CEO
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If you've ever seen my RPG collection, you might have an idea of how much space hundreds of older D&D books can take up. But thanks to the folks at Wizards of the Coast, now it all fits on the hard drive in my laptop.
Yep, you guessed it, paizo.com now has a huge selection of older D&D and AD&D books, modules, card packs, accessories and rulebooks available for download in PDF form. That's right—everything from the Tomb of Horrors to Axe of the Dwarvish Lords is available at prices that won't destroy your pocketbooks. Most of these PDFs are searchable so you can find the passages you want easily. And there is no minimum purchase! Buy as many as you like, or just get that one product you've been looking for. While you are at it, you can stock up on any of the other products sold on paizo.com, digital or not, and you only have to check out once! Further, if any of the Wizards of the Coast PDF's you buy from us are updated in the future, we'll email you to let you know that you can download the updated PDF for free.
Also, keep an eye out—we'll soon be adding PDFs from non-D&D product lines including Alternity, the Amazing Engine, Gamma World, Gangbusters, Dragonlance Saga, and even Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys!
So delve back into the history of TSR and relive some classics, or experience them for the first time!
This is su-weet.
Yeah!!
WaterdhavianFlapjack
Feel free to review all your old favorites.
I'm 11 again!
- rob
Giddiness!
Now I have information on areas that aren't covered in 3E updates.
Okay, I have a question about these pdfs. Are they "protected" by DRM? Are they watermarked? What sort of pdf am I getting? All important things to know before I decide to purchase any of them.
Stephen Miller
Ancient Gamer and Curmudgeon
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Chief Technical Officer
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Are they "protected" by DRM? Are they watermarked?
They're watermarked.
What sort of pdf am I getting?
I'm not totally sure what you're asking here. The older ones were clearly scanned and OCR'd; some of the later ones appear to have been generated from files. Is that what you wanted to know?
-Vic.
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Is that what you wanted to know?
Yes, that is exactly what I needed to know. This should help me in making a decision on purchases. Now I just have to decide on how much I want to spend.
Stephen Miller
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Chief Technical Officer
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Where 's brown box D&D and GreyHawk supplement 1?
We can only post what Wizards has given us thus far; we're enquiring about some of the missing products. I know that some have never been turned into PDFs. Hopefully we can help them bring out additional products in the future...
-Vic.
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What exactly is the significance of having a watermark on the pdf?
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Senior Software Developer
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The watermark is just a little bit of text at the top and bottom of each page that indicates when the PDF was personalized, and for whom. The idea is to prevent people from buying a PDF, then posting it to the internet anonymously.
Some PDF download places use DRM, or "digital rights management" technology which is intended to physically prevent anyone but the purchaser from viewing the PDF. This approach is annoying to the customer. And it turns out that it doesn't work, because the DRM can be circumvented, which customers often do just so they can view the PDF they paid for. (Kind of like how many legitimate purchasers of video games will immediately download a "crack" for the game so they don't have to keep the CD in the drive all the time.)
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CEO
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Where 's brown box D&D and GreyHawk supplement 1?
Greyhawk Supplement I was accidentally missed when we put the PDFs online. It should go up later today and be available for sale.
The brown (or white depending on which printing you have) box isn't available yet because it wasn't part of what Wizards sent to us.
-Lisa
I take it these are the same PDFs which used to be available for sale from SVGames until they stopped selling them a few months back, right?
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Chief Technical Officer
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I take it these are the same PDFs which used to be available for sale from SVGames until they stopped selling them a few months back, right?
More or less. We've bundled in previously published errata, and occasionally replaced pages that were missing or damaged - especially covers. Also, we think there might be a couple that SVGames hadn't posted, but we're really not sure.
-Vic.
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Vic,
If you weren't aware of it, there have been problems with some of the classic DnD pdf products. Shawn Stanley of the Vaults of Pandius has a thread on the WotC board -- http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=424985 -- to address them. Such as the problems with missing sections of the Hollow World map.
Has Paizo looked into this or even aware that it could be a problem?
--Ray.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Shawn Stanley of the Vaults of Pandius has a thread on the WotC board...
Thanks for the link. I don't have the list of fixes we made in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that the problems we knew of don't overlap much with the problems reported in that thread, except for the Western Countries Trail Map, which is the one PDF that we have entirely remade (and I just noticed we have that and the Eastern Countries Trail Map listed as Forgotten Realms instead of Mystara - I'll change that as soon as I get a chance).
If folks know of any other problems, please let us know in this thread here. I can't promise that we can fix everything, but we'll see what we can do about some of them. (And if we do fix any PDFs, people who have purchased them from us will be able to download the updated versions for free.)
-Vic.
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I am excited about this but....has anyone considered putting a random 2-3 page inside peek on each?
The 3 sentence summary is nice for an overview, but I often pick modules after looking at a map or two, reading a page of the text/story inside.
Having nothing but the cover shot, leaves me a bit cold. I've been burned too many times on "other" sites after paying for, and downloading, a PDF with garbage inside.
Great stuff. I've been a bit nervous about purchasing from those "other" sites, but I trust Paizo. Where do we post questions about the PDFs? Since this thread is still small I assume it will be okay for now.
I recently purchased a used hardcopy of the World Builder's Guide and was very sad to find out that the forms were not in it. I have no idea what these forms are and if they are worth having but would be more than happy to pay $4.00 for a PDF of the whole book if it has them in it.
thanks,
-junc
Any chance that L3 might be made available via this route?
I took a gamble and bought the Dragonlance Bestiary, and I'm happy with the way it looks.
I've bought TSR ESDs when they first came out, but later, especially when they were moved out of TSR, they started looking like simple scans, with the text being an image instead of a PDF rendered font, which made some of them unreadable (like the Planescape boxed set). The lowered quality coupled with a price hike made me stop buying them.
But the book I bought now had font text and looks pretty good (though I wish personalisation was more subtle).
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Chief Technical Officer
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Where do we post questions about the PDFs?
Here is just fine.
I recently purchased a used hardcopy of the World Builder's Guide and was very sad to find out that the forms were not in it. I have no idea what these forms are and if they are worth having but would be more than happy to pay $4.00 for a PDF of the whole book if it has them in it.
It does contain the forms, which consist of 32 double-sided sheets:
•Polyhedral world map/square-grid detail map - 8 copies)
•Polyhedral region map (same on both sides) - 4 copies)
•Square-grid detail map (same on both sides) - 4 copies)
•Kingdom information form/kingdom hex map - 4 copies)
•Area information form/area hex map - 6 copies)
•Site information form/site hex map - 6 copies)
(All of the copies are included, so the nine different forms actually take up 64 pages in the file, and they're all actually different scans instead of the same scan placed multiple times... not real efficient, but there you have it.)
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Chief Technical Officer
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I've bought TSR ESDs when they first came out, but later, especially when they were moved out of TSR, they started looking like simple scans, with the text being an image instead of a PDF rendered font, which made some of them unreadable....
I'm guessing that the first PDFs you're speaking of are the more recent publications that were generated from electronic layouts, and the newer PDFs are the earlier publications that were created from document scans with Optical Character Recognition. Layout files simply don't exist for the older ones - many of them predate desktop publishing - so scanning with OCR is pretty much the only path to keeping these alive. (However, the quality of scanning and OCR can vary pretty significantly, so there's potentially room for improvement there).
-Vic.
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This is great and I might buy some, but I still get a better thrill lurking in used bookstores and finding old classics selling for 3 bucks...
My only question is whether my collection is larger than Lisa's...
since I threw out my Dragonlance and Spelljammer stuff about a decade ago I think Lisa would win.
Feel free to review all your old favorites.
Our first old-skool PDF review is in.
Thanks, 7th Son!
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CEO
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This is great and I might buy some, but I still get a better thrill lurking in used bookstores and finding old classics selling for 3 bucks...
My only question is whether my collection is larger than Lisa's...
since I threw out my Dragonlance and Spelljammer stuff about a decade ago I think Lisa would win.
I doubt that there are too many folks with as large of a collection as I have. I basically have every single product for sale on our site, plus dozens more that aren't on the site. I even have some never produced D&D products that are more than likely one of a kind. I know that I don't have EVERYTHING, but I am darn close. :)
-Lisa
I'm guessing that the first PDFs you're speaking of are the more recent publications that were generated from electronic layouts, and the newer PDFs are the earlier publications that were created from document scans with Optical Character Recognition. Layout files simply don't exist for the older ones - many of them predate desktop publishing - so scanning with OCR is pretty much the only path to keeping these alive. (However, the quality of scanning and OCR can vary pretty significantly, so there's potentially room for improvement there).
I can't say offhand. I'll have to check. Though I see no good reason why that'd be the case, since most if not all of them were AD&D 2nd Ed (perhaps a few were 1st Ed) and IIRC Planescape was one of the newer of those.
Actually, come to think of it, IIRC the first ones did have obvious OCR errors. Which suggests to me that TSR initially put someone to OCR and proofread, and create an e-copy, and later there was a move to simple scans and raw OCR, to save costs -- perhaps as the volume of work increased.
Just to make sure I'm all square w/ things, is it okay to print these things for personal use?
-The Gneech, with evil plans for the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
Just to make sure I'm all square w/ things, is it okay to print these things for personal use?
Absolutely!
Let me just jump on here and say, we are very pleased with your response to these products!
So much so that we are having to make some adjustments to our server architecture. : )
Please let us know at customer.service@paizo.com if you have any trouble with purchasing or downloading.
Enjoy your new PDFs!
- rob
ok, here is a stupid question..are the PDF files emailed to you or mailed to you on a CD? what if you only have one of those free email accounts, like hotmail? are they too big for that?
thanks..
ok, here is a stupid question..are the PDF files emailed to you or mailed to you on a CD?
Good question. Actually, after purchase, the PDFs are simply available for download in the My Downloads area:
https://secure.paizo.com/paizo/account/assetsThis is also specified on the order approval page.
- rob
Let me just jump on here and say, we are very pleased with your response to these products!
So much so that we are having to make some adjustments to our server architecture. : )
Great content, low price, convenient access ... what's not to 'respond' to?
So ... how long 'til early issues of Dragon and Dungeon start showing up in this format? ;)
-The Gneech
Let me just jump on here and say, we are very pleased with your response to these products!
So much so that we are having to make some adjustments to our server architecture. : )
Great content, low price, convenient access ... what's not to 'respond' to?
So ... how long 'til early issues of Dragon and Dungeon start showing up in this format? ;)
-The Gneech
They have to sell out of the existing print copies first, according to their license from Wizards.
- Ashavan
They have to sell out of the existing print copies first, according to their license from Wizards.
- Ashavan
Well, I mean oooold old issues. Like #4.
-The Gneech
For the Paizo staff:
I previously purchased some PDF from rpgnow. Are your products likely from the same scans as theirs were? Since you have mentioned potentially updating or correcting some of them (they likely won't or can't), I'd rather buy yours, with the chance of correction. Some of theirs did not appear as clean scans (some images were different sizes) and Scarlet Brotherhood is outright missing the map.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I previously purchased some PDF from rpgnow. Are your products likely from the same scans as theirs were? Since you have mentioned potentially updating or correcting some of them (they likely won't or can't), I'd rather buy yours, with the chance of correction. Some of theirs did not appear as clean scans (some images were different sizes) and Scarlet Brotherhood is outright missing the map.
They're selling the same files SVGames had, which are the files that we've been correcting.
Sometime in the coming week, I'll put up a list of the more significant changes we've made. For the most part, our focus is on adding missing things (especially maps), rather than improving things that are already present, so different-sized images aren't generally being fixed. (The major exception to this is that we upgraded a lot of the cover scans before we started selling them.)
The Scarlet Brotherhood map was added late last week. (People who downloaded it from us before it was fixed should be getting an e-mail tomorrow letting them know they can download the updated version.)
-Vic.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Here are some of the major changes made so far:
AD&D Ravenloft: Adam's Wrath PDF: Added missing maps
AD&D Monstrous Compendium: Fiend Folio Appendix PDF: Added cover, back cover, divider images
AD&D Birthright: Player's Secrets of Tuarhievel PDF: Added missing maps
AD&D Planescape: Doors to the Unknown PDF: Added handouts, redid maps
AD&D Night Below Adventure PDF: Added missing map
AD&D Mystara: The Western Countries Trail Map PDF: Redid entire product
Dungeons & Dragons B3: Palace of the Silver Princess PDF: Added missing maps
Dungeons & Dragons Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry PDF: Added missing pages
Dungeons & Dragons 3-D Dragon Tiles featuring The Kidnapping of Princess Arelina PDF: Added missing sheets
Dungeons & Dragons B2: The Keep on the Borderlands PDF: Added missing pages
Dungeons & Dragons DDA4: The Dymrak Dread PDF: Added missing maps, standups
Dungeons & Dragons Blackmoor DA3: City of the Gods PDF: Replaced incorrect pages
Dungeons & Dragons Blackmoor DA4: The Duchy of Ten PDF: Replaced incorrect pages
AD&D Greyhawk: The Scarlet Brotherhood PDF: Added missing maps
D&D: The Goblin's Lair PDF: Added missing adventure, redid counters
Dungeons & Dragons Master Player Screen Featuring The Spindle PDF: Removed duplicate pages, corrected page scaling problem
Dungeons & Dragons Creature Crucible PC3: The Sea People PDF: Added missing maps
AD&D S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth PDF : replaced incorrect page
We also replaced tons of covers, and rotated a few flipped pages. Still plenty more to do....
-Vic.
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Chief Technical Officer
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More fixes:
AD&D I3: Pharaoh PDF: Added missing page
Dungeons & Dragons Hollow World HWR2: Kingdom of Nithia PDF: Redid poster map, (including adding missing map). Also added second PDF containing full-size maps (that is, not divided into separate pages for printing).
More to come...
-Vic.
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Chief Technical Officer
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AD&D Player's Handbook 2.5 PDF: Rotated upside-down page
AD&D Monster Manual 1st Edition PDF: Added missing page
So I was wondering will these eventually include the old Star Frontier adventures?
Salcor
I have a question that might just be a silly one, but I'll ask it anyway.
I note that there are many addendums being listed for pdfs. Before Paizo began offering the old pdfs, I had purchased some from svgames & rpgnow. Are Paizo's pdgs different from the ones the other companies have (had in the case of svgames)? I ask this because you've listed a few that I purchased from RPGnow (DMG for instance) that I wonder if they might be incomplete.
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Chief Technical Officer
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So I was wondering will these eventually include the old Star Frontier adventures?
Right now we can't promise there will ever be much more than there is now, but we would certainly like to help Wizards bring some other old products back to market.
Are Paizo's pdgs different from the ones the other companies have?
Tricky question, that. These files were generated over a couple of years, and some files apparently recieved some upgrades during that time. The CD-ROMs we received from Wizards contained several different versions of many of the files, and there really wasn't any documentation to help us figure out what was what. Obviously comparing all of these documents to determine the "most correct" versions wouldn't be feasible, so we just generally tried to select the files with the latest modification dates.
It's certainly possible that we've got slightly different versions of some of the files than the other vendors, but, more often than not, they're probably the same. (Except for the ones we've fixed, which we know are now different.)
Does that help clarify?
-Vic.
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Will the Mystara Eastern Countries Trail Map PDF be updated to make the map one big image (as was done with the Western Countries map)?
I just purchased the Eastern Countries map and am very disappointed. It's almost useless in its current state.
-Mike