Bad idea. DRMing a book make it less desirable and thus keeps piracy in place. Why would one pay for a worse version than the one you can pirate?
Curious stirrings in the electronic play-aids department...
Bad idea. DRMing a book make it less desirable and thus keeps piracy in place. Why would one pay for a worse version than the one you can pirate?
While I personally agree with you, I think the corporate bean counters at Disney would not, and they’ve got a lot more say in this matter than either you or I do.
How many mainstream publishers are selling PDFs right now? Can you name any?
I can think of one big one that is releasing the basic rules to their system as a free PDF that gets updated often with new content... 
Bad idea. DRMing a book make it less desirable and thus keeps piracy in place. Why would one pay for a worse version than the one you can pirate?
I just don't see how we can all have our cake and eat it too. Like you say, PDFs are already out there and will be. If FFG releases an official one without DRM, how can they be assured that it won't prevent future sales? Sure, folk like us will buy the books and pay for content as PDFs, but I reckon we're a minority. And, this is all conjecture until Uncle Walt renegotiates the terms of the license anyway.
With respect, I don’t think PDF is going to happen. Not with the official published books, and doubtfully with the betas. Just too much risk of them getting too widely distributed and hurting sales.They might get the rights to do DRM’ed e-book versions, but those would probably be pretty heavily locked down.Ironically, I think the electronic game aid is a much more likely thing that they might convince Disney/LucasFilm to do.I suspect that FFG will be trying to see about getting "electronic media" rights where the RPG is concerned, if only for PDF distribution rights. Being able to offer a character generator would be a side order of gravy in comparison.
This logic is the same reason that J K Rowling refused for years to allow ebooks of Harry Potter. Meanwhile there were perfect renditions floating around for free on the net, chapter illustrations and all. I wonder how many sales were list until she saw sense.
If people want to download pdf's, then they will find a way. It's simply lost revenue at this point not to provide official ones. I know there are licensing issues, but these things can be negotiated. I'm sure they're trying.
Hopefully this isn't just my opinion but I don't mind paying for quality. If an official PDF were released, even with DRM or some kind of code stamped in the corner of each page that indicates who the purchaser was, I would still gladly buy it. It would be convenient to be able to load a core book up on the iPad and reduce what I need to lug around for each session. I believe that the content provider deserves to be compensated for their work so I'll never indulge in a pirated copy of a FFG book.
Sure, it would be nice to have a digital copy of the book and not have to pay a dime for it. However, how can one expect the game to be successful and result in subsequent books if FFG isn't paid what's due to them.
So I hope they someday get permission to release PDFs. At least in my case, I'd pay for the convenience and quality.
This logic is the same reason that J K Rowling refused for years to allow ebooks of Harry Potter. Meanwhile there were perfect renditions floating around for free on the net, chapter illustrations and all. I wonder how many sales were list until she saw sense.
If people want to download pdf's, then they will find a way. It's simply lost revenue at this point not to provide official ones. I know there are licensing issues, but these things can be negotiated. I'm sure they're trying.
However, e-books are not PDFs, and likewise PDFs are not e-books.
An e-book release with DRM would enable the 80% of people who want an electronic copy and would be willing to pay for it, while the hard 20% that want PDFs no matter what would still go and do whatever they’re going to go and do anyway.
Now, you and I can agree all we want that DRM ultimately doesn’t work, whether it’s on software or e-books or anything else — you won’t get any argument from me on that subject. But nothing we say on that matter is going to make any difference to the people who actually have the power to make this decision.
For most major publishers, the Apple iTunes solution works — the DRM is there, but not heinously bad, and the result is that the majority of people are able to pay money to get the electronic copies of their content that they want. And they can make copies of that digital content to their other electronic devices.
Disney and Star Wars are already on iTunes and Amazon. Now we just need to do what we can to help FFG be able to release e-book versions of their materials, and preferably via multiple sources and not just iTunes.
While I personally agree with you, I think the corporate bean counters at Disney would not, and they’ve got a lot more say in this matter than either you or I do.How many mainstream publishers are selling PDFs right now? Can you name any?Bad idea. DRMing a book make it less desirable and thus keeps piracy in place. Why would one pay for a worse version than the one you can pirate?
Ebooks do not work for game books. Tables break and referencing page numbers break. That is why game publishers use pdf. They work like a print book in every way. They have bonus abilities.
Edited by DaeglanSteve Jackson games, white wolf, evil hat, green ronin, etc. Go look at drive through rpg. Most rpg publishers sell pdfs.
Okay, so how many of those publishers are working with content that they have licensed from someone else, e.g., Disney/LucasFilm?
It’s one thing to go to town with PDFs of original content that you own, it’s quite another to propose to do that with content that is owned by someone else.
I was actually kind of hoping that you’d pull out the example of Tor (http://www.tor.com) but then the argument is the same, because they’re not doing that with someone else’s content.
Ebooks do not work for game books. Tables break and referencing page numbers break. That is why game publishers use pdf. They work like a print book in every way. They have bonus abilities.
This doesn’t have to happen for e-books that are properly done. On the e-books I’ve downloaded from the iTunes store, this has not been a problem.
Steve Jackson games has some licensed content in PDF as does Hero games(Monster Hunter) and Evil hat(Dresden Files).
If the Ebook reflows the text in order to change font sizes it is a problem,
Steve Jackson games has some licensed content in PDF as does Hero games(Monster Hunter) and Evil hat(Dresden Files).
Would you say that any of those owners of the content being licensed are on the scale of Disney/LucasFilm?
If the Ebook reflows the text in order to change font sizes it is a problem,
When creating an e-book version, my understanding is that the good tools are smart enough to make those links dynamic, kind of like a web page. So, the references would automatically update as necessary for re-flowing the text.
Steve Jackson games has some licensed content in PDF as does Hero games(Monster Hunter) and Evil hat(Dresden Files).
Would you say that any of those owners of the content being licensed are on the scale of Disney/LucasFilm?
If the Ebook reflows the text in order to change font sizes it is a problem,
When creating an e-book version, my understanding is that the good tools are smart enough to make those links dynamic, kind of like a web page. So, the references would automatically update as necessary for re-flowing the text.
That is not the problem Say you have a ebook version of the Edge of the empire game and you send an email regarding a rule on page 50. Only because it is an ebook page 50 varies depending on font size... so people trying to help you have to figure out which rule you are referring too based on context not based on page number. Or I tell my gm i am using x power on page 70... only the power is on a different page for the GM....you see the problem? Add to that that tables tend to fail badly in ebooks. spanning multiple pages or get completely fubared. Ebook is a terrible format for RPG books. We actually need tables and page numbers to remain static. RPG books are reference books and they do not handle fluid ages well.
as to the size of Disney is irrelevant. They are losing money on PDFs and other companies have shown that you can do PDFs without losing money. And do quite well actually.
That is not the problem Say you have a ebook version of the Edge of the empire game and you send an email regarding a rule on page 50. Only because it is an ebook page 50 varies depending on font size... so people trying to help you have to figure out which rule you are referring too based on context not based on page number. Or I tell my gm i am using x power on page 70... only the power is on a different page for the GM....you see the problem?
Again, that comes down to proper use of the tools. The text can/should remain static, while the link itself is dynamic.
Think about HTML — if you put the page number inside the link text, then it’s just another piece of text that is inside of the link, and it is not necessarily related to the target of the link.
as to the size of Disney is irrelevant. They are losing money on PDFs and other companies have shown that you can do PDFs without losing money. And do quite well actually.
The size of the company is directly relevant, because it speaks to the nature of the people who work in the office of the head bean counters and their perception of the equation, regardless of the realities of the equation.
Disney is one of the key driving forces behind the modern attitudes of corporatism and copyright.
On the one hand, I would hope that they would be a leader in the realization that the nature of publishing has fundamentally changed and if they want to remain relevant over the next few decades then they need to adapt.
OTOH, I believe that they are likely to be the last bastion of the old guard, and they’ll probably die before they change their paradigm.
Please understand, I fully agree that companies should be producing PDFs and making them available for a reasonable fee. I don’t disagree with you at all on that point.
Where I disagree is on the matter of what I think Disney/LucasFilm is actually likely to do, versus what I feel that they SHOULD do.
they do this
https://comicstore.marvel.com/
Not in my experience. watermarked most likely. but not closed format.
FFG does PDFs (search RPGnow and you'll see they have the WarHammer stuff up there), Lucas Arts/Disney allow for eBooks from publishers, hence kindle/nook books for the various Star Wars novels. The problem isn't "pdfs cutting into sales", but that the original license considers PDFs to be "electronic gaming material" and falls under a different license. The freebies that FFG puts out in PDFs for the Star Wars game gets around the restriction by being for free.
It has been shown time and again that providing access to information in a more open format actually leads to more sales. Just look at the volume of sales that Apple does in music, and then after they got the various music companies to allow for open mp3s. Yes, piracy does go up, but most of those are either people that never would have purchased the material, or someone that wouldn't have found it normally (and so might start buying it). If PDFs hurt sales, then Paizo wouldn't keep doing them. PDFs also don't cost the company anything to produce since what they send to the printers is a PDF, so what goes to the printers is what can be put up on sites like RPGnow.
We're kind of going off on a pdf rulebook tangent here, but I wonder: what sort of online electronic play-aids could you guys think of?
Apart from a character-builder, I've been thinking of a 'module builder'. Nothing special, just a form (like the X-Wing scenario builder) where you could type in your adventure, format it like a real EotE supplement (including NPC statblocks), upload some maps and illustrations, and arrange it all on bona-fide EotE page backdrops. Then you could upload it, and people could download and 'like' it as they saw fit. Any interest in that? Any other ideas?
Basically Oggdudes offering does these as well as the character generator.
what sort of online electronic play-aids could you guys think of?
I've been toying with the idea of an NPC generator. There's already a number of decent ones out there but they don't scratch all my itches.
Setpiece generator - like the module generator you suggest but smaller scale. Tie it to the NPC generator and all of a sudden you have a one-button Cantina on Ord Mandell or a Rodian hunting lodge, all populated with a cast of appropriate characters.
Of course this is no replacement for building your own, but I see these as more of a starting point than an ending point. I could likely spit this out in a scripting language few of us would use (bash) but I'm sure there are some great coders around here that might just want to take it on, and produce something we can all use (even we scant few mac users!)