Quote from: Dumarest;962159That is a very good point. No resale value, no collector value.

I don't buy anything to collect it, but to use it. So resale value is irrelevant to me, personally.

I enjoy PDF's greatly. I find them very useful. But I'm a book guy. Any game that I run, I generally get the PDF's for that game too for extra reference. I normally GM with book in hand, and laptop at ready with extraneous PDF's and notes on multiple tabs for easy access.

So I do both. My needle has certainly moved. I used to disdain PDF use, but I'm a slave to efficiency... so here I am. PDF + Book.

Quote from: Kiero;962388I don't buy anything to collect it, but to use it. So resale value is irrelevant to me, personally.

That's allowed.

Beta, Cassettes, VHS, DVD, HDDVD.

When the "Big One" finally hits Vancouver I'll have some nice copies of AD&D2 in my emergency gear and if the earthquake doesn't damage them all my books on my shelves.  Once you have enough food, water and emergency gear stockpiled the next most dangerous thing is boredom.  PDFs can't do fuck all for you when the power goes out.

Great recent example: a big windstorm a couple of years ago cut off all power the whole weekend.  Luckily my buddy had just loaned me the first Dresden Files novel so I was covered.  I mean I still had my full library anyway but if I'd been depending on something running off a battery I could have been in trouble.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;962324Pencil doesn't work on screens, and markers leave awful stains.
Paper for me as well, all the time.

Xodo (Android) among many other apps, lets you take typewritten and hand-drawn notes on PDFs.

Quote from: KingCheops;962407Great recent example: a big windstorm a couple of years ago cut off all power the whole weekend.  Luckily my buddy had just loaned me the first Dresden Files novel so I was covered.  I mean I still had my full library anyway but if I'd been depending on something running off a battery I could have been in trouble.

I've played D&D by candle light during a power outage that lasted all evening.  Admittedly, we could have pulled out some board games instead and still had fun, but D&D was the first choice of the people in the room.

Eventually, I suspect that the PDF (or better replacement format) tech and associated devices will catch up to the point that I find it compelling, but it isn't there yet.  Also, if I don't like the content, it doesn't matter what format it is.  I can not purchase and read the PDF just as easily as I can not purchase and read the book.  I've noticed zero difference in cost/benefit between the two forms in that case. The content that I enjoy fits quite well in the space I have dedicated to those books.

Quote from: Tod13;962408Xodo (Android) among many other apps, lets you take typewritten and hand-drawn notes on PDFs.

You've been able to annotate pdfs since, like, forever! (clicks bubblegum) But I never found it faster, or more reliable, than pencil & sticky notes. After my fair share of public speaking preparation, and GMing is not all that different, I haven't taken to pdfs' advantages over old methods of preparation.

That said, yes, pdfs are a fantastic tool. Just like power point for presentations and the like, they are a great tool when they work in your favor. (And god, how I wished they always worked in my favor... *sigh* technical difficulties.) But it is still just one of many tools in the arsenal to put one's best best foot forward.

These days I have found I spend a lot more time with the PDFs for games I am running (easier to prep a game with PDFs) but I need the book for general reading and as a quick-access table copy. The book becomes almost more of a symbol of commitment.

If I have a PDF and I don't plan to run the game then it's usually a waste. If I have a PDF for a game I want to run, I need that book, or it is highly unlikely I will get around to running the game with only a PDF. This is specific to me, and probably my Gen X fellows, I suspect...I think post gen-Xers/Millennials are probably finding the PDF to be a preferred resource.

I suspect I might be willing to try running with a PDF if I had a tablet that didn't drain the battery faster than the game going on, or provided a really intuitive interface with the PDF to navigate with. Most PDFs I've got are not optimal for quick searching, though.

Quote from: Kiero;962388I don't buy anything to collect it, but to use it. So resale value is irrelevant to me, personally.

Same here. But sometime you end up with a failure and resale is one way to recoup the expense and pass the game on to someone who may actually like it.

I think Anon's got a point.  If you're going to have a computing device at the table a properly cross-linked wiki would be infinitely more useful for lookups than a pdf.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: S'mon;962315I could never use a pdf to look up stuff in game. I will occasionally do a google rule or monster search on the Internet, especially for Pathfinder stuff, but I could never run an adventure off a pdf - I always print them out. I struggle to imagine how it would be possible to GM an adventure off a screen.

I use a Kindle 2 and it works fine with PDFs for gaming. If I have a scenario then I bullet-point most things and that is easy to use. Even published scenarios work fine. I keep track of NPC wounds etc on a separate piece of paper, as that is easier, but have no problems running scenarios from PDFs.

These days "at the table" can often mean "on Roll20", so my appreciation for pdfs has risen considerably.

I've gotten to like PDFs.

However, some things annoy me.  PDFs that put the maps in the middle of the text. This is a pain in the ass in print as well

And while it's not a big deal on tablets (since they only show one page at a time anyway, or at least mine does), it seems like every PDF has it's default page set to "Single Page, Continuous". That just does not work for RPGs. Or anything, really. And it's almost always zoomed in. So when opening on a computer, you see half a page.

You can set these things when you create a PDF, yet so many companies/people seem to pick the most annoying settings possible.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;962491No one in the first world in the 21st century has any excuse not to have a robust system for backing up their data. If my house burns down I will lose every physical book I own... but my PDFs are as close to forever as anything can be in this world.

(Barring a complete collapse of civilization. And if that happens, I've probably got more important things to be worried about.)

With the advent of ever more hostile and destructive viruses being created. Dont count on that so much.

The other problem is formatting. Unlikely now. But I actually have some files from my old RPG company that are now literally impossible to open because I dont have that type of computer running that type of software anymore. (just some image files seems.) And luckily my old PCX sprite files for Star Frontiers are still kinda readable.