Gathering Storm is now on rpgnow.

As stated, it's pdf only - not cards etc. included in box so only useful as an adjunct to the box. In kudos to FFG, I posted review noting that wasn't clearly stated and within hours they added disclosure. Also cut price from $20 to $10, which is more appropriate in my mind for a "added convenience add-on" rather than "stand alone".

I do find having a pdf I can extract from and make notes into etc. is useful as GM.

Rob

i agree. i just wish there was a discount for people (like me) who paid for the hard copy and kept their proof of purchase. i don't know how it would be done without ffg getting robbed blind by pirates (Garr!), just saying a coupon or something in the box (or even getting a watermarked pdf free on a disk w/ purchasetoo much to hope for I know) would be nice. all i do now is make black and white photocopies of my monsters and put them in plastic sheets that I keep in a little binder so i don't have to hold the book open during combat.

I'm delighted to see this. It's good to be able to search the document for that tidbit I can vaguely remember but not find without an index. I also prefer printing out each section as we go and marking it up, but I'm certainly not going to mark up the full color book.

I also downloaded it. I did complain in the original news post (now deleted?) about the price (and suggested a possible discount for owners of the physical product). But with just $10 (instead of $20 before) I think there's no more need of it. Printing out pages and making notes on them or handing stuff out to players really makes it worth the price.

Thanks to FFG for this quick reaction and price reduction. I really appreciate it.

PS: also available at drivethrurpg.com

@beardfan: i had no idea it was originally $20. that is almost as much as i paid for the box. from that perspective $10 does not seem so bad. i will just think of it a as a donation to support my favorite game:)

It's a cheap addon if you compare it to European prices. Might be different for US customers. If only the pdfs weren't so freakingly slow. Takes ages to browse through the pages.

BeardFan said:

That's...bizarre. Transitioning between pages is almost instantaneous on the iPad, and I'd assume your computer has more processing power than the iPad. What software are you using?

I'm on Mac OS X. Preview ist very slow and renders the pages incorrectly. Adobe viewer renders correctly, is a bit faster, but still slow. These are the slowest pdfs I have, especially the page background and graphical elements seem to slow the rendering process extremely.

Yup, if you read my review I say that - the pdf's of old warharmmer products handle just fine, the ones of these new products are not good technically.

You can however cut and paste text from the pdf into your own wordprocessing file merrily, to "make it your own".

Rob

Yeah, you're both right. I tried it on both my Mac and my PC. Horribly slow. On the iPad, though, it's fine. Totally weird.

My core rulebook pdf is extremely slow on my desktop as well as laptop. Am I going to have to buy a $500 ipad just for my $10 pdf !?!?!

Maybe FFG can do something about the pdf they have distributed to rpgnow... because it's oh so painful trying to virtually flip pages and the worst part is the long time it takes to perform a text search (which really should be the ideal use of the pdf version, but is much slower than physically finding it in your hardcopy).

2 boons: receive a pdf that performs at an acceptable speed.

Khoriboon said:

I really agree – and it is even worse for the Tome of Adventures. It would really be nice if they could somehow flatten the PDFs before uploading them for electronic distribution.

In addition, it would be nice if they would make the table of contents a bit more accessible – at least in OS X’s Preview application, you have to open several layers of headings before you get to the chapters.

Does anyone know if there is a support forum or an email suggestion box where we can 'plead for mercy'?

i tried that, to get a "light" version of the Core rule book (i bought the 4 core set books). It's pretty and all, but a pain to navigate once you've read it once. The 3 others are fine to browse thru. I guess they need to do 2 versions of each files, one normal, one "light".

I do have a nice enough PC, tried Fox-It reader too, re-installed Adobe reader, etc.

The support person never responded to the part of my messages where i ask for a light version of the file. Maybe have to involve FFG so they ask nicely

Also, i did not buy the new Gathering Storm pdf because of that. I expect it to be like the Core rulebook, a pain to use. I stick to the paper book for that one.

If you have a real version of acrobat reader you can optimize your books. The quality can be crunched down alot, especially on pics.

i'm not paying for a pdf reader ...

It's the 9.3.2 version, patched up to date.

Please guide me on how to do that. I have access to the full Acrobat, so it'd be a godsend.

Tried to run an optimization, but since the PDF's secured it won't let me do it.