This is mainly for house rule junkies, but I've uploaded the MS Word text for the Swords & Wizardry Core Rules. That's 0e, using the Supplement 1 numbers/variable attacks, etc. Anyone who's been waiting for cut-and-paste capability for the GH 0e or for S&W, it's up. Second link from the top. http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/?page_id=18
Free, obviously.

Mods, feel free to move: I figured this post is the equivalent of mentioning a free dice-rolling program, etc.

Interesting. It'd be cool if you let us know later whether, in your opinion, putting up the PDF for free has lead to an increase in sales for you of the print books.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;291559Interesting. It'd be cool if you let us know later whether, in your opinion, putting up the PDF for free has lead to an increase in sales for you of the print books.

RPGPundit

It's hard to say, because there's no control group.  Also, as it turns out, I don't have very good tracking on the free downloads - repeat downloaders and bots are definitely showing up in the numbers.  At Lulu, where that's not so much the case, there have been about 1200 downloads, but at the website the numbers are coming in over 14,000 per month (obviously not a real number).  My guess is that the real numbers are maybe 2000-5000 per month.

And I just haven't been tracking it with that in mind, either.  My motive in putting the pdf up for free wasn't to increase sales of print books, it was to spread the game as widely as possible.  I only get a dollar from the print sales, and I put that back into artwork for other Swords & Wizardry products.

I think, if I were trying to maximize profit, I would still put the pdf up for free, but I would consider that a loss leader designed to make money from supplements and resources.  Whether a free pdf increases print sales of the rulebook is very hard to gauge, but I bet it measurably increases sales on modules, for example.  Sales on the S&W intro module (which is deliberately underpriced but still costs money even for the pdf) are about 1.75 times the number of print sales on the rulebooks, so pdf downloaders are definitely going in and purchasing other stuff, even though they got the pdf for free.

Edit: the 1200 downloads at Lulu are an interesting number, because I "advertised" the Lulu location only for print sales.  All the links to the free pdf were made to the website (until the second printing, anyway).  So, those 1200 downloads are all from someone who LOOKED at the books, and then saw the free pdf and decided to download instead of buy.  It's probably not very useful information, but it's interesting.

I can tell you I just checked out the PDF and intend to grab a print copy from Lulu some time down the road. Obviously just a personal take on it, but making the PDF available for free allowed me to make up my mind on S&W. Good stuff!

Quote from: Benoist;291562I can tell you I just checked out the PDF and intend to grab a print copy from Lulu some time down the road. Obviously just a personal take on it, but making the PDF available for free allowed me to make up my mind on S&W. Good stuff!

Benoist, if you keep an eye on the game's forums, at some point soon I'm going to order several books and re-ship them to people in Canada and the UK, where Lulu has high prices for tracked shipping. I've got several people in the UK who want books but don't want to pay the Lulu shipping charges.

That's very good to know, indeed.
My thanks, Mythmere. I'm going to register on the S&W boards.