TheHistorian wrote in Kickstarter projects:No, not easily. The pandemic has screwed up the supply chain for all sorts of things, including shelving. So after I moved, everything remains in crates and piles. So it's... somewhere.

Yes, black and white like the first one.

The author is a buddy of mine.  

He hasn't put the second one on DriveThruRPG yet.  My understanding is that he intends to do that in the next couple of months, once he has finished and delivered the newest (third) issue.  It has always been a ZineQuest product, but he ended up putting the first issue on DriveThruRPG later down the line for people who had missed the initial project but wanted a copy.

They are all three black and white, as per Kickstarter's ZineQuest color limits.  Not everyone followed those rules, but technically the creators are supposed to stick to one color for paper and one color for text.  ZineQuest rules also require saddle-stitching (staple binding), so that limits the number of pages to a certain degree, depending on the thickness of the paper.  That's why they are all black and white and are roughly the same size (40-50 pages).

The Kickstarter for the latest issue wrapped up a week or so ago.  He included the first two issues in PDF form with all the backer levels this time.  So, $5 for all three PDFs, $10 for the print version of the new one, shipping included, with all three zine PDFs.  He is also including a PDF with paper miniatures of the monsters from the second zine, and some other PDF related to the new one (not sure what it is).  The last time I talked to him, he was trying to figure out how to chop it down enough to keep it within the staple-binding limits of the printer he is using.  The initial version ended up being too long by a few dozen pages, evidently, even with smaller type.

VancianMagic wrote in Kickstarter projects:A neat looking mapmaking program:

kickstarter.com/projects/1024146278/dun ... lchemisttm

That looks great. Would love to see a hex mapper in a similar style.

ShaneG.

Old School Call of Cthulhu reprint of their early box set. For the upcoming 40th Anniversary.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ch ... hu-classic

Not to worry if you are holding onto one of the early box sets yourself,
looking at the comments I think there will be some slight difference,
so the *actual* 40 year old version you spent years hunting down will be distinct

ashmire13 wrote in Kickstarter projects:
This is their blurb on what the difference is. I guess that’s how a reprint works, you scan the original and improve the finish

“ What does "remastered" mean?
We scanned in near mint condition original printed products. The art was cleaned up. The text was OCR'd and thoroughly checked. Original typos were corrected and all errata was incorporated into the text. The layout was redone in a style very very similar to the originals, but standardized across all of the books. Bonus material was added, such as designer's notes, bonus scenarios, articles from various sources, some history, plus a few other surprises. You get all of the original material, neatly laid out, and as searchable PDFs.”

Lol. I'll wait for the free PDF without the artwork (if they choose to promote their work) or the copy that the Kickstarter backers release for free to the general public to assuage their buyers' remorse. Usually it only takes a week or two for Kickstarter PDFs to be released into the wild. Why publishers choose to release in unsecured PDF format I have no idea.

red_bus wrote in Kickstarter projects:I know that the game collecting community is much smaller than the game playing community (just as far fewer people collect books vs those who are avid readers). But I hope that it is clearly distinct from the early prints, it would be a massive problem for those fans of the game who spent ages tracking down and collecting the actual old early prints of games because they thought they were cool.

By the sounds of it, it will be distinct in that it has been proofread and they are intending to spell the words correctly. Lofty goals indeed. Set the bar high and strive to reach your goals and all that. I can’t wait to see if they achieve them.

ashmire13 wrote in Kickstarter projects:Makes you think the only people who will buy the original now are collectors, not gamers. And if you don’t want to lay out £x hundreds, buy the reprint.??

I see no issue with the playing community on the whole separating collectable memorabilia from useable product. It lowered the cost of buying and collecting, and at the same time offers the original 1980's experience to the masses at a reasonable price for backers and those wanting hardcopy, and virtually free to those who are willing to download the PDFs from their various repositories. That said, it has already been this way with D&D and I see virtually no impact whatsoever the collecting community by the proliferation of nearly everything ever printed being freely available to download to those who care to look. And to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if said Cthulhu products weren't already available for free to download also. So the only disruptive influence this Kickstarter is actually likely to create is attracting a few buyers who would otherwise have been forced to bid up the collectables. All good as I see it. What are the downsides if anyone sees any?

rmeints wrote in Kickstarter projects:
OK, I'll bite, how can anyone release a secured PDF that can't be pirated? You obviously know how. Please, enlighten us. Watermarks?

PS: Lol. No waiting for a free PDF without the artwork.

If you choose to release a PDF in PDF format, and send the entire file to me, currently I haven't come across a file that I cannot remove the security lock and/or any embedded name/identifier/or post publication watermark from. The solution at the moment if you choose to protect your IP from online piracy, is to continue to publish in hardcopy only, and make sure you trust your publisher and your staff not to leek the files used to create the publication.

Assuming that is going too far, the assessment is how much will mass digital distribution of your product for free, impact on your projected/anticipated revenue, and do you really care?

So, if we start from the position that a publisher wishes to publish something digitally, and recognises that in some manner it will be pirated, then how to slow down, hamper, and restrict such illegal distribution....

1. You could publish to viewer only. The document is kept on the publishers server, and the reader is served page by page over the internet, the page being displayed in a reader. If he searches the document, the search request is sent to server, the server searches the document, and the results offered back to the reader. But this required a host, and your own infrastructure.

2. You can personally print the billing information for a buyer onto each page of the PDF, but this has to be done as part of the background image of the page before the PDF is rendered, so that it is a permanent embedment and not a post applied watermark. If you stamp name and transaction number onto a PDF like DrivethruRPG, they are easily and freely removable.

3. You could release a PDF as a series of rendered image plates as opposed to digitally bound text over images. So you end up with a higher quality product, but it is just a series of digital photos of pages. It is not searchable and it is immense in size compared to a traditional PDF. You reduce the user experience of the PDF itself, but you limit redistribution by increasing download time and storage space for something that have very little utility. Kiel Chenier did this fairly effectively with Weird in the Waves which took a surprisingly long time to reach distribution illicitly online in spite of online reviews and an interview with Matt Finch promoting the product. The demand and the requests for copies were there, but no-one was distributing.

4. You could release the PDF for free. By default, there is then no illicit distribution of the product. Only further promotion. This is why Swords & Wizardry is so big amongst the hundreds of OSR rulesets.

5. There is an informal list maintained by the hosts and distributors of circulating PDFs of certain publishers and product they simply will not host. Either as a result of individual publishers taking legal action against individual people, or by dint of a certain level of respect for certain individuals making requests to them not to distribute their product. I won't pretend to know how it works, but it certain publishers/products are being protected/shielded by the drivers of the online PDF distribution market. Maybe a publisher should find out who the principles are, contact them and plead their case for exclusion. The bulk of (more than 80% I'd say) come from very few sources. We are no longer in an era where the masses use torrents.

6. There are a number of publishers who have distributed, or have individuals who have distributed, spiked versions of their PDFs. To all intent and purpose, the spiked PDF appears the same as the original PDF, but contains differences in the body of the text. Is filled with inconsistencies manner that limits use and playability (I've only ever come across this in adventures so far. Not in rules sets.) Wet Grandpa comes to mind, whoever or whatever Wet Grandpa is. The spiked version tends to be hosted and distributed and once it is in the systems doesn't seem to be easily removed. But the pirate copy running loose is not the genuine article.

For the past five years or so the largest RPG Piracy site was a CA company hosting the largest pirate RPG PDF site on the internet, making all its revenue through perfectly legitimate online advertising. It literally got taken down a month ago. This is one American business preying on other American businesses with the support of American advertisers and American big tech giants. We are not talking about dark web servers behind firewalls with passcodes and membership requests here. This was in your face, every single pirate PDF served up to everyone with a Google Search pointing directly at a folder or a PDF that is directly downloadable.

Thank F that's gone.

As to your original question - If I were publishing, I would not publish PDF until I had established my revenue through physical hard copy. That way any PDF that was distributed would be some guy with a scanner, and that is such a poor standard many users choose not to partake. Kind of like the old pirate movies shot on a mobile phone in a cinema. I'd say keep the PDF off the market, or accept loss of control. Only the publisher can determine or estimate any loss of revenue or potential benefit.

Just my 2c.

I'm not a publisher or an IT professional, but I'm sure there are plenty of people on the publishing/IT side of things that can share their experiences, whether or not they have been impacted by PDF copyright infringement, and what actions they took that worked or did not work.