Quote from: Melan;573119Try finding posts from old message boards or blogs to see what I mean. Actually, try free game materials from defunct blogs

That's because the owner forgot to pay the bill, or if the service stopped providing free forums or blogs, the owner didn't transfer the blog or board over to a new service. Or perhaps it's because the owner didn't care to update it or take care of it any longer and deleted it from his account. It's always the fault of the owner. I know from experience.

If they are smart, POD.  That's the most efficient way to get my money, as well as the largest sum they can possibly hope for.

I'm afraid they'll make it subscription-only, then declare there is no interest for these products when it bombs.

I thought everyone knew that backups were a thing everyone needed to do.

Quote from: Stainless;572587Whatever the reason(s), something has changed in their thinking. They withdrew them reportedly due to piracy (and possibly because they feared old items were detracting from the sales of new items). Thus, by a process of elimination, they must now feel either;

i) Piracy is no longer an issue (perhaps because they have a subscription model in mind)
ii) They no longer feel old items will significantly stop people buying the latest and greatest releases.
iii) They accept piracy as inevitable and decreasing current release sales will happen, but the revenue stream from reissuing material will sufficiently compensate for this.
iv) They don't know what the fuck they should be doing.

I figure it's v) D&D Next isn't coming out until 2014 and they need to have some income stream for the brand next year.

Quote from: Piestrio;573211I thought everyone knew that backups were a thing everyone needed to do.

Some do them, some don't. I had a crash a few years ago and now do them religiously - but I guess you have to go through that mess to be able to see the need.

Quote from: Melan;573119If you care about keeping your documents/data, cloud computing is even more problematic than local electronic copies.

That could be putting it mildly if one doesn't have local backups.

Quote from: Benoist;572255DDI-required would be a no go from me. I will NEVER sign up to DDI again. Period.

What if the subscription gave you streaming access to the entire back catalog?

Honestly curious. That might be the only thing that would make me consider a DDI subscription.

Quote from: CRKrueger;572566Hence the reprints and opening up the entire catalog again for sale.  It has nothing to do with olive branches to older editions, it's simply bringing revenue in so Hasbro doesn't send the Hatchetman around.

I still think it's adorable that grognards think the 1E reprint project is bringing anything even remotely resembling meaningful income to WotC.

Making the PDFs available again might be significant in aggregate. But the reprints? Even if they sold 10,000 copies of each 1E core rulebook (which they won't), it would still constitute nothing more than a rounding error on WotC's financial statements.

Quote from: Melan;573119If you want to keep a supplement, get a downloaded PDF copy. If you want to keep it reliably, back it up on a DVD or a spare drive.

Reliable backup of a digital library is not hard:

(1) When you buy a hard drive to keep your digital library, buy two identical drives.

(2) Copy the contents of your digital library onto all three drives.

(3) Once per month, copy the contents of your digital library onto one of your backup drives.

(4) Take that drive to a different location: Your office. A deposit box. A relative's house. Whatever.

(5) Bring the other backup drive back to your house. Next month, repeats steps 3-5.

If you do that, your digital library will be more secure and will last longer than a library of physical books.

Re: Cloud. I'll happily use it, but I'll never rely on it. Cloud backups are a good idea; but the data in the cloud is a backup and should never be treated as the primary document.

The only time a primary document ever exists in the cloud for me is if I'm using the cloud to access the document across multiple machines. And even then, that document is being regularly backed up to a location which is not connected to or dependent on the cloud. (One of the reasons I like Dropbox is because its architecture is based on keeping synchronized local copies. If Dropbox went bankrupt or was hit by a nuke tomorrow, the files in the Dropbox folders on my various computers would still be there.)

Quote from: Melan;573119If you care about keeping your documents/data, cloud computing is even more problematic than local electronic copies. The cloud infrastructure is not in your hands, and while usually managed by large, well-capitalised corporations, there are no guarantees they will be around in 15-20 years, let alone 40-50. And RPGs are almost 40 years old now.

Absolutely.  I didn't say I was happy about cloud computing gaining ground.    If there were concomitant improvements in 'internet anywhere', it would be less of a problem.

QuoteMy hunch is that at some time in the future, we will be seeing a decay and/or collapse of multiple clouds, leading to massive data loss that will wipe out much of the current decades from long-term cultural memory. I mean, sure my e-mails from 2005 on Gmail are not Paul's epistles, but if you care about ephemera, which RPG stuff mostly belongs to, it is going to be serious. Try finding posts from old message boards or blogs to see what I mean. Actually, try free game materials from defunct blogs.

I am hoping you are wrong; I fear you aren't.

QuoteIf you want to keep a supplement, get a downloaded PDF copy. If you want to keep it reliably, back it up on a DVD or a spare drive. If you really care about it, produce a bound physical copy. And if you are really interested in archival, transcribe it on vellum instead of the cheap crap that goes for paper nowadays. Okay, stone tablets are taking things a bit too far. But only a bit.

Well, that investment in chisels and marble slabs seems less wise now.  

Along the lines of this thread, if anyone has a pdf collection and wouldn't mind paying roughly $8/month for a backup solution, contact me and I can share with you what I chose.  Works great, all free software, and no fear of my vendor going under or raising my rates (with the exception of my hosting provider, in which case I can easily select another one...)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;573925What if the subscription gave you streaming access to the entire back catalog?

Honestly curious. That might be the only thing that would make me consider a DDI subscription.

I still wouldn't. The reason is that I had a DDI subscription before, I did try the service, and it was a huge pain in the ass jumping through hoops with WotC's customer service to actually get them to stop the subscription when I wanted it to.

Getting a subscription is a fucking trap, an open door for a corporation to then ignore you and keep pumping cash out of your paycheck. I will not take a subscription with WotC digital-anything ever again. I want print-on-demand on an online store. That failing, PDFs, without any kind of subscription required.

POD FTW.

If I want to use gaming product at the table then I want hardcopy. I use a computer sometimes to aid in game prep but never have one at the table. Having anything internet capable at the table always ends up being a huge distraction and a general pain in the ass.

My only concern with POD would be the pricing of boxed sets/poster maps.

Anyone have any idea how that would work?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;574118POD FTW.

If I want to use gaming product at the table then I want hardcopy. I use a computer sometimes to aid in game prep but never have one at the table. Having anything internet capable at the table always ends up being a huge distraction and a general pain in the ass.

You can always print out the pages you need from a pdf.  If you don't have a reliable printer at home, you can hit Kinko's.  They are sometimes a pain in the ass, but if you hit the night shift and generally keep to yourself, they don't usually catch on unless you try to print 150 pages or something.  Not always the best or easiest, of course, but usually less expensive than a whole book, especially a POD book.

I find that I only really need the important charts or lists at the table for quick reference.  Rules disputes can wait five minutes or so to dig up the rule in a pdf and figure out a solution.

Quote from: Melan;573119And if you are really interested in archival, transcribe it on vellum instead of the cheap crap that goes for paper nowadays. Okay, stone tablets are taking things a bit too far.

Stone is for chumps!

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/02/scientologys_se.php

QuoteWhen Gill arrived in 1988, he says, the Rimforest vault was about a third of the way to completion. It consisted of twin, cylindrical underground repositories with corrugated steel walls, and a suspended concrete floor about a third of the way up from the bottom of the cylinders.

"They were about 17 to 20 feet tall," Gill says. "There were two portals where it goes between the two steel pipes."

As with similar vaults farther north in California, in New Mexico, and another one under construction in Wyoming, the point of the vaults is to store L. Ron Hubbard's writings and lectures in the form of etched steel plates in titanium containers, as well as in other forms, so that his "technology" could survive a nuclear attack and help reform society in an apocalyptic world.

But in 1988, that was still well in the future. The titanium capsules were still in the planning stages, and much of CST's work involved simply archiving all of Hubbard's written and spoken words, organizing them, and xeroxing them on acid-free paper.

"The capsules were still being researched. The etching of the plates was being started, and compact discs were being researched, too," Gill says.

I asked him what the plans for the titanium capsules looked like. "It was like a banker's box, and you'd have a place to fill it with inert gas, like argon gas," he says.

Imagine future adventurers unearthing the entrance and braving the trap- and monster-laden tomb to find... bad science fiction and the inchoate ramblings of a narcissist?

(Treasure type "W" for What The Fuck Did We Just Get?!)