So 5th Edition has been out for almost a year now. However, the player's handbook is STILL only available in hardcover. Why don't we have a purchasable PDF yet? Pathfinder has had purchasable PDF's since its inception. Is Wizards really that behind on the times? Isn't it kind of unreasonable to force players to carry around physical books, when they can have entire libraries of game systems on their Kindle or laptop?
You can buy the PHB in electronic form if you subscribe to Fantasy Grounds.
WimbleTeaver wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Yeah, I am not too sure what they are doing. They did have somebody involved with the edition conversion in jury duty for about half a year, so that could have thrown their schedules out of whack.
There are pdfs. I talked with a librarian at my college to see if it was legal for me to have pdfs of my textbooks as long as I had paid for the book (either online access or real book), she and several other people said that it was legal for me to have a pdf of a book, no matter how I optained it, as long as I currently had access to the book from the publisher. The same should be true for pdfs of D&D books, it should be legal to have a pdf of a book that you bought from the company, and there are sites that have pdfs of the D&D book available for free download.
Lilika wrote:
I am a librarian.
Obtaining reproductions of works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution, whether or not you own the work in a different medium.
The United States Copyright Office maintains a website that serves as a useful resource.
www.copyright.gov
Right, that is it! The only way to know for sure is a:
Librarian Death Match - Go!
mrpopstar wrote:
RCanine wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Honestly, people wouldn't HAVE to pirate it if they gave us legal ways to buy it. Many people only resort to piracy because there is no way to get the thing legally (i.e. not sold in their country, not made in digital form, etc.). I would be all "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" if Wizards actually made a PDF of the player's handbook.
I would love a digital version of the core materials.
iBooks is my platform of choice, but a simple PDF that looks like the printer-friendly basic rules would please me greatly.
RCanine wrote:
mrpopstar wrote:
WimbleTeaver wrote:
Nibelung_ajr wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
RCanine wrote:
Nibelung_ajr wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Nibelung_ajr wrote:
Nibelung_ajr wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
dave2008 wrote:
mrpopstar wrote:
RCanine wrote:
RCanine wrote:
I have the all 3 books and not that I need a pdf of the PHB, I might pick up another from Amazon at the $25 price and send it to be scanned in by that 1dollar scan site mentioned previously. That will be 3 PHBs I've purchased, one for me, 1 I gave a friend and this one to have the PDF.
If you have a the physical book, you can always pake a pdf copy for yourself as a backup if you have the time, patience, and access to a copier capable of doing so, as long as you dont distribute it. I, for example, have digital versions of the PHB, DMG, MM, and Starter Pack books.
Interestingly enough (and extremely handily, since I use Roll20 to run my game even thought its face to face) when I open them in the Windows 8 'Reader' (instead of with adobe) it allows me to search the pdf has well, andusually does a good job finding text correctly.
Mistwell wrote:
jprepo1 wrote:
Mirtek wrote:
No I am not a lawyer, not I am not a librarian. At one point I did do a decent amount of research into the legality of this issue, and found a *lot* of disagreement. This seemed to stem largely from the fact that the laws and court rulings were not always obviously in sync. And further complicated by trying to take commercial precedents and apply them to personal or private situations.
It has been a few years, but as I recall.
For peronaly use, you are allowed to time shift or media shift your own products. Thus if you own an album, you are allowed to make a tape of those songs. If you have a book, you are allowed to make a .pdf of that book. If you have HBO, you are allowed to VCR or DVR Game of Thrones and watch it later. Copyright gives "exclusive' rights to the owner.... where 'exclusive' has lots of exceptions to it.
Because these actions are legal, is *why* we have DMCA laws. It is legal to buy a DVD and make a copy of the movie. What is not legal is bypassing the copyprotection on the DVD. (There is also complications if you are only 'licensing" something instead of buying it.)
But in this case, we are only talking about an item that you physically own, and are making a copy for your personal use. From everything I could find, this is perfectly legal. As legal as making a 'Mixed tape" of songs you own. (IIRC, it is even legal if you recorded the songs from the radio)
If it is legal to make your own copy, then it is legal to hire someone to do that 'legal' work for you. Or for someone to volunteer to do the work as a favor. So you can give your book to a friend to scan for you....it gets a bit trickier if you hold onto your book, and your friend uses his PHB to scan and gives you a copy. There is no case law I could find that covered that scenario.... but if the books are identical, it seems reasonable to be legal. Which, of course, means that downloading a scanned copy of your physically owned book would also be legal.... but again, not a lot of case law in the specific area to be sure.
mrpopstar wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
joeburgos wrote:
happy to oblige: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules
now go play.
joeburgos wrote:
Well, whether we or the dev team would like to have all of the core rules to be released for free...
A certain corporate creature whose initial is "H." wouldn't agree at all...
Coredump00 wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
dave2008 wrote:
Nibelung_ajr wrote:
mrpopstar wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Scruffy68 wrote:
I think the mentality is a lot of gamestores have thin margins. D&D will not pay the bills but it miht just be enough to top up the income from Warahammer/Magic the Gathering. Gamestore goes under WoTC loses a venue for MtG. I don't think the lost money would matter that much and you can get PDFs of 5E core books anyway which in theory would shoot the retailers arguement to bits.
In some ways it is kind fof frustrating though as one did get used to cheap PDFs via Paizo and the clones. $10 core rules books and splat books, 14 dollars for something like the C&C PHB and adventures for $2-$5. Voted with the wallet and I wasn;t the only one it seem. I think I may have paid $20 for a PDF maybe twice for DCC and a D6 campaign setting book.
I still have my PDFs from 2003-2005 though and now I get free upgrades to the new ones if they are rereleased.
lawrencehoy wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Torg_Smith wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
mrpopstar wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Torg_Smith wrote:
double post
Coredump00 wrote:
joeburgos wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Torg_Smith wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
I wonder if the FLGS can get a percentage of the revenue stream of a pdf download if at check out store name or ID can be entered. I see this being similar to comic book stores and the digital downloading without buying the comic. Marvel and DC still charge 3.99 for the electronic version of a comic that is new in release, same as the print comic to keep many consumers from buy just the pdf if it were say half the price as the print version. Somehow including the stores in the pdf revenue stream might help with the selling of pdfs along with print copies for RPGs and comics. I'll refrain from making a 3rd purchase of a PHB to have generated into a PDF after reading the posts about legality. I'm more of a print guy anyway.
Mistwell wrote:
Torg_Smith wrote:
I can see that delaying the PDF release makes perfect sense for retailers. However, we are now at a point where almost every player I play with already uses illegal PDF copies and they keep trying to convince me to use them too whenever they have to wait because I have to browse through my PHB that already starts to fall apart. So I'd say it's okay to release all the stuff as PDF now, so I can actually legally buy and own it.
Torg_Smith wrote:
Torg_Smith wrote:
At this point, I buy far more electronic rulebooks than physical (and I'm moving towards even less physical). Right now, WotC is not getting any of my money for 5e because they do not offer electronic versions (that I can use offline on my iPad like a PDF or similar). If when they make 5e available in such a format, I'll start buying the rulebooks.
Right now I cannot own legally 5e. I borrowed them physically from a family member but I cannot do that anymore. Importing books is expensive and I live in the other side of the continent. Yes, Brazil, where things are going wrong. PDFs are a blast: they are usually cheaper (In final price) and I can have tons of them in one PC (if I have the money). I have what, seven physical 4e books and it’s already hard to carry them to places. If there was a pdf version, that could be different.
RCanine wrote:
cassi_brazuca wrote:
Guy, nice try. The three books are like R$500,00 (or, to be more precise, R$482,80). If you have no condition to buy those books it doesn’t matter court decision about the subject. PDFs however are usually cheaper, no delivery; even with the high valor of dollar is easier to buy pdfs than physical books. My point is: I would buy the pdfs, but I won’t buy the books, so no pdfs = me not being a customer. I doubt I’m the only one, however.
Luckily my gaming group has some morals when it comes to pirated pdfs. I have the physical copy of the books and will wait until its released by WoTC to legally own the pdf. I like to think its the right thing to do so the company/ ie employees that created the game and books get compensated for their hard work. We chastised one of our players when we saw he had pirated copies...bad form in my eyes.
EthanSental wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
cassi_brazuca wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
I've removed content from this thread because they violated of the Code of Conduct. You can review the Code of Conduct HERE.
cassi_brazuca wrote:
Grazel wrote: