Yesterday, more details came to light about lawsuits filed by Wizards of the Coast against alleged Dungeons and Dragons book filesharers. In recent years, D&D has made a huge digital push with subscription-based online services, but in April, Wizards put the kabosh on official PDF copies of their books amid a flurry of lawsuits.
With this week’s reveal of the plaintiffs and some of their attempts at mediation comes a doozy:
Nolan, denying that he uploaded the handbook for public access or committed other wrongdoing, wrote personally to the court on May 20 that he lost his wallet with material showing his Web site usernames and passwords on a trip to Michigan in February.
A (paraphrased) response at reddit sums it up: Time to roll a skill check for bullshitting, Nolan. You better hope the judge considers your D20 permissible evidence.
pffffft, level 12 paladin? i could cap that fucker in my underwear, please.
Wizards of the Coast was the worst thing that happened to Dungeons and Dragons.
I’m not so sure if it was WoC or Hasbro that ruined it.
My 2nd Ed books are lovingly stored. Maybe someday I’ll find a group to play with again. [weeps quietly for Ravenloft games of yore]
I’m actually 26 and only JUST getting into DnD in its fourth edition, with friends. It’s a lot of fun, but damn if the ban on PDFs doesn’t suck. The people who are really into the hobby will wind up purchasing the material they pirate, over time, like I have, and if I didn’t have access to that illicit information I might not have gotten into the game in the first place.
Google has +50 Armor of Invisibility, I guess, cause they don’t care who copyrighted the works they put up.
I only read this because I thought you were writing about Skeet Ulrich. I’m not proud of that.
And now that WotC stopped publishing official PDF copies, certainly we’ll have a harder time finding copies of them on BitTorrent shortly after release!
Right?
I admit I like the changes made in 3.5 with the sheer flexibility.
but Wizards need to realize that the reason so many of their books get pirated is because they are, indeed quite expensive. Let’s see, 4e is a little less expensive new then 3.5 does but to get started you need:
*The Dungeon Master’s Core Book
*The Player’s Core Book (1 & 2)
*Monster Manual
*A Set of Dice
*Character Sheets
The Books are around $35 retail, Player Sheets are around $10, Dice are a (pun intended) mix bag – ranging from $4 to $23 dollars depending on how many, what type, and the materials they’re made out of – I’ll make it $5, which seems to be the average.
Total that: $154.80 to get started – and that’s not including the Campaign setting books, the additional monster manuals, guides to various classes, figurines (which imho is largely optional), DM Screen (again that I think depends on the game’s play style and level of trust).
It’s an EXPENSIVE hobby (about the few other geek things that get pricier then D&D is Tabletop Wargames like well… Warhammer – which is a different kettle of fish)
And Wizards is under the false impression that everyone who wants to play has that chunk of spare change around, and gamers have been Sharing/Pirating these books for years, just back when Rogue was Thief and Wizards were Magic-Users, they just did it via copiers or trading books.
If they want more buyers, they have to cut costs. I think most players won’t mind B&W Illustrations or less fluff text
You can always hand carve your dice from animal bones. That saves a lot.
Shini, you really don’t need all of that stuff. Who buys character sheets from Wizards? You can download them free from their website and print them out, or photocopy the one in the back of the Player’s Handbook. All you really need is one Dungeon Master’s Guide, one Monster Manual and one Player’s Handbook (the first one- the second one is entirely supplemental) split between *six people*. It’s nice if each person has their own dice, but you can definitely get by with just a few sets. For anyone who has played the game to honestly say that you need all of that stuff (and make it seem like that’s a per-person cost) is disingenuous.
Compare that to the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on World of Warcraft over the years, and EverQuest before that… not to mention the thousands of dollars in computer upgrades in order to keep up… and D&D is a damn cheap hobby.
I still pirate some of the books, though. I just really like being able to search the PDFs. If I find myself using the book, I go out and buy it. But those supplemental books are not at all necessary, and they can easily be split amongst a group of friends. The prices on most of the ‘core’ books, like the PHB 1&2, DMG, MM, MM2, etc are pretty good- it’s books like Manual of the Planes and Open Grave that I don’t really think are worth the cost. I like the descriptive text and I like the art, so I don’t want them to get rid of that. I just think that they need to price their books better in relation to one another.
NEEERRRRDDDSSS!!!!
@8 and 10, all you need is a Player’s Handbook and some dice. The DM will also need the Monster Manual, and maybe the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
I’m sorry, but I have to defend Wizards of the Coast on this one. The only way to make money off a roleplaying game is through book sales, and by selling PDF versions you’re essentially begging people to pirate them. I’m guessing Wizards pulled their PDFs because they were hemorrhaging money.
I was going say what 10 said but 8 does have a point, there is a good deal of high priced ancillary crap for D&D put out by WotC. I’d think that most people who’d get into D&D are clever enough to know what is worth their money. Also I’d add that if you are looking for the core books and have patience they can be had for half cost, new and used, from 3rd party sellers through internet retailers. My copy of PHB 4th ed. was something like $17 shipping included, brand new.
@10 – I used to write macros that pre-generated player sheets for people – before they had them.
Craft your own. Make your own screen. At first, the books were paper, didn’t even have a binding until the MM.
kibosh?