How weird. My renewed interested in roleplaying games (RPG) has led me to a few sites, and it’s amazing to see how much material is offered either for download – either free (specially “light” versions of the rules) or for a few dollars.
Examples: GURPS Lite is free on e23 and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia is $5.95 from RPG Now.
=> GURPS Lite | D&D Rules Cyclopedia
And if you start reading EN World reviews you’ll notice that many of them review PDF files instead of actual books. How amazing! And as far as I can tell, these PDF files are not burdened with evil DRM! At least the D&D Rules Cyclopedia I bought was an ordinary PDF file. (2006-11-09 Nostalgia for Rolplaying Games) Well, I didn’t really care for all the backgrounds blowing the file size up to over 70MB, but it’s still nice to see that you can get old stuff as well. I mean, you can download the AD&D 2nd Ed. Dungeon Masters Guide for $4.95 from RPG Now!
=> EN World reviews | DRM | 2006-11-09 Nostalgia for Rolplaying Games | AD&D 2nd Ed. Dungeon Masters Guide
As I said – I’m stunned!
Yes, I admit it. I spent most of my gaming in AD&D 2nd Ed. 😄
As for the price tag: I think CHF 5 would be fair, which is about USD 3. Why are the PDF files I mentioned about twice as expensive? I guess I have to consider the alternative scenario of getting a printed book and doing the scanning and OCR myself. Even if I share it with a large group of people, I’d still be spending a lot of time on it. That’s why I’m still willing to pay the price.
Other products such as a four page character class description is much cheaper. Lost Classes: Sword of Khonsu costs $1.29, for example. Cool!
=> Lost Classes: Sword of Khonsu
On the upper end, something as cool as the about 350 page MonkeyGod Presents: From Stone to Steel costs $18.00 and the nearly 200 page Kitsunemori Campaign Setting costs $13.95 and there’s a twenty page free preview available for download! (Read the raving review!) And there’s both print and PDF releases, eg. The Asian Bestiary, Vol. I - PDF and The Asian Bestiary, Vol. II - PDF are available for download at $16.99 each, where as the print edition costs $24.99. (Reviews at EN World ¹ ².)
=> MonkeyGod Presents: From Stone to Steel | Kitsunemori Campaign Setting | The Asian Bestiary, Vol. I - PDF | The Asian Bestiary, Vol. II - PDF | ¹ | ²
Maybe I should buy the Kitsunemori instead of trying to write something up myself. I wonder how much a professional printing would cost. I gave SauterCopy a call and they told me it would cost about CHF 200, ie. about USD 160 to print. Ugh!! Who said anything about eBooks being cheap and cool!? I guess I’ll have to get used to using my laptop when running a game. Or use black & white when printing.
=> SauterCopy
Too late.
I bought it. 😄
#Books #RPG #Publishing
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I’ve found the best solution is to use something like Fine Print (or psbook in Linux) to produce A5 sized booklets. That works very well, and keeps the costs down.
=> Fine Print
The price of .pdfs is wonderful right now; I don’t mind paying $6 for a classic adventure or new supplement, especially as the quality (especially of the new stuff) is so good. Role-players never had it so good. As you said, there’s a lot of great free stuff out there too.
If you’re looking for an good campaign setting, the Mahasarpa Campaign is a terrific one based on Indian and Asian mythology. It’s a web enhancement for Oriental Adventures (which I’ve just finished re-reading), but that isn’t really needed to get the feel of the setting. I ran a campaign using this setting a while back and loved it.
I’m thinking about starting a new campaign myself, and plan to use the city of Ptolus as an entry point into the World's Largest Dungeon. That should sort my gaming needs for years! 😄
=> Ptolus | World's Largest Dungeon
The Platyer's Guide to Ptolus is a free download, and it’s probably the best city-based/urban campaign setting ever made. I’d troughing through it now.
– GreyWulf 2006-11-28 17:11 UTC
=> GreyWulf
Thanks for the pointers! I will look into it.
– Alex Schroeder 2006-11-28 17:53 UTC
Kitsunemori tönt sehr gut, z. B. der Höfling (spielt es in der Zeit von Genji oder Heike? Ah, beides wäre für diesen Charakter ein Fest) oder Shinto-Priester (der vielleicht mit Kaligraphien Demönen beschwört oder Schutzzauber wirkt) oder natürlich der Bogeschützte...
– Chris 2006-11-28 22:09 UTC
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