Media for new RPG products

[Agemegos]

I am starting to feel rather old-fashioned about the shelf full of RPG rule sets, settings, and supplements that I downloaded as PDFs (often formatted for US letter pages), printed out on my laser writer (on A4 paper), and bound in my little thermal binding machine. I have the distinct feeling that the cool kids live on a pure diet of patterned electrons. But honestly, I only got as modern as I am because posting books to Australia became prohibitively expensive.

So, cool kids! Fellow gaming dinosaurs! Thinking of the new materials (rules, supplements, settings) that you actually use in your games, and disregarding the legacy of stuff that you bought in hardback fifteen or thirty years ago and are still using, what medium do you tend actually to have recent purchases in while you are using them?

Has this changed lately? If so, can you say why?

[AlexanderHowl]

In prefer paper, but I have been forced to switch to digital because of my lower back. I used to carry a couple dozen books to every gaming session, but they get heavy. I will still bring a half dozen paper books with me though so other people can reference them easily.

One of the primary issues for gaming companies with the switch to digital is that it gets rid of the best form of advertising, the physical book. I will usually not buy into a system unless I can purchase the physical book, as saving $10 is usually not worth the risk. If a company is unwilling to have any physical books they are unwilling to have customers like me.

[Mark Skarr]

I think Egon summed it up best.

I haven't purchased a print-media book in several years.

I rejoiced when the push to digital occurred. I loved only having to take a tablet/laptop to my gaming group meetings (back during the bright times . . . the times before . . .). Now that we do everything on-line, it's even better. I can have all the relevant books open in their own program, and that can sit on my second monitor. If I need it I can just search it, and if I'm having a bad-sight day, I can move the window to my main, larger, monitor and read it.

Digital has made my life so much better.

Also, I for one, will embrace our robot overlords.

[tcr25]

One of the best things about PDFs (or digital in general) is the ability to search. It makes finding that one niggling rule you half-remember so much easier ...

[DeadParrot]

I still prefer hard copy material. I can often find stuff faster in a book then the digital folks can search on their devices. More a function of electronic search mostly sucking then my blazingly fast page flipping.

More then once the digital books have failed due to battery issues or for those that still think cloud is good, when the ether blocks the signal.

I do prefer digital character sheet preparation followed by print to hard copy for game use. Eliminates stupid math errors plus if something bad happens to the hard copy, printing a replacement is simple.

[Kalzazz]

Pdf on a cellphone

It's just so light and handy to read, and easy to store

[Agemegos]

I'm a little bit surprised to see re-flowable formats such as EPUB and MOBI polling so poorly. Do you think that have prospects for the future, and if not, why not? Is it that RPG materials depend extensively on tables?

[adm]

For me, yes the tables, and the PITA steps it often takes to get them recognized on an e-reader.

[dcarson]

I think Apple for it's book application has a extended form of epub that allows for tables and such for textbooks. Hopefully there will be a more open standard that does the same.

[cptbutton]

I am a cranky old man who has never gotten into these newfangled formats because text, HTML, and PDF are good enough for me. Also because I associate them with DRM, which I intellectually know may not be true.