Follow up Castles & Crusades Unboxing (Now with Moving Pictures!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sgyh6I35rE]

 

The above video and this post are a follow up to a post I wrote titled: Castles & Crusades Unboxing. It was particularly about the shipping and the conditions of the Castles & Crusades books when I received them.
I am going to take some time here to clarify my thoughts and opinion on a couple of other issues I had with the Castles & Crusades books that I did not bring up in the video due to time.

PRINTING

I am not particularly upset that all the Castles & Crusades books are printed in black and white. I just was not expecting that and felt others might like to know this as well. It seems like most modern day produced RPG books are in color. I own several modern day RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Mutants & Masterminds, DC Adventures, MouseGuard and Dresden Files. They are all in color. I just had the expectation that Castles & Crusades would also be in color.

When I go to used book stores seeking out older RPGs I fully expect them all to cost more and be in black and white. I have paid a pretty penny for some older pre-made adventures. Sometimes you stumble into a used book store or a garage sale that has RPG books for sale very cheap, but that seems to be getting more and more rare.

My comment was not a slam on the art in the books themselves. Just that I expected the books to be in color and for me it was a surprise to find it was all in black and white.

 

PDF

To me, it seems ridiculous, that in this day an age PDF downloads (or any electronically form for that matter) are not an option (or should I say affordable option?) to those buying books from RPG companies. There seems to be a divide between RPG companies that offer PDF downloads at a reduced price and those who may not even offer them at all. In the case of Castles and Crusades you can get the PDF copies of the books for just a bit under retail cost of the actual books.

I personally am far more likely to invest in a new RPG if I have the option to buy the books and the PDFs of those books at a reduced price. It’s also better for my gaming group because I am far less anal retentive about my RPG books in their hands when they are eating over them and spilling things on the gaming table because I know I have a PDF backup of the game.

For me the reason that I ended up buying Castles and Crusades as the direct result of a couple of friends who said the game is worth it. I believe my friends that this game is going to be great. But if I had just read a couple of good reviews and went over to the Troll Lord Games website and saw the overpriced PDFs I never would have bought the game.

It seems like my experience has been that most companies offering PDF copies of gaming books sell them for between five and ten dollars. To me this is a perfectly acceptable cost to someone who is also buying the books at the same time.

Now one may argue that PDFs are not the best format for gamers to download their books in. This may be the case, but until that perfect format comes around you should still offer the PDFs. Every modern day Operating system can handle them and will for quite some time. Hell, offering any kind of digital option for gamers would be nice. Text, PDF, ePub, just give us something so we don’t have to worry so much about our physical copies!
Just like I said in the video. With all the fuss my original post made regarding Castles and Crusades I am excited to play this game and give it a sold review here on Stargazer’s World.