4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

Holy shocked to all heck!

I think the next thing that needs to happen are discounts for those of use who have print copies already.  Not that that is likely to happen because of verification problems.

Finally!

Instead of dozens of books lying around, our group can huddle around the flickering glows of our laptops at the gaming table, comforted in the knowledge that they are at least legal copies.

Watermarking with name and order number is a nice way of controlling piracy.  If a copy gets out, it should be fairly easy for WotC to figure out who to sue.

Like Cam I wish that there was a way for those of us with print copies to get electronic copies for free or a reduced price, but this is still a way cool development.

I find it slightly odd that the bundle price is more than buying the three volumes separately.

(Yes, I registered just so I could point that out.)

@Patrick - I guess for ten extra cents they save you the hassle of clicking “Add to cart” 2 additional times?

This is a really cool deal. I bought the printed Players Guide and DM Guide already but I think I’ll just return the DM Guide and buy the Core PDF bundle. That gives me all the books at my computer where I can annotate the PDFs, make my own bookmarks, etc… and still have the handy Players Guide to pass around.

Scary never thought that they will go this way, maybe if they become tech savy we will see a good character generator - one that can be updated like Army builder

The price for the bundle is $74.85 (no savings). Must be a typo.

I suppose I can see one person buying the PHB and sharing it within their gaming group. Searching is SO useful.

Still, very glad to see Wizards offering it at all!

Ooooh, just noticed H1 is coming out soon. If the price is 15$, I might just pick it up. If it’s 20$, why wouldn’t I just buy it on Amazon and get the physical maps?

Which means it will probably be 20$… Ah, Amazon, how do you make physical objects cheaper than their digital counterparts? (other than your Volume Pricing [at-will])

Gotta say, watermarking your copy is about the smartest thing they could to DRM wise. Much less of a hassle on the user, and If 4000 people have a copy they didn’t pay for they know who to look for.

Sorry, wasn’t my intent to pick on a typo.  Years ago, Burger King, in particular, tended to make their “meals” more expensive than the components, so I was flashing back!

1 - Watermarking is probably the best way to control digital media, so props to WotC.

2 - I wish I had known this in February, then I wouldn’t have pre-ordered (saving myself some phone time with amazon o_0), so I’m taking my props back.

So I guess I’m in the middle on this

Watermarking isn’t a great solution… all it takes is one guy obsessive enough to take the time to remove the watermarks (there are tools to help do this) and put it on bittorrent.

Wizards has been selling PDFs of their products (over 900) for at least a couple years now through RPGNow.  Though it looks like the new books have lagged behind by a few months… the Rules Compendium was published Oct 2007, but it didn’t hit RPGNow until Feb 2008.

They’ve probably released the PDFs this early to try to combat the illegal PDFs floating around… I think that would be more effective if the PDFs didn’t cost _more_ than the hardbacks on Amazon.

For me its not a cost issue so much as a value issue, especially with the DM Guide. So Amazon sells the DM guide for a buck or two less than the PDFs. But during a game if I need to look something up its going to much faster on a PDF then it is digging through a paper index or trying to remember exactly where that obscure thing I read about might be.

A good PDF reader will also let me annotate things easily, create bookmarks, etc…

The downside is that I need my computer to read it. I can’t just curl up on the couch and read through it. Even on a laptop its just not the same as good ol’ dead trees. But the value during actual play trumps that for me.

One minor gripe with the PDFs.

Bought the Monster Manual, having a digital copy will be great for copying stat blocks into my documents or printing selected pages.

They added the watermark to the bottom of each page, out of the way of any artwork. That’s great. Only problem is that it extended the size of the pages so that 2 page spreads no longer match-up. That makes me sad ascetically. Not that big a deal, but it is annoying.

Leslie - I sometimes curl-up with a pdf by rotating it 90° (Acrobat does this) then going full screen and holding the laptop sideways. One the arrow keys to advance pages. Poor-man’s ebook reader.

FYI, the Keep on the Shadowfell PDF went up on Drivethrurpg this afternoon, at the same 30% off cover price.

Thanks for the tip, Patrick.

Arg. Decisions, decisions. Do I buy the hardcopy and take digital pictures of the maps or do I buy the PDFs and use a graphics editor to clean all the DM stuff off the maps?

No chance of me getting digital images of maps that my online players can use with the PDF, huh? I guess demand for those assets just isn’t there to justify the work. Or is it being built in 3D for DnD Insider as we speak?

Would posting clean images of maps violate the copyright? Probably.

Wish I could edit my comment…

Just noticed that the PDFs include the maps as an extra section, formatted for printing (or converting into individual images, in my case). My cynicism was utterly unwarranted. Boo to my bad attitude! I guess the PDFs would be less work for me.

I think I’ll buy the PDFs in a couple weeks to try it out and report back in the forums.

I think the cost is reasonable for people that choose not to buy the books and just want digital copies.  I think it is high for people that have the books already. I can see people spending $70 on digital only and bringing the laptop to the gaming session for easy reference.  I don’t see anyone buying the books and then buying the .pdfs for a higher price.

Wasn’t the original plan for the d&d insider subscription to include PDFs of the rulebooks?

I would say that from the standpoint of Wizards that the PDFs are $10 less than the actual books and already discounted. They don’t care how much you got them for from an online retailer, they discounted for the lack of printing costs.

Not saying I think it is discounted enough, but how do you put a price on 4-5 years worth of work in some peoples lives? Because the value of that work is what they preserving when I really sit down to think about it.

Amazon has undercut the suggested retail price. Wizards doesn’t have control over that.  They have, as Kelly noted, significantly undercut the costs of their print books.  I too think it needs to drop quite a bit more (at least for those who already own the hardcovers) to fit into the reasonable category, but it is at least understandable.

Long story short, wholesale price in the three-tier model is about 30% of cover… Wizards is selling those books wholesale at about $10 each.  They’re only making about $6, give or take, per book.  (I don’t think I’m very far off here… I’m guessing that they have a high enough print volume that they’re not paying more than $4 for printing.)

So they could sell the PDF at $10 and make more money off of the PDF than the physical book.

I’m happy with the discount on the PDFs. I think it’s the right price based on the original cost of the hardcovers.

Pricing the PDFs that cheaply would cheapen the value of the product. Think about the man-hours that went into the creation of the books. The playtesting time, all the artwork (which takes a long time to create), the layout time, proofreading, color correction, revisions, etc. Technically they could probably sell the PDFs much cheaper and make a “profit” but that doesn’t reflect the actual value to the users or the value of having talented designers, artists, editors, etc. working on it.

If you buy the books for $75 and play just a half dozen games with them, you’ve already gotten a great value out of your purchase. Hate to pull out the old “cost of a movie” cliché, but if you went to a movie ($10) and dinner ($15+), you’ve just spent the cost of one of the books.

The PDF is a separate product from the print version. If I buy a the hardcover of a novel, should I get a discount on the paperback?

The pdf is not really a separate product.  It is what was sent to the printers.  It takes no extra work.  The paperback is a different version of the same book.

And in your last statement, you kind of set out your own petard to be hoisted on. A paperback is $6 and a hardcover is $30.  That’s 1/5th of the cost.  By your own metaphor, these PDFs if sold at the same discount as the shift from hardcover to paperback, should be at most $8.00.

The value reflected in the hardback book price reflects printing, shipping and the three-tier retail chain more than it does the value of the content.

When you buy a paper roleplaying game book, you’re paying about 15-20% for the content and everything else is what it cost to put it into paper form and get it into your hands.  Producing the content itself is the _cheapest_ part of producing the book.

I’m not talking about Wizards selling the PDFs for $12 (each) and making “some” profit… at that price, they would still make more profit per sale than they do on the paper books.  (Even after RPGNow’s cut of 25%, they’d still be making 50% more profit by my estimate.)

I think they just don’t want to undercut the retail chain too much.  SJ Games is doing the exact same thing (PDFs that cost more than Amazon) and has stated that’s their primary reason.  They were seriously afraid that PDFs would dramatically cut into their book sales, and lower book sales would hurt their relationships with retailers.  If Wizards is in the same boat, the price has nothing to do with profit margins and everything to do with keeping retailers happy.

It is a separate product because you can buy it *instead* of the hardcovers. I think it’s reasonable to say the existing discount on the PDFs covers the cost of printing, shipping, etc. You’re paying for the content, not the physical product.

My analogy wasn’t meant to be pricing specific, I could have said If you saw the movie in the theater you wouldn’t expect to get a discount on the DVD.

Bottom line. The PDFs (and all D&D books frankly) are a luxury item. WotC (and any other retailer) can price them at whatever they want. Consumers can choose to buy or not. I’m sure if the PDFs sell poorly WotC will either lower the price or discontinue making them, whichever makes more sense to their business. I personally think the PDF prices are reasonable for the amount of *quality* content contained within.

P.S. Don’t forget to add the cost of overnight shipping to the Amazon prices if you want a fair comparison with the PDF pricing. Immediate delivery has value too.

Last night I played D&D for the first time in about 10 years. It was a ton of fun. I was the DM, my wife the sole player. This was more of a “play test” to learn the combat system.

So, obviously I’m out of practice, its a new system, lots of stuff to look up. My wife plays a rogue and she fights a lone Orc. Things go pretty smoothly until she decides she wants to pickpocket the Orc during the fight. Hmm… How do I figure that out?

Old Method: Pull out the DM Guide I’ve read once and start thumbing through the index. Maybe that’s the right reference. Look it up. Nope. Move on.

New Method: Type “pickpocket” into search bar. Presto. Everything I need right there in just a few seconds. Plus, I left myself a note in the PDF with an idea of how to make this more useful later.

When you are dealing with a digital product the price is rarely about cost. Its about the value you are delivering. The PDFs saved me at least 30 minutes of digging through books trying to figure out different stuff. Opportunity Attacks...um, how to run those again? *Search* Done. DC on breaking down a door? Search. Done.

As an old, out of practice DM looking forward to running a bunch of people new to RPGs through Keep of the Shadowfell I can already tell just how much time & effort having that in PDF is going to save me. I need to make some tokens for the battle map. Copy/paste out of the PDF, print, done. I need to make a few notes on these NPCs so I leave a comment right in the PDF. Done.

The value I received for the price I paid is very high and completely worth it. They saved me significant time and they turn a tidy profit. I don’t see anything wrong with that equation. I hope they continue to find more ways to deliver a better value. The more Wizards can control costs while delivering that value, the better it is for me too. That’s a theory at least.