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> Tags: [[tag:Books]] [[tag:RPG]] [[tag:publishing]]
How weird. My renewed interested in roleplaying games (RPG) has led me to a few sites, and it’s amazing to see how much material is offered either for download – either free (specially “light” versions of the rules) or for a few dollars.
Examples: GURPS Lite is free on e23 and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia is $5.95 from RPG Now.
And if you start reading EN World reviews you’ll notice that many of them review PDF files instead of actual books. How amazing! And as far as I can tell, these PDF files are not burdened with evil DRM! At least the D&D Rules Cyclopedia I bought was an ordinary PDF file. (2006-11-09 Nostalgia for Rolplaying Games) Well, I didn’t really care for all the backgrounds blowing the file size up to over 70MB, but it’s still nice to see that you can get old stuff as well. I mean, you can download the AD&D 2nd Ed. Dungeon Masters Guide for $4.95 from RPG Now!
As I said – I’m stunned!
Yes, I admit it. I spent most of my gaming in AD&D 2nd Ed. 
As for the price tag: I think CHF 5 would be fair, which is about USD 3. Why are the PDF files I mentioned about twice as expensive? I guess I have to consider the alternative scenario of getting a printed book and doing the scanning and OCR myself. Even if I share it with a large group of people, I’d still be spending a lot of time on it. That’s why I’m still willing to pay the price.
Other products such as a four page character class description is much cheaper. Lost Classes: Sword of Khonsu costs $1.29, for example. Cool!
On the upper end, something as cool as the about 350 page MonkeyGod Presents: From Stone to Steel costs $18.00 and the nearly 200 page Kitsunemori Campaign Setting costs $13.95 and there’s a twenty page free preview available for download! (Read the raving review!) And there’s both print and PDF releases, eg. The Asian Bestiary, Vol. I - PDF and The Asian Bestiary, Vol. II - PDF are available for download at $16.99 each, where as the print edition costs $24.99. (Reviews at EN World [1] [2].)
Maybe I should buy the Kitsunemori instead of trying to write something up myself. I wonder how much a professional printing would cost. I gave SauterCopy a call and they told me it would cost about CHF 200, ie. about USD 160 to print. Ugh!! Who said anything about eBooks being cheap and cool!? I guess I’ll have to get used to using my laptop when running a game. Or use black & white when printing.
Too late.
I bought it. 
Tags: Books RPG publishing