This to me is an absolute deal breaker. Being able to copy text and images allows me to create player friendly character sheets, adventure notes with monster stats etc and the like.
The core 3 books were not Copy & Paste disabled (at least RPGNow.com does not indicate so) so I am unsure why Martial Power and Draconomicon are. Can anoyone from WOTC elaborate please?
My book shelf is at capacity now, so I have made a conscious decision to buy 4e in PDF only as much as possible (I have a hardcopy of the PHB, but after that I intend to buy DMG and MM PDF only).
Are all future D&D4e PDFs going to be Copy & Paste disabled? If so I may have to rethink my decision to get into 4e.
I just noticed on RPGNow.com that Copy & Paste has apparently been disabled for the Martial Power & Draconomicon 1 PDFs.
This to me is an absolute deal breaker. Being able to copy text and images allows me to create player friendly character sheets, adventure notes with monster stats etc and the like.
The core 3 books were not Copy & Paste disabled (at least RPGNow.com does not indicate so) so I am unsure why Martial Power and Draconomicon are. Can anoyone from WOTC elaborate please?
My book shelf is at capacity now, so I have made a conscious decision to buy 4e in PDF only as much as possible (I have a hardcopy of the PHB, but after that I intend to buy DMG and MM PDF only).
Are all future D&D4e PDFs going to be Copy & Paste disabled? If so I may have to rethink my decision to get into 4e.
That would be disappointing. That's 90% of the reason for buying the PDF, at least for our group. We'd rather have the book at the table, but we like being able to pull the text straight from the file to drop into character sheets and such.
If I can't do this, my ability to work with just PDFs is diminished and as I physically don't have space to also buy hardcopies I won't be buying into D&D 4e beyond the 3 core books and maybe the Eberron books (which I may try to find room for). Adventurer's Vault, Martial Power etc will all be ruled out of my purchase plans.
Also I find that the sheets from the builder just aren't that printer friendly, with a little copy & paste magic and some sweet Framemaker I can get a full set of powers and class abilities on a single sheet of paper instead of a full sheet for just a first level character.
You can still print the page out and "cut and paste" the old-fashioned way. An inconvenience, sure, but if something this minor is an "absolute deal-breaker", then maybe you were just looking for an excuse not to "get into 4e" anyway?
I'm not saying it is a deal breaker to get the book, I am one of the biggest 4e advocates there is, but if I cannot copy-paste from the PDF to my own digital character sheet, then as far as the PDF goes, it IS a deal breaker.
I'm not saying it is a deal breaker to get the book
Umm...
you hadn't actually used the phrase "deal breaker" at all before I posted. I was responding to the OP, who said that this issue was making him reconsider playing 4th edition at all. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.Of course, perhaps I've given away the secret, and now the Boot of WotC will come down on DriveThru. Oh well.
I just bought it (like, 10 seconds ago) from drivethru, and my PDF is not copy/paste disabled.
Of course, perhaps I've given away the secret, and now the Boot of WotC will come down on DriveThru. Oh well.
I just bought it from RPGNow, and it's not disabled there, either.
...he also chided the people complaining in that thread by pointing out that they could have brought this to the attention of the proper authorities rather than just complaining on a forum in hopes that someone official might wander by and notice.
You can still print the page out and "cut and paste" the old-fashioned way. An inconvenience, sure,
To be honest, physical cut & paste would be a major pain for me and something I really wouldn't bother to do.
but if something this minor is an "absolute deal-breaker", then maybe you were just looking for an excuse not to "get into 4e" anyway?
I don't feel it it minor, especially as I plan to go PDF only for the majority of any 4e purchases I make. The majority of my game prep is via PDF, and copying and pasting monster stats, feat write ups etc onto a single page for reference is a god send. It is one of the reasons why I am still hoping for PDFs of the 3.5 core books, though at least I have access to an SRD for that.
I am not looking for an excuse to not get into 4e, but I already am faced with a number of things that should put me off but haven't*. But another disincentive like this may have been the straw that broke the camel's back and would prevent me from buying into the line any further than the 3 core books which seem to not be copy & paste disabled.
Its the same reason I did not get into buying music downloads until recently. I hated the fact that iTunes provides music in a proprietry format that won't play on my Windows Media Player on my phone (and WMA files from the Windows Music Store are DRMed meaning I am limited to the number of devices I can put the track on). Now 7digital.com provides actual mp3s I am happy to download them.
[EDIT]Actually a more pertinent example was DriveThruRPG.com's early use of DRM. Sales were pretty poor and I didn't purchase any PDFs from them during that time. But when they moved to watermarking my purchases sky rocketed and DTRPG's sales did so too.[/EDIT]
*My weekly game group not wanting to play 4e is a pretty bug disincentive, meaning my 4e use will be at conventions. Other disincentives are the greater combat focus and use of squares for measurement (a criticism I also had with Savage Worlds). Still I want to be part of the D&D hobby & community and so I plan to play 4e as well as continue with 3.5.
Scott Rouse (WOTC employee) posted elsewhere that the copy/paste prevention was done by rpgnow.com, not by WOTC, and that he fixed it with a phone call.
Great news (naughty rpgnow.com!) and I have just checked the website and the text that indicates copy & paste disabled is indeed gone, yay!
...he also chided the people complaining in that thread by pointing out that they could have brought this to the attention of the proper authorities rather than just complaining on a forum in hopes that someone official might wander by and notice.
By "that thread" I assume My Rouse's condemnation is not aimed at me for this thread. Was that thread on the WOTC boards?
To be honest, I have sent questions to customer service a couple of times and to be honest the replies received are not too helpful, too vague to be helpful.
Maybe my experience of other games companies should not be applied to WOTC - often posting on a forum will likely get a reply from an employee (on the M&M Atomic Think Tank Steve Kenson can be seen responding to questions).
For example, when I was interested in buying New Gods of Mankind it too was copy & paste disabled - I posted a message on the Dark Skull Forums and an employee took note, looked to see if other PDFs were having copy & paste disabled and when it was found they weren't he re-instated copy & paste. Great customer service!
Anyway, the main thing is that the 4e PDFs are not c&p disabled and are priced lower than the hardcopy books, so WOTC seem to be getting PDF sales right with 4e and for that I am thankful.
use M$ one note, scan the pdf into it, and have one note do the character recognition.
I have no idea what one note is, but it seems unnecessary now that C&P has been enabled (and I assume future PDFs will also be C&P enabled). yay!
I have no idea what one note is, but it seems unnecessary now that C&P has been enabled (and I assume future PDFs will also be C&P enabled). yay!
I agree, the point is to make it clear that instead of stopping piracy, it pisses off legitimate users, who have to jump through hoops to get their functionality back.