D&D 5E So what's the scoop on D&D in PDF Format?

[SteveC]

Hear that? that is the sound of a horde of people coming in to tell you how PDF is inferior and how you can just print it to file and it's just as good.

I have been hearing that for years. Except no one has been creating any sort of serious RPGs for online use that aren't in PDF. It does have issues, to be sure, but alternatives are worse. I go to several different sites to grab RPG PDFs, and really none of them use any other format. Not that I'd mind something different, though.

 

[Staffan]

So just did my first digital purchase for Quests from the Infinite Staircase. Count me unimpressed. HTML is so much more unwieldly than a pdf, though I guess I can use it to print out a map or two.

I've recently been running Infinity primarily from PDFs on my laptop, and I find myself missing D&D Beyond's/PF2's HTML* so much. HTML lets me have a single flow of text instead of having to skip up and down a page when the text flows across a column or page break, and lets me have multiple tabs from the same file open for referencing multiple things.

For example, if the players are, as they are likely to be when we play next week, about to help the police apprehend some criminals of two different factions that's a fight where I have to deal with NPCs with four different stat blocks (detective, police, zealot, smuggler) across two different books. There's a map and a key to the map on two different pages in the adventure book, with the stats for one of the NPC types being on the same page as the map. Stats for the other three NPC types are in the core book, on three different pages. Combat rules are also in the core book, with vital information in a few different places – and since we recently started playing the game, I'm going to need to refer back to those rules. I'll probably also need to check some player special abilities and weapon traits, which again are in different places in the core book. So, if I had access to a D&D Beyond-type service when running this, I'd be using something like 10 different tabs and have all the information I need right at my fingertips (and easily readable because I get to tell my web browser to zoom in to the right level without it breaking the text flow). But instead I have to flip back and forth in my PDF reader which is a frickin' nuisance.

I will grant you that it might be more pleasurable to read a PDF just for reading's sake, although I'm fairly certain that that's mainly a matter of just being used to it. But when actually playing or running a game? I'll take a web site any day of the week and twice on Wednesdays (which is when we play).

* or HTML derivate, or code that generates HTML/XHTML or whatever it's called these days.

Hear that? that is the sound of a horde of people coming in to tell you how PDF is inferior and how you can just print it to file and it's just as good.

Reporting for duty, sir. And why would you want to print it? The whole point is to have it all on the screen so I don't need to have a bunch of paper lying around being useless.

 

[Bacon Bits]

So just did my first digital purchase for Quests from the Infinite Staircase. Count me unimpressed. HTML is so much more unwieldly than a pdf, though I guess I can use it to print out a map or two.

Wait until you have several books and want the equivalent of PDF's Ctrl+F. Or if you want to use the index that's in the printed copy. There are things I like about the D&DBeyond format, but it's much harder to use as a reference for something you only partly remember.

The fact that the Compendium category is a dumping ground for everything including adventure module text is incredibly frustrating the moment you start to search for something that you know is in a given book but you've forgotten which chapter.

 

[Reynard]

Reporting for duty, sir. And why would you want to print it? The whole point is to have it all on the screen so I don't need to have a bunch of paper lying around being useless.

Do you know what printing to file is? As a hint: it doesn't involve paper.

 

[Staffan]

Do you know what printing to file is? As a hint: it doesn't involve paper.

Ah, my bad. I read print the file, not to file.

Not that I'd want to do that either, seeing as I prefer it as HTML.

 

[Reynard]

Ah, my bad. I read print the file, not to file.

Not that I'd want to do that either, seeing as I prefer it as HTML.

But you don't own it if you don't have it in a savable format.

 

[MNblockhead]

Wait until you have several books and want the equivalent of PDF's Ctrl+F. Or if you want to use the index that's in the printed copy. There are things I like about the D&DBeyond format, but it's much harder to use as a reference for something you only partly remember.

The fact that the Compendium category is a dumping ground for everything including adventure module text is incredibly frustrating the moment you start to search for something that you know is in a given book but you've forgotten which chapter.

Yeah, they need to improve search options. Bring in some AI to allow more effective natural language searches. Also have a rules reference with an alphatized index linking to rules accross multiple books. Finally, a feature that allows you to create your own DMs screen or reference article with easy ways to send content or cross-links to it as you review the rule books would be nice.

They've developed some nice new features in DDB, such as Maps, but they've done very little to improve the search and lookup features.

I still prefer searching in DDB than having multiple PDFs open and using CTRL+F.

Not that I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy RPG in Foundry, with all of the rule books in Foundry Journals, I find that the best of both worlds. I can search across all of my content. I can copy a link to just about every object, whether a journal, actor, item, roll table, etc. by clicking a button, or dragging it to a journal. And when I want to a PDF (e.g. there are some games where seeing things as they were formatted for print--especially some adventure material--is useful), I can embed that into a journal so I don't have to have a separate PDF reader open.

The one thing that I can't do is have the content of PDFs embedded in journals indexed and searchable for running searches across all content. I can search within a single, displayed PDF, but that content is not included in any "universal" search. But for WFRP, it doesn't really matter, because I already have that content in Journals. I just have the PDFs available when I want to see the original formatting.

Apparently, the Pathfinder 2e game system for foundry has modules that allow you to import a PDF and have it converted to Foundry journals. Apparently it works well. If more game systems in Foundry or other tools had such functionality I would be far more pro-PDF. Because PDF would then be a universal format that you could import into usable content into your VTT. But for now, in the systems I play, I would have to do it manually, which would be turning my hobby into an unpaid data-entry job.

 

[mamba]

But you don't own it if you don't have it in a savable format.

HTML is a savable format

 

[FarBeyondC]

HTML is a savable format

I can't think of a worse format to save to than HTML.

 

[mamba]

I can't think of a worse format to save to than HTML.

I can