RPGs Pdfs and Trying this a fucking gain.

I swear to god I don't write for like a month and all the sudden my brain forgets how to or something like that. I tried writting this blog post yesterday and I ended up deleting it in disgust. It was that bad. I've written some seriously terrible shit on here too but it was just awefull. My thoughts were disorganized, my sentences didn't flow, and I felt like I was writing through and intermediary. It was bad. I don't give up though. Well not easily anyway. SO here we are again.

This time with a fresh approach.

The role playing industry is one of those things that leaves me in a near constant state of concern. I mean it is a fringe hobby that has the most ass backwards buisness model the world has ever seen. I mean take a look at it. One person buys 1 to 3 core books nessisary to play. Then he amasses 2-5 friends and they use those one to three core books near infininetly limited only by the game masters imagination. There is no reason for the players to own the core books or any books for that matter, and often times they don't bother buying into the game. So for every one book sale you manage to entertain a number of other people who don't contribute to the companies bottom line. There is also the fact that rpg companies are run by folks. By that I mean they often times don't have buisness degrees, or training, or any sense of advertising, and it shows in almost every aspect of the hobby. Sometimes sucessful companies don't fold but rather they self destruct from the inside. It is kinda stressful.

Over the past 10 years or so Roleplaying games have made one single tremendous change, and that is that they embraced the pdf format. I say ten years because while drive thru rpg hasn't been around or relavent for that long the piracy scene has, as people sat there in their houses painstakingly scanning each and every page of their rule books. From such humble beginnings pdf has become an ubiquitous force in gaming. This is both good and bad.

It is good in that it lets long out of print books be availible for sale. There were tears of joy when whitewolf dumped its entire line onto Drive Thru's site allowing long time fans to round out their Wraith or Channgeling collections. It has become an incredible boon to independent publishers as the pdf format allows them to publish without having to stress about printer costs. There are many indie games that only print books for the convension seasons, relying the rest of the year on PDF sales. Lastly, it allows dead games to remain alive. More on this later.

The problem is that many game companies don't really seem to know what to do with PDF files or how to best utilize them. I'm going to use two examples, one doing it right and one doing it wrong because that makes my lift easier. The company doing it right is Nightfall games the oweners of SLA Industies. SLA has been out of print throughout most of its excistence. It bounces from publisher to publisher finding purchase only to have the publisher go under or catch fire, or decide they wanna be more "family friendly" (suck a dick wizards of the coast). Now they have a publisher and they are working on a new core book that will modernize the game mechanics and give an update to the setting. Fans await with baited breath. To help the wait go by easier they have done two very smart things. They have released the core rule book for free. Right now you can go to drivethru or rpgnow and download the core book for free. Since there isn't a core book in print this is a lifesaver in terms of keeping the game alive and interesting new comers. The other smart thing they are doing is releasing data packets. They are little packets of official game material that they charge about three bucks for that you can get via pdf. They range from 3-11 pages, and they are professionally laid out with some very attractive artwork. They incorparate a range of new ideas and generally they are slick little products that lets people know that the game is still alive, there is stuff coming out for it, it is being worked on, and you don't need to have patients because we are handing you a cookie now.

By contrast Eclipse Phase is doing it wrong. They like SLA has offered their rulebook for free. However, unlike SLA their main rulebook is currently in print. The idea is that you can look at the rule book in pdf form and if you like it you can either buy the pdf or print version of the book. I love this book. So I want it. I want it right now. The problem is that the current print run ran out so I have to wait until more show up. Now here is the important part. This is a $50 book. It isn't something I can just buy, it is the price of a video game or several other things I want. See if you are going to rely on print sales then the book MUST be kept in print. By contrast A/State, Obsidian, and SLA Industries are all small print rpgs that were all active at roughly the same time, and they were all in print either before or at the start of the pdf invasion. At the time of this writting I could go and order all three of these books and most of the supliments at bargin prices. I did in fact they are on their way in the mail as we speak. This is because when these games came out having a stock was important. The more we move twords pdfs the more this is going to change, and that's fine. However, they are making it phyically impossible for me to hand them money in exhange for a product.

I am low on time. So the last point I would like to make is that suppliments and the like are much more suited to pdf files than main rule books. The pdf readers haven't advanced to a point where flipping between multiple sections in different chapters or across different books is convienent. As a result making a charecter off of a pdf file ranges from annoying to nightmarish as you have to navigate through a book that tries its best to be annoying to navigate through. This is paticularly true of the Eclipse Phase book which is so graphic heavy that it chugs most netbooks whereas the SLA data sheets are small compact peices of information that are easily accessable and do not need to be frequently referenced.