But I own the DVD or X-Box 360 disc. I don't have to connect to XBox Live just to play HALO or to the Warner servers so I can watch Lord of the Rings. When my internet goes out, the first thing I do is pull out books and start reading, throw on a DVD and start watching movies/TV, or play video games. If the DRM involved prevents me from doing that, I'm not spending money on it. Period. Sure, they don't have DRM anymore, but they did when they first came out.

I'd happily pay for a subscription to something like the D&D Insider where I get something of value that's updated regularly. I felt like I was paying for the character generator/GM tools updates and getting the digital PDFs for free. Also, I got professional-quality and regularly/timely goods for my subscription. I would pay in a heartbeat to get something like that for Shadowrun. Or if the digital downloads came with extra features (deleted sections that couldn't be included due to page count, automatic updates/errata, developer's notes, more detailed/frequent rules examples, etc.), I'd be much more inclined to buy them.

Hell, if the prices were lower, I'd consider it. But paying the same price as the cover price of the paper copy (or more than what I'd pay on Amazon for a physical copy) or $10+ additional as a bundle? Never going to happen. I can't keep a digital copy dog-eared and open on the table during a session and I can't bring a digital copy into bed to read as I go to sleep. And the back-catalog they're offering for download? Full cover price for something I can get on eBay or Amazon Marketplace for a couple of bucks.

electricity is a service/utility, one that have a clear finite source/capacity. Gas, are you talking about natural gas, as in a gas stove, or gas as in gasoline? in the former case its pretty much the same as electricity, in the latter you actually own the mount you filled the container with once you payed. Hell, use an electrical outlet to fill a battery (not sure what the requirements are to tap a gas main, i suspect given the fire hazard its strictly regulated) and you basically own the charge thats on said battery (tho i suspect you would have a hard time selling it, unless your in some remote part of africa or something).

with movies and such things get a bit more complicated, as in some ways what your paying for with a dvd is the service of the packaging and cost of the media, plus whatever the distributor payed the creator(s) if the movie in the first place. Your rarely doing business directly with the creator. Problem is that technically the movie itself is not finite, and as such cant really be dealt with in the same way as the electricity or other finite resources.

Thing is, the internet is for information, what a star trek replicator is for physical objects. in the same way as the mechanical loom made fabrics silly cheap (and sparked the luddites into existence), the computer and internet is making information silly cheap. once the original "pattern" have been created, it can be duplicated a unlimited number of times. It would not surprise me if the entire library of alexandria could today be stored on the memory capacity of the cheapest mobile phone. Information have gone from a sellers market to a buyers market. We are saturated in "information", and more is added each second. Is there anyone today that have the capacity to read, view and listen to all the recorded information existing right now? This is not food, where what one eats, another can not eat. And thats been the fundamental problem the lawyers and such have grappled with since the first printing press, cassette or video recorder came to be. And the digital world have basically taken the problem and cubed it.

You're not going to suddenly convince me that paying $18 for a PDF of a book I can buy in dead tree format for $24 without even shopping around is somehow a good thing. I'm never going to buy it.

If you want to download PDFs of all your books, I'm not going to stop you. But that doesn't mean that I'm EVER going to pay that much money for it.

Abstruse, you are comparing stock retail pdf prices to prices obtained from Amazon or discount retailers. Of course it looks like a bad idea.

That's all kind of moot since there is no DRM on the PDF, so there is in fact no difference between a DVD with a movie on it, and a CD with your PDF on it. You physically own a disk in both cases, and you own the information that is stored on said disk.

Umm, they are lower? PDFs are cheaper than hard copies of books unless you're talking about buying them used or some such.

It's cool if you don't want to save money by having something more useful, I'm not going to stop you. I'm just saying that every one of your reasons is based on nonsense. You fear DRM that doesn't exist, you complain about paying the same price when it is cheaper, somehow paying for a subscription in which you come out of it at the end of the time with nothing is more appealing than buying a PDF in which the PDF is yours forever.

@hobgoblin I don't really understand most of what you're trying to say. Yes, I know that you get gas/electricity for paying those bills, but my point was that you don't ever 'hold it in your hands' which was Abstruse's complaint, that he was paying for something 'that he couldn't hold in his hands'.

Your point about information being overwhelming is... well, pointless. I don't see how it enters into the conversation at all. Are you saying that all information should be free? That PDFs should be free? That movies and blueprints and everything should be free because they are information and there is alot of information?

I similarly don't understand your point about DVDs. I know that you pay extra for the packaging and everything, but what you want out of it is the movie itself, which is just information on a disk, just like a PDF on a disk is just information on a disk. Once again, my point was that both are equally valid examples of 'something that you can hold in your hands'.

For one thing, the DVD has EXTRAS. You know, I get more. Commentary tracks, deleted scenes, gag reels, interviews, documentaries, etc. You buy a download of a film, you don't get that. That's also why I don't buy bare-bones DVDs unless they're on the clearance rack for a couple of bucks.

And, like I said, my impression of PDF downloads comes from WHEN THERE WAS DRM on them. It left me with a bad impression of the whole thing.

I don't consider a 35% discount off retail for a digital document over a paper version to be a big enough discount to make me want to buy it. You remove almost all of the overhead then charge what is effectively what the distributor is paying for the paper copy. It means the company gets exactly the same money without spending a penny beyond the overhead of server hosting (which they already pay for by maintaining a site). It's like satellite TV companies raising prices after they've already put the satellites in orbit. You want to charge $5 extra over the cover price of the book for a bundle? Sure, that works. Charge $10 or so as a stand-alone download? I'd consider it. But I don't consider paying wholesale prices and not actually getting the product as a "good deal".

And how exactly is a PDF document more convenient? I can't take it with me, I can't read it on the bus or at work, I can't read it in bed, I can't write in the margins, I can't dog-ear the pages or put in little tabs/sticky notes, I can't read it if the power goes out, and I can't loan it to a friend to borrow without committing a felony. The only way I can take it anywhere is to read it on another damn computer or something like a Kindle which is yet another $200 gadget I have no need for.

You can have it on a Laptop (Or Eee PC as I do) and use the "Search" function to find rules/equipment in a flash. That's very convenient.

You can have your whole Shadowrun Library on said item while you're on an airplane/train and read while travelling.

Personally, I like the option for both. Because give me a dead tree book to read any day.

Especially when it's very hot and I don't want my heat generating computer on.

You know what, I'd like to see a (Former) Canadian city for once... Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver...

Best I got is that I know Lone Star runs the police in Sudbury. Which probably means that the crime rate increased...

I don't have a laptop. Or a kindle or an ipad. I have an iphone and that's good enough for me.

*Sings in the key of off* "C is for Cookie, and that's good enough for me!"

Then it doesn't make sense for you to buy PDFs. Buy books, and I hope you support your local hobby/game shop.

Those that do have the equipment, and enjoy the PDFs, well, that's their business, is it not?

Important note: BattleCorps only gives you like 3 days to download any file. God only knows why.

Yeah, never been entirely sure about that, since they also tend to limit you to 5 or 7 downloads. One or the other I could understand to prevent splashing the link for everyone to download it for free. But you can e-mail them and get a new link if you ever need to re-download anything.


I don't see why that is a big problem. Is there some reason that CGL should make less profit on selling you a book because it is a PDF instead of a dead tree? It is still the same book with the same effort put into it.

Wow, iPhone can't do PDFs? I'm surprised. I suppose alot of that stuff varies from person to person. I can do all those things you mentioned with my PDFs. Well, power outage is limited to about two hours for my laptop battery, and loaning to friends is questionable, but otherwise, I can write notes, earmark, take it with me, and very nicely, I can do a search of the entire PDF for particular terms in a couple seconds.

Why should I pay the same amount and get less for my money when it doesn't cost them a single DIME extra and they get to double-dip me? At least when I buy the Theatrical and Director's Cut of a DVD, I have two DVDs (one of which I can sell if I want). I can't do that with the PDF unless, again, I want to commit a felony. It's like the airlines charging extra fees for using the bathroom or carry-on luggage, except the latter at least makes a SLIGHT amount of sense because it does take more fuel.


iPhones can do PDFs, but it's a friggin' 4" screen trying to display something that's meant to be read on 8 1/2" paper. So it's almost unreadable unless it's specifically formatted for the iPhone and even then, it causes eye strain trying to read on the thing. It's one thing to read text messages or an IM and then going back to whatever else is around, it's different for trying to read a 64-300 page book.

And I don't have a laptop. The only portability I'd have with a PDF is burning it to a CD/DVD or use a thumb drive and bringing that to read on another computer - of questionable legality since a copy is stored on their computer in cache when it's opened.

I'm not saying that a PDF is a bad option for distribution. I'm just saying it's bad as a SOLE method of distribution especially when you're charging full price. Hell, I won't even buy the micro-distributions like 10 Jackpointers and Digital Grimoir because the content doesn't justify the price tag. Maybe $1 each, but $5 for MAYBE 10 pages?

This is my opinion on the matter. Other people obviously have other opinions. My opinion will not be changing anytime soon. I will pay for digital distribution IF I feel it is a good value for the money. I will gladly pay a slight premium ($5 over retail, for example) to get a digital copy of a book I've purchased in dead tree format. I would love a subscription system if the content was regular and of at least half-decent quality. That's my view on the matter, and it's a view I'm backing up with my consumer dollar. You and others who support digital formats are voting with your consumer dollars. And I'm sure CGL loves you for it since every digital sale is 100% profit since there's zero overhead.

You don't get any less and you aren't paying the same amount. You're paying several dollars less for the exact same information. There is no double dipping, and heck, if you really wanted, you could buy the PDF, and then print it all out for the same cost as buying the dead tree, and then you have both the PDF for each searching and the dead tree for when you want to be away from your computer.


Yeah, that's a really good point (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

No, it is not questionable legality, it is entirely legal.
Yeah, I haven't gotten DG for similar reasons, it seems like alot for only a few pages, but it is selling well (apparently) so it must be fairly decent. Then again... $4 for 18 pages, that's just over $0.22 a page, compared to $35 for dead tree augmentation at 200 pages, making it $0.175 a page. That's actually not so much worse when you look at it like that.

Hmm, just noticed that arsenal and augmentation are $12 for the e-books. That's a very nice price, and quite a considerable discount from the $35 they are for dead tree format.


I think alot of people would like that, and it would likely be a good idea overall. CGL would likely convince alot of people who buy physical books to pay $5 extra for the PDF for ease of the search function and some of the other advantages, when they wouldn't get the PDF otherwise.

The illegal advantage to PDF format, of course, is that one guy in the group buys a book and suddenly everyone has it, albeit in PDF format.

I pretty regularly go to bed reading from my Kindle, just relating to that arguement. And getting a book printed for you at Kinko's is pretty inexpensive.

PDF or other digital formats work for some people, not for others. Certainly I don't need 4 copies of Arsenal floating around the table.

My roommate has a Kindle and he does the same thing. It's a brilliant piece of technology, but it's just not there yet. And typically, I'm the guy that buys all the books and everyone borrows mine for character creation and I haul them whereever the game's being played. Two or three other people have a BBB and that's it. Like I said, I can see the appeal, but not at the price point they've been released by FanPro/CGL.

My laptop is slightly larger than the core rulebook, has most 4th Ed books and some older ones on it and when travelling, working or during boring lectures I have it with me anyway. As far as portability is concerned, .pdfs are clearly superior.


But in general I think neither digital nor paper are better than the other, both have their advantages and disadvantages (many of which are more based on a subjective "feel" than something objectively measurable) and thus i prefer to have both. Which would indeed be easier if Coleman chose a more moderate house and the pdf prices were reduced accordingly (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

when i find a cheap ($200 or there about) reader that acts as a basic usb storage device or can take a SD card, and that have a screen size that can display a book formated PDF without forcing me to scroll in any direction, then i am interested. Before that, pdfs are great for forum discussions, but less so for really reading the "book" from "cover" to "cover".

and i would say the thread exemplifies what i tried to touch on earlier (tho the complexity of the topic results in me rambling incoherently as i try to drag in way to many threads). We do not see the work put into the background text, we only see the size of end file, and therefor the cost of the transfer (if one do not have unlimited bandwidth pr month) and storage. And as the act of transferring is a copy, rather then reducing some kind of physical stack with one like one see in a shop shelf, there is no real observation of loss. End result is that the perception of value, at least for one end of the transaction, hits rock bottom. And thats the thing, value is not a fixed quantity (tho the western world have mostly abandoned the art of haggling).

Or character creation, or finding something the GM needs in an instant, or settling a rules dispute, or...


Agreed. I hate reading longer documents on a computer screen, but that's just our subjective perception again.


Information always is intagible, not matter whether it's stored on paper, semiconductors, magnetic, optical, or any other carriers. But if the cost of the carrier medium and distribution thereof (well, nearly all of it) is taken out of the equation, you'd expect some hefty discount.
At least in Germany bookstores already get 30-40% off the list price (large chains will strong-arm even better prices) when ordering directly from the publisher. So let's say the publisher gets 2/3 of the list price, this includes not just the authors' pay and profit margin which always remain, but also the cost of printing and handling the books with interest (because all that is paid up front) and a certain "safety factor" (in case the book sells far less copies than printed).

This is pretty much how my group works as well. It's always "Pass the magic book. No, the magic book! This is Unwired!" And things like Kindles, well yeah, PDFs are great if you have that, but do we really want the hobby to set up those kind of financial barriers to entry? I mean, I think part of the appeal of tabletop RPGs is that you need a couple thirty dollar books between you and some dice and you're good to go for a few months. Adding a two hundred dollar electronic reader dealie kind of skews that.

Can we get back to dreaming of cities now?

The question was answered in What's Up With Shadowrun as "Bogotá, Denver and possible Tir Na Nog, along with the Ork Underground."

Ah, good. A guy in my group is talking about running us in Denver.

Seems he likes the idea of a city owned by a Dragon. Me, I'm not so sure... "Never deal with a Dragon" and all that...

Still, first chance I'll have to play a game since I was first introduced to Shadowrun in '92.

Denver is a fun city to run in - Ghostwalker is pretty "hands-off" most of the criminal dealings in the city; this isn't S-K where every time you turn around you have Lofwyr behind things. But if you do decide to deal with a dragon, you could do a lot worse than GW; with the possible exception of Hestaby, he's probably the Great that enjoys metahumanity the most.

Wouldn't that be "Claws off"?