Can Dungeons & Dragons And PDFs Co-Exist?

Can Dungeons & Dragons And PDFs Co-Exist?


Last week’s news that Wizards Of The Coast would make classic editions and modules for Dungeons And Dragons available for download had me initially excited; I love classic AD&D/D&D. Then I remembered. I still have all that stuff in physical form! How do the PDF versions compare?

That photo above? My RPG shelf, sans miniatures. Sure, some of it is a touch kobold-eared here and there, but it’s been well-loved over the years. It’s a canny move on Wizards Of The Coast’s part to re-issue the books as PDFs; while they’re in no way free (and my inner cynic suggests there are probably dodgy scans of them out there somewhere), those who left AD&D behind somewhere around 2nd, 3rd or 4th edition might find some old-school roleplaying glee in there somewhere.

There’s the obvious conclusion that I could save myself some shelf space — for now, the site only offers AD&D/D&D content, although it’s part of the larger Drive Thru RPG site, which has plenty of other role playing goodies — and take things into the digital age with it.

So, I decided the best thing to do was to pick up a PDF and give it a spin. The ordering process is nicely simple. The PDFs are priced (with some already on “special”, although there are a whole host of classic modules that I can’t see there yet); you pick out your order, pay via credit card or Paypal and a watermarked PDF is prepared for you. For the sake of familiarity, I went for the $4.99 D&D Classic Set Rulebook. (The now very old red box set, for those of you of a certain vintage.)

There is something deep in my soul that’s a little upset that it’s only a 7.5MB download, but then, in theory, it’s not the size that counts, and at least that means it’s a quick download. There’s no evident DRM beyond watermarking (which appears at the bottom left of each and every page), so transfer to a tablet or phone is trivial. I was somewhat concerned from the appearance of the first couple of pages that they might be lazy image scans, but thankfully that’s not so. These are fully searchable PDFs, which means whenever I need to know how many spells a level 3 Elf has (2 first level + 1 second level), I can do so seamlessly.

As an entry point to the classic games, they’re quite good value. I genuinely couldn’t tell you how many hours I’ve plumbed into these games over the years. Still, I’ve got to admit that I don’t think I’ll be dumping my classic books just yet. There’s something nice about physical paper for a game with physical dice. I could be tempted, however, with some harder-to-get modules at these kinds of prices.


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