Purple Snit's page

I have a question: I'm not condoning anything, here, I'm just honestly curious. In the heady old days of the 1980's, you could [and often did] borrow a D&D rulebook from the library or a friend, photocopy what you wanted, and return the book. Pretty much everyone in the local gaming groups did that with the books and Dragon mag, and created their own little binders of relevant rules. No-one ever talked about prosecuting them for copyright theft, and I know people still do this with library books/magazines on all topics. So - what's the difference [ethically or legally] between borrowing a library book and copying parts of it for personal use, and doing likewise with a PDF or hard copy that you borrow from someone else? Is it the scale of the distribution that's causing the problem? Was it always illegal, just not a big enough issue to prosecute or pursue? Have the laws changed?
As to turning someone in for having pirated materials - I think it would be pretty hard to prove anything, and as a former Gaming Store manager, I really couldn't find a reason to bar or punish someone for doing so. in fact, I think I'd get in a lot of trouble if I tried to enforce any sort of ban based on hearsay.

And I think the term "theft" applies to physically removing something. If you lose something physical [such as the bank example], then I stole it. If I copied it without permission, that's not theft, it's piracy [under today's terminology]. It doesn't change things, just clarifies the terms used.

Actually the primary threat to FLGS was and still is sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and... Paizo itself. Gamers are happy enough to use the social services of game stores and then snub them by buying online for cheaper. WOTC never made a big thing of selling online until very recently and it's still not a major implementation for them.

Exactly my experience - the local gaming stores have lousy selection, and they hike their prices on the stuff they do have, so I can get the same books for substantial discount from an on-line retailer. Why pay $44 for the Pathfinder APG when I can get it on-line for $27? This doesn't even touch the issue of the lousy selection; with money being tight, most people won't shell out bucks sight-unseen for a book, so if they can't hold it and browse it, they won't buy it at all. And, right or wrong, this has influenced some of the instances of piracy that I have heard of. It's a vicious circle; the store won't carry it because it doesn't sell, and it doesn't sell because they won't carry it. So more people try to get it any way they can, fail to pay for their copy, sales fall further, gaming companies lose money, and the hobby keeps shrinking. It's a complicated issue, it applies to music as well as RPGs, and I don't pretend to know what the solution is.

I've liked Anti-Paladins since First Edition of a certain other game [Unofficially, of course]. If the Demon vs. Horse seems unbalanced, consider this; any Paladin worth his/her salt should have allies by that level, and could very easily have an Angel of some sort as one of said allies. And that would balance things nicely. It's just a matter of the story being told; not every GM will go for that, of course, but if you explain it well, I don't see why this is impossible.

So here's my experience regarding PDFs and RPGs. I live in a fairly small town, and it's a long drive to a bigger one - I only get there a couple of times a year if I'm lucky [kids eat up the Gaming budget really quickly...]. The local Gaming stores don't carry much selection, and take a "Well, we don't carry it because it doesn't sell" attitude; never mind that it doesn't sell because they don't stock it in the first place. But this means that I have to shell out a lot of money blind if I want to check out something new in detail. Free PDFs and samples have exposed me to a lot of titles I would never have picked up otherwise, because I can't afford to spend $30-$50 canadian to buy a hardcover I haven't even seen. This has all led to me buying MORE material, not less. Sure, PDFs are awkward, because they require a computer to access them, but they are certainly a convenient source of material for a lot of people, and the reduced price is sometimes enough incentive to convince me to pick them up, even if I then have to print parts of them off to take to a game. Today's shopper wants convenience, something the Gaming Stores just don't seem to have grasped. As long as I can get it now, or have Chapters.ca deliver it to my door for free shipping, why would I waste time trying to convince a Gaming store troll to order it, maybe get it in 2-4 weeks, pay a deposit, etc.? The market is changing, and the retailers need to recognize this. And so, it seems, do a few Seashore-dwelling Thaumaturges...