Classic D&D PDFs available for download!

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)?

Yep - that's on the to-do list.

-Vic.
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Dungeons & Dragons B10: Night's Dark Terror PDF: Added missing counter sheet

Can you tell me if the Planescape Campaign Setting Boxed Set is the same unreadable scans I've bought in the past? If it's a better version, in particular one with real text instead of scans, I might consider buying it again. (I don't roleplay these days, but I have a soft spot for Planescape because my favourite computer RPG is Planescape: Torment.)

Can you tell me if the Planescape Campaign Setting Boxed Set is the same unreadable scans I've bought in the past? If it's a better version, in particular one with real text instead of scans, I might consider buying it again. (I don't roleplay these days, but I have a soft spot for Planescape because my favourite computer RPG is Planescape: Torment.)

The scans are super light, but text is selectable.

-Vic.
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AD&D I4: Oasis of the White Palm PDF: Added missing page

The scans are super light, but text is selectable.

Thanks. I guess it's the same as what I have then, that is, not really readable. IIRC the selectable text in products from around that time was badly OCRed text, not at all proof-read, so searching or copying it didn't work all that well.

IIRC the selectable text in products from around that time was badly OCRed text, not at all proof-read, so searching or copying it didn't work all that well.

Amazingly, there doesn't appear to be any facility for correcting incorrectly OCRed text in Adobe Acrobat. The big problem with the early PDFs is probably that the scans weren't very good, so the OCR was more likely to make mistakes.

-Vic.
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I was wondering if there are any plans on improving some of the original pdf's that svgames and rpgnow.com had. In particular the 2e DM screen and Master Index and the correct page order for the 2e Arms & Equipment Guide. I have purchased nearly all of the RPGnow PDF's for 2e and 1e and am not overly pleased with their quality, but if I knew that the quality would be better (even slightly) I would most likely purchase them all again.

I decided to give it a try since and I went ahead and purchased the DM Screen. It is the same as the one that SVgames and RPGnow had. You guys should really fix this as it cuts off the edges of the screen itself and makes it difficult to read.

Yeknom,

Feel free to post a list of the things you know of that have major problems, and we'll add them to the list of things to fix. Our highest priority is fixing things with missing content - anything less serious is unlikely to be fixed soon.

(Actually, it's easy enough to fix pages that are out of order or rotated incorrectly, so we can sometimes sneak those in.)

-Vic.
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Also, once we fix them, you can download it again for free with the fixed file available. Thanks for taking the time to help us out with this!

-Lisa Stevens
CEO

Yeknom,

Feel free to post a list of the things you know of that have major problems, and we'll add them to the list of things to fix. Our highest priority is fixing things with missing content - anything less serious is unlikely to be fixed soon.

(Actually, it's easy enough to fix pages that are out of order or rotated incorrectly, so we can sometimes sneak those in.)

-Vic.
.

Also, once we fix them, you can download it again for free with the fixed file available. Thanks for taking the time to help us out with this!

-Lisa Stevens
CEO

Vic Wertz wrote:

Yeknom,

Feel free to post a list of the things you know of that have major problems, and we'll add them to the list of things to fix. Our highest priority is fixing things with missing content - anything less serious is unlikely to be fixed soon.

(Actually, it's easy enough to fix pages that are out of order or rotated incorrectly, so we can sometimes sneak those in.)

-Vic.
.

[Note all of these were downloaded from RPGnow.com except the DM screen and Master Index which I purchased from Paizo to see if the quality was better]

DM Screen and Master Index - The pages of the Index are a bit too fuzzy; The Screen Panels suffer from being cut off on the edge where everything can't be read clearly, here are the specifics: The Piercing Critical Table has the word severity cut off, and all that can be read is verity. The panel that has the adjusted saving throws for caster level and the Critical Event Table is cut off on the left side as well, probably a quarter inch from the original product as you can't make out the class names on the alt save table and the numbers from the critical event table; The Battle Tactics table is cut off on the left side and you can't read the words that tell you what the tactic is called; The rest of the panels are very light and difficult to read.

Spelljammer Adventures in space boxed set: Both books look as if they sprayed with a light layer of grey paint before being scanned, yet somehow you can see the words on the next page fading through. Several of the ship cut outs and the planet icons do not match up with the lines and cause the entire page to look sideways. What happened was someone had used the cut out and then tried to put it back in place, but they didn't try very hard.

The Alternity Players and GM's book are horrible scans. The first or second page of every chapter is a dark black and the words are supposed to be a light green to a blue, but in the scan they are completely unreadable. I printed them off after I bought them, so I could save the originals from being damaged by careless players and it was just a waste, as the first page of each chapter was nearly illegible and most of the tables were as well.

The Combat & Tactics, Spells &Magics and the Skills & Powers books are fuzzy and grey,similar to the Spelljammer Adventures in space book but not as bad.

The Complete Priest Spell books and the Wizard Spell books are not aligned properly and several pages from each book (say around 12 or so) are poorly scanned and you can see the words on the next page coming through.

Labyrinth of Madness is fuzzy and difficult to read.

Glantri, Karamiekos, Amber and the Night of the Vampire Boxed sets do not have a the audio cd that should have come with them. This is terrible as the cd can be 'illegally' downloaded AND the quality of the scans is quite fuzzy.

The Night Below boxed set is seriously a poor scan. The maps, particulary those of the Glass City and the surrounding area are not scanned to line up and are severly out of sequence. The Battle Maps (all three of them) are not scanned to the same size and are spread out through the maps section.

Queen of the Spiders is far to difficult to read and should be scanned better. The pages look like they were sprayed with grey paint and the words bleed through on each page. This was a real disappointment for me as my copy is in real bad shape. I just recently paid $130 dollars to purchase one in 'good' condition from Amazon.

Demihuman Deities is a very poor scan and is nearly impossible to read.

The Revised Ravenloft Campaign Setting Box has a dark tint to all of the pages and the Tarroka Cards are not lined up properly, so that if you print them you end up with cards that are oddly shaped.

The Arms & Equipment Guide is missing a page and has two pages that are out of sequence.

The Cardmaster Advenutre Deck has the grey spray paint look going for but the cards themselves are not bad.

The World Builder's Guidebook and the Dungeon Builder's Guidebook both have the grey spray paint look and the words bleed through the pages.

Like I said I have downloaded nearly every AD&D Product from SV games or RPGnow.com and most of them are not very good. There are a few exceptions, as most of the Realms products are fair (The Aurora's book is excellent)and the Complete Handbook series is acceptable. If I knew that you guys were going to fix them I would gladly download them from you guys and spend the money again, as the cost doesn't really both me.

On a related note I have a suggestion. You guys should try to get the rights to the old Mayfair stuff, Judges Guild stuff and the original Kalamar setting (the grey books), as well as some Earthdawn and Rolemaster Stuff. The Role Aids books from Mayfair are 'classic', although some of them are classically bad. Their rework of the Invincible Overlord isn't in line with the Judges Guild version but, if taken by itself, is wonderful, especially the players map and the adventure boxed sets. Finally, when are you guys going to get the Mythus Bestiary and the Mythus Aerth book?

I will comment more on the books that I have downloaded from RPGnow.com later. I hope this helps.

Yeknom,

Thanks for the list. The ones that are missing pages are higher priority; the badly segmented maps are below that; improving the quality of scans (the "grey spray paint" ones for example) will go on the bottom of the list along with scans that have partial words cut off, and frankly, it could be a very long time before things like that get fixed.

We have asked Wizards about the possibility of bringing back other products, including the Mayfair Role-Aids line; we haven't got a response yet.

-Vic.
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Oh - I forgot to mention - we've asked for permission to bundle MP3s with the products that originally came with audio CDs, but we haven't heard back on that yet.

-Vic.
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AD&D GDQ1-7: Queen of the Spiders PDF: Rearranged booklet of maps and monsters

(It's a bit busy here leading up to the holidays, so there hasn't been a lot of time to work on PDF corrections. There is a big job in progress - Dragon Mountain, which was missing a lot of map pieces and more - that will hopefully be done soon.)

-Vic.
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As I understand it, the books PDFed earlier are fully laid out, and it's the later ones that are just bitmaps with badly OCRed text underneath.

The biggest shame is the 1983 World of Greyhawk ESD, which could have been a compact, readable primer but is instead an ugly 100 MB monstrosity. If any of them could be redone, I'd like to see that one.

Any chance of seeing GAZ10 "Orcs of Thar" in pdf? (pleasepleaseplease!) =D

Any chance of seeing GAZ10 "Orcs of Thar" in pdf? (pleasepleaseplease!) =D

We have not yet successfully obtained permission to add any missing products.

-Vic.
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Jeff Sparks wrote:

Any chance of seeing GAZ10 "Orcs of Thar" in pdf? (pleasepleaseplease!) =D

We have not yet successfully obtained permission to add any missing products.

-Vic.
.

Does that mean permission is being sought?

I'm really rooting for this one. It's the only GAZ not (legally) available in PDF. I have the hardcopy, but I'd love to have them all on my iBook for easy reference. :-)

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.

Hi. First time post.

I have to say that I love the fact that someone is taking some responsibility for these great old products and making sure that they continue to be legally available to a wide audience.

If you can get authorization to do more products from WotC, the first on your list should be the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. You know, that little brownish box that came out back in 1974. (Or even one of the later printings in the white box.) It's sort of the reason this whole rpg thing exists.

I happen to know that a very nice illegal copy has been floating around the Internet for about 5 years.

Another top priority should be the 1981 Basic and Expert editions of Dungeons & Dragons with the Erol Otus cover art. So many of us got our start in gaming with these, it's not even funny.

Thanks,

Chris

Does that mean permission is being sought?

We have asked for permission to add missing products, and that request has not been granted, nor has it been denied. That's about all I can say.

-Vic.
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Vic,

Thanks for all the good work you have been doing. This has sparked my interest in getting alot of the older D & D items that I have missed / lost / lent out to never see again. Keep up the good work!

Kevin

Vic

I have been in contact with people through Wizards trying to get an answer to this. I originally started collecting the list of things missing in Mystaran/D&D ESDs to try and get permission to host those things from the ESDs that were missing or were so poorly scanned as to be unusable. I thought that running the official Mystara site that I might be able to do this. My latest contact from Wizards still hasn't gotten back with an answer to this one ... I never thought of asking Paizo now that you've taken over this whole ESD thing and have actually started doing things.

So therefore my question is, can I host things from ESDs that having missing or poorly scanned items. The list which I built up from asking the community is available http://pandius.com/miss_esd.html

Now I realise a couple of things, firstly that this is really up for Wizards to decide. I of course keep getting a lack of a reply from them.

And secondly of course now that it appears a lot of stuff has already been fixed up in the ESDs the policy might be to point people to the fixed downloads. Of course I don't know what that means for people who previously downloaded ESDs especially if they downloaded them from other providers.

Sorry I haven't read the whole of this thread to see if there are specific answers to any of this stuff but any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated - I've been trying to work with this issue for what seems like years now and it still hasn't been resolved.

cheers
shawn

I never thought of asking Paizo now that you've taken over this whole ESD thing and have actually started doing things.

To be clear, all we're doing is selling products that Wizards has provided us, and, occasionally, when we have time, fixing some of the more egregious errors in those products. We have not, thus far, received permission to do anything about missing products, and we don't do sweeping revisions to current products.

So therefore my question is, can I host things from ESDs that having missing or poorly scanned items.... Now I realise a couple of things, firstly that this is really up for Wizards to decide.

I can't even attempt to answer that on their behalf, I'm afraid.

...the policy might be to point people to the fixed downloads. Of course I don't know what that means for people who previously downloaded ESDs especially if they downloaded them from other providers.

You're welcome to point people to our site, of course. And when we do fix PDFs, anyone who purchased them from us may download the corrected version free of charge.

-Vic.
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You're welcome to point people to our site, of course. And when we do fix PDFs, anyone who purchased them from us may download the corrected version free of charge.

-Vic.
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cheers Vic much as I suspected really. I'll continue over at Wizards. My links to the primary ESD source is on Paizo already, but that extra bit of information is nice to know.

I realize this is a very old and maybe overused thread, but it seems to be where everyone is posting their D&D PDF requests, so I shall follow suit. And please forgive me if the reasons that these books are missing are discussed elsewhere -- I did search and came up empty.

I think these PDFs are a wonderful thing, and they come at a good time for me, when I'm forced to downsize my (physical) collection a bit. I notice that a few of the 1st edition hardcovers are missing, though. In particular, the Manual of the Planes, and all three of the world books: Dragonlance, Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms Adventures. Any plans for these?

(And, if I may, I'd also add my +1 for some sort of Dungeon PDF archive, perhaps in the form of an online searchable archive from which you can download individual issues or single adventures, if a big CD/DVD set isn't possible.)

I think that D&D PDFs available for download is like the best thing ever for the true gamer or collector that needs and wants all that info and just doesn't have the money to get it all or the room for the books!! I have a ton of books that keeps growing and I'm literally starting to stack them now because I'm out of space!! I don't even have room to display my mini collection, which has gotten out of control! Thank Pelor, my wife and I are moving to a bigger house next month or esle we would be drowning in books. Thanks be to Pelor for the PDFs!!!

Can you print out pdf's or not?

You can print out PDFs.

As for filling in the holes, Wizards hasn't made any new ones in ages.

And as for old magazines, the rights issues are muddy enough that nobody is able to easily sort them out, so don't expect to see anything on that front, either.

However, we do post PDFs of issues published by Paizo shortly after we sell out of back issues.

-Vic.
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You can print out PDFs.

As for filling in the holes, Wizards hasn't made any new ones in ages.
-Vic.

Oh now I get it your being sarcastic!

Vic Wertz wrote:

You can print out PDFs.

As for filling in the holes, Wizards hasn't made any new ones in ages.
-Vic.

Oh now I get it your being sarcastic!

Huh? No sarcasm. Those were answers to separate questions. The answer to your question is that you can print them out.

The answer to the people who were hoping missing products would be filled in that Wizards hasn't made any new 1st- or 2nd-Edition PDFs in ages.

-Vic.
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As for filling in the holes, Wizards hasn't made any new ones in ages.

I thought it funny anyway. beacause I used "or not"-

Issue to report: Day of Al'Akbar is missing a scan of the fold-out map of the city of Khaibar.

While I'm here, I'll mention another one that's been bugging me for a while: the text in the Kara-Tur boxed set isn't searchable. For a set containing two 96-page sourcebooks packed with all kinds of information, that's really bothersome. I often can't remember where I read some piece of information, and I can't even reliably confirm whether or not it was from this set. Although I expect this is something you won't actually get to fix.

The text of the 1e Lords of Darkness is also not searchable.

Issue to report: Day of Al'Akbar is missing a scan of the fold-out map of the city of Khaibar.

I'll add that to the list of fixes needed. (And hope that someday someone gets the time to fix them....)

the text in the Kara-Tur boxed set isn't searchable.

You are correct that that's not the kind of thing that's going to be fixed anytime soon—that basically requires a complete redo.

-Vic.
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Something I've noticed, going through my Rules Cyclopedia PDF that I bought the other day, is that the text is, well, rather blurry compared to some of the other PDF versions of it</a> that are floating around. I don't regret buying it, but I could wish the text was sharper.

For an example of what I mean, see http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5556

Given that the only color elements in the book were backgrounds on some charts, and the leaves along the top and bottom, is it really necessary that it be in color as a color scan? It's a little hard to read and would probably be costly to print out.

To be clear, Paizo did not create these PDFs—Wizards of the Coast (or people working on behalf of Wizards) did. Quality standards are all over the board—some of the PDFs are fantastic, and some are terrible.

Wizards has allowed us to fix some of the major problems (mostly things like missing pages), and so we've fixed many of the worst problems in the most popular products, but we just don't have the resources to fix everything.

-Vic.
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Any chance the later dark brown cover of The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan could be added? That's the version of it that I knew from the early '80s, and I kind of miss it. ;)

Any chance the later dark brown cover of The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan could be added? That's the version of it that I knew from the early '80s, and I kind of miss it. ;)

You can imagine that, even if we had time to fix a lot of Wizards' PDFs, that would have to be one of the lowest priority things we could do. :-)

Thanks for posting all of those product reviews, though!

-Vic.
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quote: 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.

this is a problem I'm currently having. I purchased the rules cyclopedia PDF, spent an hour downloading it, and now it says the viewer cannot decrypt the file. what kind of voodoo beads do I have to shake at the moniter to get the files to open?

quote: Any chance the later dark brown cover of The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan could be added? That's the version of it that I knew from the early '80s, and I kind of miss it. ;)

I just bought that adventure today...very nice, and in mint condition.

lol, I think I discovered my problem. I have adobe acrobat 4 installed instead of 5 (as required).

it helps to read sometimes, :)

I'm still installing the reader, but I'm sure it will work just fine. if it does work I'll be back to download many more files.

hooray for paizo PDFs!

Lords of Darkness (1e) appears to be missing maps for the Ravens Bluff sewer system (for the "Vampires" adventure) and for Ezuwara Castle (for the "Oriental Spectres" adventure). Were those missing from the original product, or were they missed in the scan?

FEEDBACK ON PAIZO PDFs:

Today I bought the following pdf files:
- AD&D: Rod of Seven Parts PDF
- AD&D Monstrous Arcana: Eye of Pain PDF
- AD&D Forgotten Realms: Faiths & Avatars PDF
- AD&D Forgotten Realms: The Dungeon of Death PDF
- AD&D Forgotten Realms: Hellgate Keep PDF

First impression:
Pro: In general I love the possibility to re-download the files
Contra: A first look into the files: personalizing them is understandable, other companies proved, though, that customer's name and order number are sufficient. I don't like to see my e-mail address on each page twice (on top and under the text).

A closer look:
Common features:
Bookmarks, inserts, and maps included. Tro7p even contains old FR and Dragonlance product ads at the end of the file.
All products stem from the same era of D&D (1996 - 2000).

Discrepancies:
Eye of Pain contains background graphics "behind the text". And of course the scanning software was confused by this. Text is shown properly on screen, but try to mark/ copy text: In midline markable text stops and the rest of the text line is considered to be graphics... On the other hand (at least i.m.h.o.) 2nd edition adventures like this one show some of the most beautiful black and white art published so far. EoP stands in one line with some of the most beautiful 2nd edition "traditional look" products like Greyhawk.

F&A shows how good scanning can be like!
All pdf files sometimes have problems to identify column/ paragraph sequence correctly. F&A shows the least problems (maybe due to its text heavy approach).

Dungeon of Death showed clearly on its last pages that it was scanned in manually: some pages were scanned in at slightly odd angles. Something both DoD and EoP have in common, too: Text boxes were unfortunately recognized as graphics.

The Rod of Seven Parts is a 60 MB file containing exactly 300 pages. The scanning quality is flawless (I guess, due to the graphics light text), the content legendary, and the maps at the end of book 3 very beautiful even compared to today's standards. Unfortunately some of the larger maps were divided into book sized chunks: you will have to glue (usually four) single page print outs into one large map. Maybe these maps could be added as a large scan, too (as was done by Paizo for some other products?). There is already one small errata file added to the pdf clarifying which of the seven player handout cards is which one.

Conclusion: The known quality differences, but in general no reason for serious complaints so far. :-)

Greetings,
Günther

Hi,

I search for "The wrath of the immortals" as a pdf-file. Can you please help me?

schmalh