I couldn't afford the game so I purchased the pdfs. They're all but useless. My laptop isn't exactly slow in performance - but scrolling from one page to the next is physically and mentally painful. And I paid good money too. So I'd like FFG to look into this please.

And saying they're for printing doesn't wash. They may be for printing but they are also for reading on screen. Or, put another way, making them printable but not necessarily readable is just bad design.

Not happy

I've had the same problems scrolling through mine. They do have an easily searchable bookmarking you can have running on the side to jump around, but I don't have a slow computer and it takes forever to scroll page by page and it would definitely be appreciated if FFG would update these so we can turn the background off. It 1) will make sure my printer doesn't cry and then jump off a rooftop, and 2) make online reading easier.

Pleeease FFG?

I agree. Two versions of the pdf's should have been available for download when you purchase them, one web-ready and one printing copy. My computer is certainly not low-end and it still takes a long time to scroll in them. I've tried to downgrade the quality to make them quicker to read, but so far I've been unable to make it work.

Well I'm glad others feel the same way, I was afraid I was getting old and grumpy.

Seriosuly though, FFG? Come on guys, we''ve given you our money, we'd like to be able to read your product without the frustration.

Please?

The thing is that they are actual printers pdf's that mean that they have layers and all the high res graphics that most windows pc's can't handle, anti-alised fonts, full embeds and so on. What you need to do is get your hand on something that can flatten the pdf into a web format, since there is no lock on the pdf you can edit it in say acrobat pro, I'm sure that there is a other drag and thing out there as well that will tighten it up for you, a little googling will net you one. As for the game you wont actually be able to play it with just the books, someone in your group will have to go and splash to get the cards and so on, they aren't just helpers, the abilities and talents are actually on the cards and not in the books.

Well, I'm sure I could do it with Acrobat Pro, but it would be nice if anyone could point me to a free software that can flatten (or whatever is needed) the pdfs.

Pretty cool that they would send the high-quality ones actually. It should be feasible to flatten them if you're having trouble viewing them.

One benefit I can see for folks like me who have the box already is full access from anywhere (for me that means work in addition to home). On the other hand "full" access for reference purposes should also include the cards since they are not just aids... they are the rules too.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I love the high quality of the pdf's, but it would have been nice to get faster/optimized versions together with the print-quality ones.

As a player I find it superb to have a set of the rules as a pdf, I might end up buying a copy of the full game as well at some point but for now the pdf's suffice.

UncleArkie said:

Oh I'm aware I can't play the game with just the books, I was before I bought them. Still, I got hold of the books just to find out how the rules work, how it all hangs together.

Only they're a nightmare to navigate!

Yup the guy that did the disp and layout did bungle it a little, I think they should hire me, I mean I did a 260 page publication once a month (as a designer and layouter) and we never made these kind of mistakes, on a 3 man team... I just don't get how the production values of the books can be so low when the game, system, cards and everything else is so high. Its like they sat around, designed this amazing thing and did all the cards and stuff and then went, **** we have to explain this to the players, drat.

UncleArkie said:

Well said.

Print the pdf's. It's not that many pages and it's nice for your players to also have a rule book.

Gallows said:

Are you kidding?

I already spent almost £15 on them. With all that colour, on my printer I'd be spending probably upwards of £30 extra to print them out. £45?

Rat Catcher said:

Exactly, I was thinking about getting them printed (due to them being hard to use on the computer), but quickly realised that it would cost me more to print them (in colour that is) than buy the boxed game.

Easy way to flatten a PDF :

1) Download and install CutePDF : http://www.cutepdf.com/products/CutePDF/writer.asp

2) Print the WFRP rulebook PDF, and instead of selecting your printer, CutePDF.

3) Pick the PDF name and generate the file. It is going to take a while if you print it all at once. If that becomes a problem, you can just split it by chapters, etc.

Note : You will lose bookmarks by doing this method.

First of all, I am not promoting or sponsoring any hardware or software. I own a MacBook Pro and view these pdf rules on a program called "preview", which is build in the OS. They scroll smoothly and easily with this program. If you can click page numbers within the table of contents, then this is something that I am lacking with this program. I can refer to the page number easily by a sidebar that contains the click-able pages of the section.

What I am suggesting... is to try and find another pdf viewer that might be faster and smoother. Once again, hardware is comparable to most of what you are running with a pc. I think the software is the issue.

For what it is worth...

Troy

I've been using Foxit Reader ( http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/ ) to read the PDF's as it's a bit quicker and consumes less resources than Acrobat Reader. It's not perfect and still takes a bit at times, but it's given me much better performance and readability than Acrobat Reader.

That being said, if you do go ahead and install Foxit Reader make sure you follow the Custom install, otherwise it will install a Firefox toolbar. It annoys me when programs try to install other programs, so I thought I'd let people know about this ahead of time.

I've yet to try the trick of printing out the PDF's using CuteWriterPDF, but I'll give that a try too.

I've tried FoxIt too, but it wasn't really that much faster. I've also tried using xpdf (on my linux machine), without any luck. And of course adobe's reader for windows and linux.

I tried printing to a pdf using PDFwriter, but that didn't help, I'll give CutePDF a try as well. Thanks for the tip. Preview for MacOSX is a nice viewer, pity my mac died a while ago :/

Could it be a simple performance issue? My windows PC has 2GB of ram, is anyone getting a faster viewing with 4GB or more? (a upgrade to the memory is way overdue in any case for my PC).

Its no performance issue, its simply bad work with the pdf's.

I got a 3,3 GHz dual core and 8 GB RAM, no luck with at least decent performance. Images take ages to load and scrolling is nearly impossible, dunno what they did ...

According to a fellow gamer, there are layered images stacked on to of each other each one of them completely overlapping the ones below, but I haven't looked into it myself.

At work on my Mac, I cannot even see the images (same file i use with windows) and most of the text has the same color as the background (= is invisible, but selectable).

The speed in which the PDFs were released leads me to believe FFG didn't take any extra time creating a true PDF (aside from adding in bookmarks and hyperlinks) to optimize reading performance. Especially with the images and layers stacked on top of each other.

Truly, I would have spent the same $$ on the PDFs if they were text and diagrams only, leaving out the fancy backgrounds/art/formatting.

They're best used as a backup reference, nothing more. The full color/full memory demands version wasn't necessary.

Well I fully expect FFG to come goodd here and sort it out. Because right now. I've given them £15 for a pdf print out I can't print out. And like I said, reading them is actually painful.

A crude 'fix' is to print the document out to a 'pdf-printer' with the 'print as image' option. This loses all the bookmarks, but you have a readable copy which a fair machine can render swiftly.

Rat Catcher said:

Why can't you print it out? I had no issues printing all books. Does your printer run out of memory? You just need to set it up to print directly to printer, one page at a time.

Gallows said:

Because it would cost me too much in ink.

Rat Catcher said:

Oh... I have a colour laser printer, so it wasn't much of an issue. But with an ink printer it will get both messy and expensive.