WotC rereleases every version of D&D

[Sorontar]

http://kryptonradio.com/2013/01/23/wizards-of-the-coast-rereleases-every-version-of-dungeons-dragons/


The products for sale include a combination of core rules books, adventure series (what us old gamers call “modules”), supplement materials, and various backlist products from most of the D&D rules systems known to gaming-kind — Basic, AD&D, AD&D 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, 3.5 and 4.0 — as well as specific campaign settings like Planescape and Ravenloft.

Basically, they are releasing on PDF most old adventures. While the online shop (http://www.dndclassics.com) does have Birthright as a value for the settings filter, it doesn't presently have anything for sale there. We can but wait.

Sorontar

[Vicente]

The scans quality is very good: you can search them, they are bookmarked,... And the product information is a joy to read too :)

In general, an impressive work by WotC at least from my pov :)

[Thelandrin]

I wonder what happens about those people who bought TSR PDFs back in the day (before they were yanked from electronic stores everywhere). I doubt that they will get a refund.

[Magian]

I don't think they would either. It is likely under some new legal provision that differs from the SRD designation.

I am sure they have concluded that all their products are out there on .pdf already free to download, so they may as well try to make it available and legal and get some money for it. Once everything is scanned into .pdf the products revenue is likely cost effective.

[Vicente]

I wonder what happens about those people who bought TSR PDFs back in the day (before they were yanked from electronic stores everywhere). I doubt that they will get a refund.

If you bought them on DriveThru/RPGNow, those .pdfs are again available to you for download (in their new improved versions). I think they are not available again if you bought them in other stores like Paizo.

[marcum uth mather]

Still no Birthright stuff though... But it does look great!

[Vicente]

I suppose they will come in time :) They have probably to re-scan and OCR everything and that takes time (and I suppose they will start with the most popular books first).

[AndrewTall]

I suspect that I'll buy a copy of everything despite having it all in hardcopy already - does that make me weird?

I just figure that someday I'll wear out the maps, etc so a soft copy would act as a back up ;-)

[Magian]

Not at all. I have the same plan even if I have hard and soft copies. I will be interested in the quality of the scans. I want perfection or closer to it than I could do. Scans that I have could use improvement.

[Vicente]

I'll be doing the same, good pdfs are really really appreciated for me :) (I love physical books, but pdfs are very handy).

[Thelandrin]

PDFs also have the search facility. :D

[Arjan]

PDFs also have the search facility. :D

that is IF they are perfectly OCR traced.. i know i have tried in the past.. but back then it was a pain in the ass to correct everything.
perhaps they have some better equipment as i did :)

[Vicente]

The new ones are done like that Arjan :) So you can search happily on them :)

[Green Knight]

I'll re-by BR (on top of my physical copies and digital scans):

IF they make new good scans that include all the pages presented in a decent fasion AND has searchable text etc.

[AndrewTall]

Printable maps would be nice too - preferably ones that you can re-size so that they all have the same scale!

[bigmac]

I wonder what happens about those people who bought TSR PDFs back in the day (before they were yanked from electronic stores everywhere). I doubt that they will get a refund.

I doubt they would get a refund too.

If people think that Birthright is cool and they bought one or more PDF, why would they be due a refund, if WotC later publish better PDFs? The people that bought those earlier PDFs got what they asked for and had the opportunity to play Birthright games. I would say they had their "value for money" from their PDFs.

As Vicente said, people that bought their PDFs from DriveThru (aka RPG Now) will now get the chance to upgrade to the new PDFs for free. Those older PDFs were cheaper, so that is a great deal for anyone that bought these back in the day.

That isn't the case with people that bought them from Paizo, but those other customers still got value for money from what they bought. The only thing that I think is a bit of a shame is that anyone that has lost PDFs they bought from Paizo has no way to replace their copies. It would be nice if Paizo were allowed to provide their old files to anyone who has lost them. However, with Paizo offering an updated version of the SRD and keeping the 3rd Edition rules alive, I'm guessing that Wizards of the Coast are very unlikely to do anything to help Paizo customers.

[Urieal]

Hi fellas. I'm new here, but I thought I would chime in on the dndclassics.com products that I have.

For the most part, all the items I have purchased from the site have been very good quality scans. They aren't perfect, but I have printed everything I've purchased (most of the X modules, Moldvay basic, Cook/Marsh Expert, Mentzer basic, some B modules) has printed without any problems. I actually printed 5 copies of the Mentzer Basic PHB for all my players :).

That being said, the quality of the Rules Cyclopedia is mediocre at best. The illegal one floating around the internet is higher quality all respects, except that there is no color and that the tables are misaligned.

The maps in the modules have printed well. Not perfect. But certainly good enough for play at the table.

[Vicente]

Quite sad that the RC quality is bad, it's probably one of the most interesting PDFs they could put up there...