I’m relatively new to Pathfinder (started this February) and have been slowly gathering an expensive but self-sufficient printed collection to last me and my friends for years to come. For now I plan to get only Curse of the Crimson Throne, Legacy of Fire and Carrion Crown Adventure Paths (without map folios).
They only set back to all this is Carrion Crown Player Guide – it’s the only book I can’t find in printed version. As I understand Player Guides stopped being printed after Legacy of Fire. While PDFs are fine and good, my friends and I find it a lot more helpful to pass around real books and now Carrion Crown Players Guide burns a hole in my collection and heart.
So my question is:
Are there any plans for PDF-only Players Guides to be printed in the future? I don’t want to create a self-made cheap knock off.
I can't speak directly to your question with any knowledge of Paizo's plans, but I highly doubt the players guide will be printed. They seem to look forward, except when celebrating something seminal, like the Rise of the Runelords reprint. Frankly, it's not necessary to have a printed player's guide. It is short and only is needed during the character creation stage. Plus, everyone should have their own copy, which argues more for the PDF than the printed book. But if you really want something printed, I would print it yourself. Like I said, it's not too long.
Yeah, there's really no reason to have it (though I imagine that's like blasphemy to someone who collects things). It's short and really the only thing the players NEED to see out of it is the campaign traits if you use them.
The rest of it is just short backstory on the area (which you could easily read to them at the start of the first session or before) and suggested classes/races (which again, you can easily dictate).
Yeah, it’s no Legacy of Fire player guide.
Printing it out is not a problem (excluding paint consumption); I have a black-and-white laser printer. But even the best color printers can’t match the beauty that is the official Paizo book. Next to the other two player guides it would stick out on my shelf like a sore thumb.
And as for just using the PDFs on devices, you all already know how much procrastination happens with that even if there is no Internet connection.
I plan to play Carrion Crows as the 3 campaign so there is a lot of time to figure out something.
I would even buy a set of only player guides for every campaign created by now, if Paizo actually would make it. As you said, having several of those is never a bad thing. It could also work as a good advertisement to all the campaigns for newer costumers.
Thanks for the support guys, even if the results are discouraging.