EN World Thread

So, in a nutshell, a few people pirated the PHB2, and WotC decided to pull all PDF sales. A rather stupid move, in my opinion, I was a frequent customer of 3E material. I guess I'll simply stop purchasing WotC stuff then, and move my money elsewhere for my d20 needs.

A seriously boneheaded move on Wizards part. This is probably going to destroy more than a few PDF retailers, and give their customer relations yet another kick in the balls. Seriously, what was wrong with the Watermarks on the PDF's? Obviously this is how they caught the guys that pirated the material in the first place... All this means is that there will be a 1 or 2 day delay between when the book is released and it's up on pirates bay since the seeder will need to scan it first.

Either that or someone will get their hands on the PDF's that are sent to the printer and put those up like they did with the 4th ed corebooks.

I mean really... if Hollywood, the Music Industry and the Computer Gaming Industry combined haven't managed to 'crack down on piracy' what hope does Wizards have?

Depends - do they have access to ritual magic?

Ba-dump-bump! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

Ironically, I saw a little while ago that Palladium Books will begin producing PDFs in the near future.

What a wacky world we live in.

-paws

Hell must be freezing over. I know where I am moving if the greenhouse effect continues.

Let WotC make thier mistakes. It only hurts their sales and profit margins.

But it looks good short term for investors. Would be nice to know some actual figures, but if pdf sales don't resume, they will sell much less stuff. A lot of pdf sales go to people who already have dead tree books, some simply refuse to buy books that weight more than a notebook containing all books ever published. And some people are simply pissed of by that move. If Wizards were Sony, they could get away with blatantly insulting their customers. Alas they are not Sony, so this stunt will cost them.

It's not just sales they're stopping -- which would be understandable, if misguided -- but also distribution. That means that if you've legitimately purchased a WotC PDF from an online retailer, you can no longer access it. Hope your hard drive doesn't crash!

The distribution part is the seriously boneheaded move. Stopping sales is one thing, but robbing customers that have already paid you money of their product? Bad karma from that.

I am just glad that Catalyst is different.

They are not different, they simply are not in the same situation. Yet.

Then not even Sony is Sony.

apple is the new sony (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

They still kinda got away with it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Meanwhile, DrivethruRPG is giving away free downloads of White Wolf's Exalted main book. I guess if a company is to take advantage of another company's choice, now is the time. I was just given the heads up about this from a friend, so I'm kinda curious about the game system.

Paizo is offering a 35% discount on all Pathfinder PDFs until the end of the month:

Didn't they do something like that when 4.0 came out? Exchange your old D&D books for copies of Exalted? *shrug*

-paws

aye, they did. well, looks like they're doing it again. persistent aren't they.
what I do like is that paizo is offering the discount on pathfinder pdf's as Fuchs mentioned above. I just saw that on their forums. A lot of companies are trying to take advantage of WotC's decision it appears, good marketing standpoint.

Once WotC realize how stupid they were doing that and that everyone is making fun of them, they will never ever make a single pdf, just so they have not to admit to the mistake.

It's quite a cool time right now, unless you care for 4E.

Maybe we will get lucky and Hasbro will sell off the D&D IP.

But who would do it justice?

The community would do it justice. There would be plenty of bickering to start, but at some point early on, someone would "rally the troops" and take the lead and have a following of enough people that want to help on the project to make it viable. There are obviously going to be forks where disagreements happen, but even if it turns out to be similar to open source software development, having a handful of quality versions of DnD is not going to be a bad thing.

Not that I foresee something like this happening, but honestly, who knows the game, any game, better than the people that are spending hours upon hours running and playing it? Unlike Shadowrun, DnD 4e doesn't need the metaplot. So you are reduced to just the ruleset to play with...

Even more to the point, who could afford it?

AJC

With the OGL, D&D effectively was put in the hands of the community in all but name. Several fans and corporations are doing their own version, based on the OGL/3E rules.

Bullshit. If anything, fans would end up making twenty different versions of Dungeons and Dragons and declaring jihad against all others.

Fans think that it has to include this thing and that thing and those things, even though none of them will ever agree on what exactly this that or those things are! Further, such versions would probably include so much legacy material that it would make the game either nigh unplayable or unmarketable and please only the people who created it in the first place. And a new audience? I figure small interest in the strange, gibbering Frankenstein creature of clunky and highly specific rules from the 1970s. The rpg hobby has moved on.

Heck, how many legacy systems there are out there right now, each trying to be "old school" DnD? Labyrinth Lord and Castles and Crusades are the two I can think of offhand. What about the holdouts who still play Brown Box? Or go Brown Box and Supplements I & II or just I? What about Greyhawk? Do you continue past there? Or loop it all together and stick Unearthed Arcana in there as well? Would you bring back THAC0? Racial level limits? Elf as a character class? How about, as Wesley's topic down thread mentions, female characters that are only allowed 18/50 strength? Where do you place the arbitrary line and say, "no further."?

And you think Harry Potter slash fiction discussions are razor edged? Try a discussion between 1e and 2e DnD players. Don't even think about tossing anyone post TSR in there, they're liable to get shot. How about the myriad versions of 3.*? How much say would they get in this new system? How many people would line up to kick the 4e fans in the stomach while they're curled in a fetal ball crying?

In my opinion, 4e is a game that's easy to teach, that's easy to play and easy to add legacy material to as you go. I realize that my opinion is highly subjective and think that most the edition warfare is either elitist poo-poo'ing or nostalgic vitriol, but despite rules changes its still a game that follows the e3k rule: explore, kick in doors, kill monsters, kollect treasure. Anything beyond that was bullshit that people added on in their own campaigns or came from a rule set that was advertised as being able to do anything, any genre, any game! but didn't actually succeed. I think that Dancy needs a kick in the teeth for trying to sell that particular load...

I've been trying to avoid this whole pdf issue because I knew it would devolve into people taking pot-shots. Is this Sony stupid? Yep. I've spent the last couple of days looking for something that would shed light on why they'd make such an obviously wrongheaded decision, but have thus far come up blank.

If the popular conspiracy is right and this is all a smokescreen while they create their own pdf sales service, there are much better ways to have gone about it. If it's because the lawyers are freaking out over pirates...Wil Wheaton actually answers best: "the people that are going to steal are going to steal regardless of what I do to try and stop them. The best way to compensate is to be open, honest, and try to provide things that you can't get by stealing it online."

WotC had better start frying up some crow but quick or this is only going to get worse. They at least need to stop scrambling around trying to justify it because they're looking like the Keystone Cops. My opinion? This ain't some evil scheme - "never attribute to malice that which is probably stupidity" - this is Lawyertron 500 gone buggy.

But that's the point. In this day and age, just because some game is published by XYZ and can be bought at Barnes & Noble doesn't mean its better. I'd easily accept twenty different versions of DnD and all the bickering. If they are all being actively developed and receive input from the community, then we all win.

I may like version B and you like version C, but seeing neither of us have to shell out $$$ to play it...again, we all win. We get to play a bunch of different games without investing money and then we pick the one that fits our style best and go with it. And if you then get involved and become in part a developer, then we all win again, because its constantly being improved. And I guarantee a good game will still be a good game if its not coming out on hardcopy.

There are so many rpgs out there that sound intriguing or I'd like to play or run, but I'm not gonna shell out more $$$ and take a chance on a dud. But if it was all free...it'd be a different story...