Power Cards, Cheat Sheets, and the Wii: Why I want legal PDFs

[Hussar]

So just hope that your Hard Drive never crashes.

Hrm, a Hard Drive that crashes so badly that you entirely lose all the content, completely unrecoverable. In a RAID hard drive? Never mind backing up is ridiculously easy and cheap.

It's about the same as saying, "so just hope that your kids never get a hold of your Dragon collection and destroy it."

 

[Drkfathr1]

Hrm, a Hard Drive that crashes so badly that you entirely lose all the content, completely unrecoverable. In a RAID hard drive? Never mind backing up is ridiculously easy and cheap.

It's about the same as saying, "so just hope that your kids never get a hold of your Dragon collection and destroy it."

C'mon guys, I hope you're honestly not trying to say that there won't be folks out there that this scenario WILL happen to.

Yes, there are ways of recovering, yes there are plenty of alternatives for backing up. But lets be honest here, you KNOW there will be people that for whatever reasons will lose their content.

Online digital subscriptions and electronic tools are nice (fantastic even), but they're not perfect and they're not the end-all-be-all of gaming salvation.

Now get off my lawn!

 

[Ourph]

C'mon guys, I hope you're honestly not trying to say that there won't be folks out there that this scenario WILL happen to.

Yes, there are ways of recovering, yes there are plenty of alternatives for backing up. But lets be honest here, you KNOW there will be people that for whatever reasons will lose their content.

Perhaps, but in a comparison of .pdf vs. downloadable DDI content (as in, the original subject of the thread), neither is the "safer" option in this kind of scenario.

 

[malraux]

Perhaps, but in a comparison of .pdf vs. downloadable DDI content (as in, the original subject of the thread), neither is the "safer" option in this kind of scenario.

Or even that your collection of old magazines and books won't get water-logged from a flood, or scribbled on and cut up by a child, or the paper become too brittle to reliably use. Or that the eventual heat death of the universe won't make your fingers too cold to turn the pages.

 

[Alan Shutko]

Umm, Alan, that's not correct as I understand it. Right now, if you subscribe, you can download all the material from the WOTC site. The only thing you couldn't download is the any material which came out after your subscription ended.

No, you can't.

You can download Dungeon, Dragon, blog articles, and the windows tools. You can't download the Rules Compendium. If you're subscribing because you want digital access to content in the books, you cannot access it after your subscription ends.

 

[Ourph]

No, you can't.

You can download Dungeon, Dragon, blog articles, and the windows tools. You can't download the Rules Compendium. If you're subscribing because you want digital access to content in the books, you cannot access it after your subscription ends.

The Character Builder and the Encounter Builder contain the rules text for all character abilities, powers, feats, skills, equipment (including magic item powers) and monsters in the current set of rules. That accounts for the vast majority of "content in the books". The only things the Compendium has that aren't included in the CB/EB combo are the basic rules of the game like how skill checks work and how to make an attack roll.

 

[malraux]

The Character Builder and the Encounter Builder contain the rules text for all character abilities, powers, feats, skills, equipment (including magic item powers) and monsters in the current set of rules. That accounts for the vast majority of "content in the books". The only things the Compendium has that aren't included in the CB/EB combo are the basic rules of the game like how skill checks work and how to make an attack roll.

Well, you'd lose traps and hazards, which is pretty significant IMO. That said, I expect those to get added to the Adventure Tools relatively soon.

However, really the compendium is a pretty useful search tool. Far better for reading about most things instead of using the character builder. Of course, if I knew that the compendium were about to be taken offline, it would be fairly trivial to basically pull the entire content into my own database.

 

[Mark]

Of course, if I knew that the compendium were about to be taken offline, it would be fairly trivial to basically pull the entire content into my own database.

Assuming it's not some illegal method, how would you do that? Is it not worthwhile to do this now (given the lack of wifi in many gamestores and other gaming locations)? It also raises the question, if so much of it is downloadable through the "builders" then why isn't the compendium downloadable anyway?

 

[Ourph]

However, really the compendium is a pretty useful search tool. Far better for reading about most things instead of using the character builder.

I'm not downplaying the usefulness of the compendium at all.

 

[malraux]

Assuming it's not some illegal method, how would you do that? Is it not worthwhile to do this now (given the lack of wifi in many gamestores and other gaming locations)? It also raises the question, if so much of it is downloadable through the "builders" then why isn't the compendium downloadable anyway?

It is not illegal, though it might break the Terms of Service of the compendium. But basically, wotc has released much of the info about how to get the xml data and reference items in the compendium. So for example, I can easily get an xml list of all the monsters in the compendium. Then I would just add a bit of info to get the program to download and save the web entry of each monster, plus associated metadata from the xml. The little bit I've done with writing my own interface to the compendium showed that it was surprisingly easy, and I've barely taken any programing classes.

It wouldn't be worthwhile to me right now. I just don't use a computer somewhere where I don't have internet access currently, and that's the only reason why I would currently want to write such a program. As for why wizards hasn't done so, I can imagine that the return on investment just isn't there. They seem to be lacking in enough manpower to finish the apps that they have currently. The level of polish that it takes for them to release an app also greatly increases the amount of time that it takes.