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

[Paul Farquhar]

You need 400 pieces of paper actively in front of you? In addition to the rulebooks? You can't DM without being able to see all of them at the exact same time?

WOW!

Or maybe you're just actively misunderstanding what I am talking about with having a couple of sheets ready for whatever I am currently running so you can make a point.

I was including rulebooks in the page count. But I’m not really organised enough to have everything I need in front of me (ADHD).

 

[Wolfpack48]

I was including rulebooks in the page count. But I’m not really organised enough to have everything I need in front of me (ADHD).

Typically, I will have my notebook (Moleskine) with the adventure notes, dice, any minis to be used, pencil, dry erase marker and eraser, several printed pages as player aids/handouts, if a published adventure, printed pages maps with markups and highlighting (stapled), and the GM screen. The Rulebooks will be on a shelf or pile nearby but not on the table. Center table we have, if needed, a dry erase map area and minis.

 

[Wolfpack48]

So here's what I mean when I say printing HTML sucks (even if you print to PDF). Browser printing has been frozen in carbonite since Netscape.

 

[darjr]

Eh, whatever.

I don't wan't the digital hyperlinking and integrated digital table top.

Just give me the PDF. They exist. They make them for the printers. I'll take that. Especially if I buy it on DNDBeyond just give me the PDF. Or sell it to me again.

DNDBeyond is fantastic, and lots of people prefer it, and it facilitates wonderful tools many love and use.

It's still silly they don't offer PDFs.

 

[mamba]

So here's what I mean when I say printing HTML sucks (even if you print to PDF). Browser printing has been frozen in carbonite since Netscape.

sure, it could be better, no one said it is the perfect solution. You can download the individual image too

 

[MNblockhead]

So here's what I mean when I say printing HTML sucks (even if you print to PDF). Browser printing has been frozen in carbonite since Netscape.
View attachment 374238

I usually just download as webpage complete if I want to have it off line or if I want to take something and edit it a lot. I like having all the images and other assets in a separate folder with the HTML as I find it easier to work with images that way.

But assuming you want to print to paper or just prefer PDF for consistency with other material or because you prefer the various markup tools and bookmarking in your PDF application, I find that I generally have a better experience printing from D&D Beyond. Not perfect, but satisfactory. I've never seen an image split across pages.

I'm using the latest version of Google Chrome with D&D Beyond. The only setting I change is to remove headers and footers. Images are always moved to the next page, even if that leaves a lot of white space on the prior page. I don't know if images are auto-scaled if a single image itself won't fit on an 8.5x11 or A4 page.

What adventure is your screenshot example from?

 

[mamba]

What adventure is your screenshot example from?

Pharaoh

 

[Staffan]

You don't have space for 3-4 sheets of paper side by side? Sounds like you do, but you fill it with other stuff. I'll take this as "I want to disagree with this person because they don't meet how I run, but I actually prove his way is just fine in the process."

3-4 sheets, perhaps (though the rounded ends of the table make that an issue). 3-4 sheets, rulebooks, adventure, tokens and/or minis, and dice? No way. I mean, if I had the whole table to myself maybe, but the dang players want some room as well.

 

[Chaltab]

You'd probably be okay in that area, since printing (and saving) whatever webpage you're looking at is universal (albeit often not pretty). As for pulling it up in a browser...you'd be able to, but remember that you're essentially renting the content, rather than owning it. If you leave the platform, or if they ever decide to pull/alter it, there'd be nothing you can do.

As a former user of Insider... it's not a matter of if, but when.

 

[MNblockhead]

Pharaoh

View attachment 374242

Yep, it does cut off using the Chrome built-in print to PDF functionality.

Check out the Print Friendly add-in for Chrome: https://bendingbranches.com/blogs/resources/the-best-canoe-trip-portage-pack.

It allows you to scale images without shrinking the text. You can do the same thing by entering some javascript into the F12 console, this extension is just more convenient. It does, however, shrink ALL the images, which doesn't give a great result in a situation like this where you just one problematic image. It allows you to remove images or individual elements from a page before printing, but doesn't allow you to resize individual element, unfortunately.

You could probably write some javascript to shrink only select images, but that's not very convenient if you run into this issue often and do a lot of printing from websites.

Nearly any other idea I can think of off the top of my head requires even more busy work. E.g.: download as webpage complete, resize the problem image, open the HTML file and print.

I looked at whether I could print to PDF as normal and resize the image in Adobe Acrobat. I can, but...when the image is split across two pages it become two images in the PDF. So you can't just select the image and resize it to fit to one page.

For something like this, I can at least print the entire adventure to a ~25 page PDF, even fewer pages if I shrink down the images before printing. Then download and print the map images separately. It isn't that much time to prep for an entire adventure. But if you have websites with the adventure split over many separate pages, it would be a pain.