https://youtu.be/Qv0_NMP-vBY

It's just two kindles bound together, but what an innovation! Could this be the future of tabletop gaming books as well? Imagine all of your gaming books and adventure modules in one of these things.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1095898https://youtu.be/Qv0_NMP-vBY

It's just two kindles bound together, but what an innovation! Could this be the future of tabletop gaming books as well? Imagine all of your gaming books and adventure modules in one of these things.

Reading from front to back it works great and having a library at your finger tips is simply beyond awesome.  eInk does do so well with graphic heavy medium. I prefer using my iPad for that. This includes game books. eInk reader however are beyond awesome for reading novels.

I owned kindles since the first version released from Amazon as well as owning an iPad. In general tablets PDF readers and e-books are not great as references. A printed book is easier to get around due to the ease of flipping paper pages.

In contrast well designed apps are a different story. I have used several, the best is the Crawler Companion for the DCC RPG especially how it automatics table lookup for the DCC RPG numerous charts. I started to use DnD Beyond and it work very well as a reference. The Compendium works similarly on Roll20 when I using the VTT. Useful enough that I think RPGs that have app reference support will have an advantage over those that done.

The Apps solve the reference issue by having well structured searches and menus to zero on the rule or material you are looking up. EInk readers and PDF readers are replicating books and have indices, table of contents and searches. Now the two screen of the ebook in the video may solve this if the left screen has the index or ToC up and the right screen changes depending on what you select.  That would nearly be the equivalent of keeping one of your fingers next to the ToC/Index will flipping through the rulebook.

I think reference apps with built in RPG utilities are the way to go.

Not my future. Physical books will always be better than any tech they come up with. Always.

Quote from: Graewulf;1095911Not my future. Physical books will always be better than any tech they come up with. Always.

I have some Egyptians and Sumerians that would disagree with you.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1095898https://youtu.be/Qv0_NMP-vBY

It's just two kindles bound together, but what an innovation! Could this be the future of tabletop gaming books as well? Imagine all of your gaming books and adventure modules in one of these things.

For starters, the pages look too small. I had to get reading glasses to read regular size pages, Anything smaller is going to be difficult for me.
For next-ers, for e-books to replace my physical books, they have to have the functionality of a physical book. IE being able to flip back and forth rapidly between sections, stick my fingers in-between pages as a temporary bookmark, that kind of thing. I've tried to use e-books at the table, and it's just not practical at the moment.
I encourage them to keep at it though! Being able to carry my whole library on one pad style device would be great if the useability issues were addressed.

Quote from: Graewulf;1095911Not my future. Physical books will always be better than any tech they come up with. Always.

Preach it brother!!!

Unless we're talking about those 600+ page monstrosities some companies like to churn out, printed books will always be more useful for me to bring to the game table. As far as digital goes, most companies could be doing a lot more to make PDFs a better option for those that would like to use them over physical books. Nova Praxis is still probably the standard for me when it comes to how to do an rpg PDF, and if more companies put that sort of usability into their PDFs I imagine there would be a lot more people willing to rely on digital books for gaming.

Ideally, what I'd like is something in full color that can double-page display a 5E D&D size hardback.  Nice big display.  Doesn't have to have a web browser or anything else like that, just sharp display with full color capability.

I vastly prefer physical books to PDFs, but there are definite advantages to electronic copies.  One of them being "does not take up large amounts of physical space" and another being "much, MUCH less of a pain in the ass to move."

Quote from: Cave Bear;1095898https://youtu.be/Qv0_NMP-vBY

It's just two kindles bound together, but what an innovation! Could this be the future of tabletop gaming books as well? Imagine all of your gaming books and adventure modules in one of these things.

The future is Now, peasant!

While you masturbate over what you think is the latest technological achievement, the rest of us are using the most appropriate tool for the job! We Are Getting Shit Done while you continue to worship at the altar of technology and you do not even realize that Your God Is Dead!

(Damn, but this is some good bourbon!)

Quote from: Thornhammer;1095971Ideally, what I'd like is something in full color that can double-page display a 5E D&D size hardback.  Nice big display.  Doesn't have to have a web browser or anything else like that, just sharp display with full color capability.

I vastly prefer physical books to PDFs, but there are definite advantages to electronic copies.  One of them being "does not take up large amounts of physical space" and another being "much, MUCH less of a pain in the ass to move."

I've recently moved from the People's Republic of China back to South Korea. I'm not normally a gadget-guy, but after shipping this heavy-ass box of books, ebook readers are starting to look a lot more attractive to me.

I remember some Kickstarters having stretch goals like "if we raise X number of dollars, we'll pay this other person to do a thing and if we get an even bigger number of dollars we'll pay yet another person to do another thing." That seems like a good model, keeps the main creator from dumping too much on their own plate, spreads some risk around and gives those subsidiary creators a chance to build up a track record as "person who does what they said they'd do on Kickstarter" which'd be helpful if/when they want to run their own Kickstarter campaign.

Do they cartridges that give off that "new book smell"? which then fades to that rich "old book smell" after a few years?

If not - GTFO.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1095898It's just two kindles bound together, but what an innovation! Could this be the future of tabletop gaming books as well? Imagine all of your gaming books and adventure modules in one of these things.

Looks a little gimmicky and on the other hand I would buy the heck out of a DnD or Pathfinder version.

And since WotC can not find their electronic ass with both hands it would most likely be Paizo who did it.

Quote from: Graewulf;1095911Not my future. Physical books will always be better than any tech they come up with. Always.

Then weep, because college textbooks are going all digital.

Dr. Egon Spangler was right.  "Print is dead."  He was just about forty years off.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1096004I've recently moved from the People's Republic of China back to South Korea. I'm not normally a gadget-guy, but after shipping this heavy-ass box of books, ebook readers are starting to look a lot more attractive to me.

I moved from Singapore to Oz back in 2002... and then Oz to Singapore, Singapore to Oz, Oz to Singapore, Oz and Singapore to the Philippines, and soon Philippines to Oz again (I think that's it) and I realised that having half-a-tonne of books was proving to be a costly part of my lifestyle choices. I've been moving to digital for everything ever since.

So, yeah, I understand the attraction of the grognardism behind "real books are the only books" but the practicalities of my life simply don't allow that luxury anymore. And then there's the dust, the danger of termites (goodbye 1E products!), and the inability to read real books in bed with the light off, just to name a few more things.