D&D 4th-Ed. PDF

I received word that Drive Thru RPG has been granted the license to peddle 4^th-Ed. D&D corebooks PDF files.

The PDF versions of the corebooks can be had at 30% less than the low-tech versions. With Wizards of the Coast's announced online tools, this is probably your best bet. After all, you can always print-out whatever you need from the PDF. Actually, you could print it out, collate/bind it, and set it in its own cover, if you were so inclined; of course, all of this is going to run you more than just buying the print-version outright, but if you lose your copy or it gets damaged, you just make another one!

Further, so long as you - the purchaser - keep them, you could print-out as many players' copies of the books as you need. No more sharing/fighting over the PHB! Again, so long as you do not distribute these copies (ergo, give them to the players), there is no violation. This is absolutely perfect for creating your own player's handbooks, which I do (and suggest) anyway.

Further, you can compile your own DMG in the order of the rules you use. Say you prefer some alternate hunting rules out of an old Dragon magazine and use an expanded equipment list included in one of the online Dragon articles. Instead of having some dog-eared photocopies crammed between the pages of the book, you simply print-out just the pages leading up to where the material you wish to replace starts, then include your alternate rules instead. Not only does it look neater, not only is it more organized, with a little work, you can make it look so professional that anyone reading it would not be able to tell it wasn't "official."

Really guys, print is dead, and this is the wave of The Now. Between WotC's online search and your computer's own searching capabilities (including Adobe Acrobat's internal search functions), a PDF copy of the rules would forever eliminate time lost to looking-up rules. Further, with the online tools, you are probably going to need a computer to play anyway (I'm sure you could manage without one, but having one would be so much better), so this makes it that much easier.

What I don't know is whether or not the books are linked. I doubt it. You can do a hell of a lot with PDFs, so even though I doubt the products come with all the bells and whistles (bookmarks, indexed chapters, hyperlinks to other sections, etc.), you can add these on your own. As mentioned above, you can even add external links to other documents and URLs to include 3^rd-party material and alternate rules.

The books are still going to run $75, but that's about $40 less than what you'd pay for the low-tech versions.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008