different than Hawai'i 1995, or whenever. And nothing much has changed since... Add a dragon, add a King, and season to flavor.

Bull

Posted by: lspahn72 Jul 15 2004, 01:45 PM

QUOTE (Paul)

Add me in to the drooling mass of fan boys. I can finally start getting them all onto a laptop,and stop hauling three 55 gallon tupper ware tubs of books in my trunk with me to play....

I have three milk crates...

Machines

Magic/Locations

Core Rules

Gotta weight in at at least 100lbs....

Posted by: Bull Jul 17 2004, 01:32 AM

Heh, we dragged all my Shadowrun books out back last night for a game.. I don;t have any of the redundant SR1/2 books, and I sold or gave away most of the place books and the like. So with the exception of the critters books, Sprawl Sites, Shadowbeat, and a few modules, the rest is every 3rd ed book so far

It's a stack about 3 feet high and weighs about 30 pounds

Bull

Posted by: Odin Jul 17 2004, 03:33 AM

yes pdf's are a must.

Posted by: Paul Jul 17 2004, 08:42 AM

Gah! Call me a supermarket hunter/sportsman. I shoot my meat straight off the meat counter into my cart. Same for my veggies.

Posted by: Mr.Platinum Jul 17 2004, 06:55 PM

Oh I am so looking forwards to ShadowdOf Asia and State of the fucking art 2064

Posted by: OurTeam Jul 17 2004, 07:35 PM

QUOTE (Bull @ Jul 16 2004, 06:32 PM)

It's a stack about 3 feet high and weighs about 30 pounds

A stack of Canon books weighs almost 45 kg per meter of height.

Using English weights, its very close to 1 lb. per cm. of height. A three foot high stack is about 90 cm., so it should weigh about 90 lbs.

/Edit: I know newbies shouldn't correct their elders. I'll apologize and buy you a beer at GenCon.

Posted by: Crimsondude 2.0 Jul 18 2004, 12:20 AM

QUOTE (Odin @ Jul 16 2004, 09:33 PM)

[post]

While I generally don't give a damn, you might want to forget you typed that. At least, 'round here.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Jul 18 2004, 12:25 AM

I think he was referring to having a friend with a scanner scan books you already own into PDFs to be used by you. While I'm not sure if even that is perfectly legal, I don't think there's anything really wrong with it -- you own the books already.

His post in the waiting-for-SoE-thread was much more out of line. [Edit]Oops, it was http://invision.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=4809, not about SoE. Still not exactly malicious, but probably against board regulations anyway. Not that I've never broken those...[/Edit]

Posted by: Crimsondude 2.0 Jul 18 2004, 12:59 AM

NOooooooooooooooo.

I was just cautioning him because people tend to get their panties in a bind whenever the subject is broached.

Posted by: Ottergame Jul 18 2004, 02:51 AM

I think FanPro has an exlcusive arangement with White Wolf to distribute through drivethrurpg. So that'd mean DRM.

Posted by: Kesh Jul 18 2004, 03:23 AM

I don't give a damn about DRM. I just want those classic books as PDFs.

Honestly, the DRM is a non-issue for my uses. I don't print PDFs (or only print a dozen or so pages that I need), rarely copy from them, and love the searchability. I'd love to see Shadowrun on DTRPG.

Posted by: Ottergame Jul 18 2004, 03:33 AM

Sadly, DRM is an issue for me. So I cannot buy them.

Posted by: Odin Jul 18 2004, 05:24 AM

only changed my posts crimsondude2.0 after the board tried sending spyware my way ......blocked it thankfully but thought it would be for the best if I changed my posts.

Posted by: Adam Jul 18 2004, 05:27 AM

QUOTE (Odin)

only changed my posts crimsondude2.0 after the board tried sending spyware my way ......blocked it thankfully but thought it would be for the best if I changed my posts.

Pardon? Our services do not attempt to foist any spy or malware onto anyone.

Posted by: Odin Jul 18 2004, 05:31 AM

my sincerest apologies then.

Posted by: Zeel De Mort Jul 18 2004, 10:47 PM

Okay so what's DRM, what's bad about it/them and why would that affect the buying of pdfs?

Posted by: Adam Jul 18 2004, 10:53 PM

DRM, as implemented by DriveThruRPG.com, requires you to be using Acrobat Reader 6. When you first buy a file, you need to go online and create an account with Adobe [You can either use a general purpose adobe.com account, or link it to a Microsoft Passport account]. If you backup your files or wish to transfer them to another computer, you'll also need to go online and activate that computer with your account; this process takes a couple of minutes. Once a computer is activated, it does not need to be activated again [unless you reinstall your OS.]

There is a limit of 6 computers that can be activated to your account at any one time, but you can phone a 1-800 number at Adobe and deactivate machines.

DTRPG has a http://www.drivethrurpg.com/catalog/FAQ.htm and further documentation on these matters.

Posted by: Zeel De Mort Jul 18 2004, 11:13 PM

Ah, thanks for that Adam. Sounds a bit like Steam for Counter-Strike actually. A bit annoying (in my personal opinion), but I suppose it's useful to prevent straight forward piracy.

Anyway by the sound of what they say in thos FAQs the pdf books typically sell for 50% of the retail price, if more than 6 months old. I guess I can live with that. You can even print them out and have it all to hand if you like. Useful for all those out of print books.

Posted by: BitBasher Jul 18 2004, 11:13 PM

Er can books be transferred to a pocket PC device? If not, then there's no point to me buying this as I own the books, and this just dramatically limits how I can use them versus paperback copies, with the exception of keyword searches and then only if I'm sitting in front of a PC.

Heck, will these even let me copy and paste text for forum threads instead of having to retype what I'm reading manually?

EDIT: the FAQ says I can copy and paste text, and print book sections. so that's not so bad, still kind of iffy on the Pocket PC copy, but we'll see.

EDIT EDIT: Nifty! they do offer it for Pocket PC. Expect me to buy a freaking WAD of these books. Woohoo!. This will get a goodly amount of business from me!

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Jesus H tapdancing Christ. it's an 8 meg installer for Pocket PC. That's OBSCENE. I'm still going to use it though.

Posted by: Zeel De Mort Jul 18 2004, 11:20 PM

From what the FAQ says it sounds like you can copy and paste a certain amout of text each day (10 pages I think).

It'd be useful for me as I don't own a lot of the older books, and I don't really fancy spending a great deal of my time looking for them on eBay etc. But all these restrictions could be mildly off putting to say the least.

Another question.. I'm not saying I'm planning to do this, but couldn't someone just download the pdf, print it out, and then scan it back in again using OCR? Then they'd have a text document with the contents of the book in it and could copy and paste, transfer, upload, sell, do what they like with it. Seems like kinda an easy way round things. If you don't mind using up a couple of hundred pages of paper and some of your spare time that is...

EDIT: Eh, started typing before all your edits there but it looks like you've answered all your own questions now. Is there actually any need for the rest of us to be on this forum, or should we just leave you to it?

Posted by: BitBasher Jul 18 2004, 11:24 PM

QUOTE

Another question.. I'm not saying I'm planning to do this, but couldn't someone just download the pdf, print it out, and then scan it back in again using OCR? Then they'd have a text document with the contents of the book in it and could copy and paste, transfer, upload, sell, do what they like with it. Seems like kinda an easy way round things. If you don't mind using up a couple of hundred pages of paper and some of your spare time that is...

Well someone could do that with the physical book too by cutting off the spine and scanning it, so that's actually MORE complicated your way, either way no loss of rights or increased risk for them.

QUOTE

EDIT: Eh, started typing before all your edits there but it looks like you've answered all your own questions now. Is there actually any need for the rest of us to be on this forum, or should we just leave you to it?

Sorry, I had a Knee Jerk Reaction then actually Read the FAQ. And it's 10 selections or pages of text every 10 days, just FYI. I should have read BEFORE I replied.

Posted by: Zeel De Mort Jul 18 2004, 11:34 PM

QUOTE (BitBasher)

Well someone could do that with the physical book too by cutting off the spine and scanning it, so that's actually MORE complicated your way, either way no loss of rights or increased risk for them.

They could indeed. But if I was a budding software pirate I think I'd rather spend half the list price on an electronic copy of the book and do the above, and still have the electronic file intact. Rather that than pay twice as much and do quite a lot of damage to the (perhaps rather valuable) original copy I'd bought.

Anyway a bit of an unnecessary debate I suppose since I've no need or desire to do either, but it just came to mind.

I guess I'll be watching this space to see if/what they'll publish online and how much it'll cost, as well as any restrictions there'll be.

Posted by: BitBasher Jul 18 2004, 11:37 PM

If the price is reasonable i'll be picking up all core rulebooks and non-adventure suplements.

Posted by: shadd4d Jul 19 2004, 09:16 AM

According to someone at the PEGinc forums, there's a way around that restriction if you reuse a pdf writer and send the DRM file through that. Personally, I'd rather get it from RPGnow.com, mostly because I can have a copy on the computer and burn to cd what I want.

Don

Posted by: Kagetenshi Jul 19 2004, 12:12 PM

That's a good point… unless the DRM is rather sophisticated or excessively restricting, I can think of a trivial way around it.

Does DTRPG do any sort of watermarking or similar?

~J

Posted by: Adam Jul 19 2004, 01:00 PM

QUOTE (shadd4d)

Personally, I'd rather get it from RPGnow.com, mostly because I can have a copy on the computer and burn to cd what I want.

There's no reason you can't do this with files from the DTRPG service.

No watermarking, Kagtenshi.

Posted by: Ottergame Jul 19 2004, 01:46 PM

For all the hassles of DRM, it is embarrassingly easy to get around it. But I don't want to feel like I am doing something wrong by circumventing the protections so I can do with the document what I wish.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Jul 19 2004, 03:10 PM

QUOTE (Ottergame)

Indeed.

I recall seeing that somebody had figured out how to remove the protection less than 12 hours after it was launched.

No, I'm not gonna say how. That would be wrong.

-karma