Author Topic: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)  (Read 17257 times)

Offline Nytemare3701

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Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« on: October 28, 2013, 10:39:52 PM »
I have been thinking more lately on the state of my hardcover books, errata, and the meaning of "official" due to the recent conversation in fun finds 5. The line is drawn at every gaming table to allow or prohibit different tiers of books, from the Core Only DMs to the Everything Goes MinMaxapalooza, and I came to a few observations of my own.

Drawing the line is entirely ok. Things aren't balanced as well as they could be. Broken shit happens. I don't trust WoTC with their own product.
Errata is given a bad reputation because it is a change to the book they sold us, the book that we as consumers to be a complete and competently made product. The problem is that the team making the game is much smaller than the group breaking it. Errata WILL happen. The real problem here is that the delivery method is flawed to the point of feeling illegitimate. When they put out a PDF of errata, I either need to keep them with my hardcover, memorize them, or physically alter my hardcover book to include them. None of these are any better than if I had just houseruled them in the first place.

These led me to the same conclusion. The decision to allow or disallow books is one for each group to make, but the balance of a book shouldn't be the issue. Errata should be freely available, implemented painlessly, and supported with real data. This is why my tabletop games will no longer be hardcovers, and I will not be supporting games that do not implement their books with E-Book friendly formatting and E-Book based Errata. I know people love the feel of a hardcover at the table, but it's holding the genre back by being a static ruleset that can't be fixed when broken. If Hardcovers had removable pages (like a binder) then it would be fine, since errata'd pages could be traded out at will (barring formatting and pagesize issues). This is what E-Books excel at though.

I understand the fears of the companies that don't want digital formats and want to sell a physical product. I understand the desires for the physical book. I understand the tradition. What I don't understand is it being treated as the proverbial golden calf. It's broken. We have the technology to fix it. Digital sales are not going to destroy your industry, and you have the capacity to sell a superior product because of them.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2013, 11:22:35 PM by Nytemare3701 »

Offline veekie

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2013, 03:52:37 AM »
There are other problems with living rulebooks though. Changes need to be propagated, remembered and implemented. Depth of rules means that for the most part, the game runs with the general rules knowledge internalized, and it gets increasingly hard to keep the same mental versioning across your group as you stack errata. Many errata affect only small parts of the game individually, which makes them hard to bring to mind.
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Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2013, 04:14:34 AM »
There are other problems with living rulebooks though. Changes need to be propagated, remembered and implemented. Depth of rules means that for the most part, the game runs with the general rules knowledge internalized, and it gets increasingly hard to keep the same mental versioning across your group as you stack errata. Many errata affect only small parts of the game individually, which makes them hard to bring to mind.

That's going to be a problem with ANY system that undergoes balance changes. As long as something changes, you WILL have to acknowledge that change to the rules and internalize it eventually, or be playing a fundamentally different game from those who do. Digital distribution makes these changes relatively painless in comparison to the same changes on a hardcover, and with the right delivery methods they can actually have a value added effect on the product. Imagine a patch program that can be run on your E-Books, changing the needed areas without downloading the file all over again. It's not a stretch, since that's pretty much how video games patch. If you own a legitimate copy of the book, you get your patches. If you don't, then you have to go manually download them from whatever illegitimate source you would normally get your PDFs of the books.

Offline veekie

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2013, 06:16:32 AM »
I mean the problem is with calling attention to changes. D&D is primarily operated by humans interpreting the rules after all, and taking Pathfinder for an example, even after GMing it for a year, I'm still making rule system mistakes where there is some unannounced change between it and 3.5, nevermind the internal changes.
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Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2013, 11:57:33 AM »
I mean the problem is with calling attention to changes. D&D is primarily operated by humans interpreting the rules after all, and taking Pathfinder for an example, even after GMing it for a year, I'm still making rule system mistakes where there is some unannounced change between it and 3.5, nevermind the internal changes.

@Interpretation: It wouldn't be so if the rules were better defined. If the definitions are lacking, then smoothly implemented errata fixes that. In fact, the things we normally love to see (explicit intent from the designers) are easily added to digital formats in the form of spoiler blocks.

@Memorizing rules: Patch notes are your friend. If it is a game you regularly play, read the patch notes. The human brain is MUCH better at absorbing minor changes than it is at trying to memorize a 3 page errata document.

Offline dither

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2013, 06:58:49 PM »
You make some good points here, but I wonder if it would be okay if softcover rulebooks that included major updates were released periodically (let's say annually) while splatbooks with pretty, pretty pictures were still released in hardcover?

For massive damage?


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Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #6 on: October 30, 2013, 04:13:12 PM »
You make some good points here, but I wonder if it would be okay if softcover rulebooks that included major updates were released periodically (let's say annually) while splatbooks with pretty, pretty pictures were still released in hardcover?

For massive damage?


--Dither

Hardcover books without usable information are basically just picture galleries. In fact, they are worse because you CAN'T use them for reference anymore, as the provide incorrect information, which is worse than no information at all. As for softcover releases...Are you willing to pay whatever costs they want to charge you for a shitty softcover of a book you already own, which you only bought in the first place because you wanted a hardcover for the feels? They sure won't be releasing them for free, and annual updates don't lend themselves to bite-size easily absorbed patch notes. Instead you get effective overhauls that the community already addressed long ago, meaning relearning the rules every year.

Offline dither

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #7 on: October 30, 2013, 05:22:25 PM »
See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.

I'm not saying ebooks *aren't* the way of the future, but my Player's Handbook sees use every week at the game table because I can flip to the page I need faster than my players can scroll through the website.

WotC put out some nice softcover books for the Essentials line, which are really transport-friendly.

Also, who's saying "incorrect" or "unusable" information? It sounds like you're just assuming the product quality of print products is inferior. Is a hard copy worthless because there's a typo in a table on Page X, or because errata released two years *after* that contradicts the original wording of a prestige class feature?

Again, as I said -- you make a lot of really good points. I think you may be overselling your point a bit.


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Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #8 on: October 31, 2013, 03:10:13 AM »
See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
See, that's the problem. Right now the digital copies we have are poorly formatted versions of physical ones. They were still physical first, and don't take advantage of the digital format. The fact that they were physical books FIRST, then digitized as an afterthought or for more distribution is what's keeping them from being formatted optimally. Sidebars and pretty pictures make E-Readers cry since they just can't format them right.

Also, I use my PDFs MUCH faster than physical books, provided they are FORMATTED RIGHT. Even the ones that have searchable text are many times faster than my physical book, since I can CTRL+F, type Wealth By Level, then hit enter a hell of a lot faster than most people can look it up in the index, then flip to that page.

Also, who's saying "incorrect" or "unusable" information? It sounds like you're just assuming the product quality of print products is inferior. Is a hard copy worthless because there's a typo in a table on Page X,

Of course it's inferior. Unless it was printed PERFECT the first time, then every errata after that point is by definition a correction of those errors. It's not about a typo here or there. It's about the MASSIVE balance issues that inevitably pop up in almost every multiplayer game in existence.

...or because errata released two years *after* that contradicts the original wording of a prestige class feature?
Unless the errata is worse for some reason (and I don't mean worse for your character, I mean worse for the game), then that contradiction should happen. The errata are corrections to problems, not new content. D&D (and most tabletop RPGs for that matter) live in this weird-ass bubble that other games don't seem to even consider, one where fucked up rules are just part of the game. This is why things like The Oberoni Fallacy have appeared.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2013, 03:25:51 AM »
See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
See, that's the problem. Right now the digital copies we have are poorly formatted versions of physical ones. They were still physical first, and don't take advantage of the digital format. The fact that they were physical books FIRST, then digitized as an afterthought or for more distribution is what's keeping them from being formatted optimally. Sidebars and pretty pictures make E-Readers cry since they just can't format them right.

Also, I use my PDFs MUCH faster than physical books, provided they are FORMATTED RIGHT. Even the ones that have searchable text are many times faster than my physical book, since I can CTRL+F, type Wealth By Level, then hit enter a hell of a lot faster than most people can look it up in the index, then flip to that page.

Problem: that is a flaw with e-readers. Books should not be intentionally designed to look like the most ugly block of text ever for the sake of an easily-designable PDF. :/

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #10 on: October 31, 2013, 04:22:36 AM »
See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
See, that's the problem. Right now the digital copies we have are poorly formatted versions of physical ones. They were still physical first, and don't take advantage of the digital format. The fact that they were physical books FIRST, then digitized as an afterthought or for more distribution is what's keeping them from being formatted optimally. Sidebars and pretty pictures make E-Readers cry since they just can't format them right.

Also, I use my PDFs MUCH faster than physical books, provided they are FORMATTED RIGHT. Even the ones that have searchable text are many times faster than my physical book, since I can CTRL+F, type Wealth By Level, then hit enter a hell of a lot faster than most people can look it up in the index, then flip to that page.

Problem: that is a flaw with e-readers. Books should not be intentionally designed to look like the most ugly block of text ever for the sake of an easily-designable PDF. :/

This is what dynamic formatting excels at. If you don't have uninterruptible blocks of text (I'M LOOKING AT YOU TABLES IN IMAGE FORMAT) then you can optimize it for any given digital device.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #11 on: October 31, 2013, 04:27:25 AM »
You directly said 'don't include pictures'. I take issue with that. :|

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #12 on: October 31, 2013, 04:39:08 AM »
You directly said 'don't include pictures'. I take issue with that. :|

The SRD includes no pictures, but has links to access the images for all the creatures on every creature block.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #13 on: October 31, 2013, 04:49:31 AM »
That's not a particularly attractive way of doing things, which defeats the point of pictures. Aesthetics should not be utterly sacrificed for the sake of easy editing. If your rulebook looks like a particularly bland textbook, it's unappealing.

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #14 on: October 31, 2013, 05:20:38 AM »
That's not a particularly attractive way of doing things, which defeats the point of pictures. Aesthetics should not be utterly sacrificed for the sake of easy editing. If your rulebook looks like a particularly bland textbook, it's unappealing.

I consider it unappealing that the aesthetic choices used for hardcovers make them unwieldy and awkward on most digital formats. My example of the SRD stands, since you could easily do a full page picture entry in a PDF or other digital format, followed by dynamically formatted text. The only reason they don't do this in paper formats is printing and space concerns. This isn't an issue in a digital format. Which would you prefer, a Full page pinup style picture of your balor, or the one put on the side of the page with the text wrapping around it?

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #15 on: October 31, 2013, 05:23:32 AM »
Full page because better picture quality is likely (literal image quality, not better drawing).

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #16 on: October 31, 2013, 05:28:01 AM »
Full page because better picture quality is likely (literal image quality, not better drawing).

Exactly. That's what a digital format offers, as a hardcover is currently offering the text-wrapped version.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #17 on: October 31, 2013, 05:30:58 AM »
This isn't relevant to digital format. I'm saying keep the nice formatting, sacrifice some ease of use and usability. Just because it's digital doesn't mean you can make it ugly.

I don't care about digital or not, I only care about the visual outcome (also avoiding page bloat).

Offline ketaro

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #18 on: October 31, 2013, 06:23:00 AM »
The easiest solution is to just not worry about errata. If there is a problem that bad, it probably is either being kept in check or been houseruled to work in a less broken or more functional way. If it is really that big of a problem. The eventual coming of an errata then for whatever that problem thus was becomes moot as you really can just categorize the errata as the same kind of houseruling problem solving you might've already done when the problem first came up.

Personally, hardbacks just come off as functional enough to not need to bother with an e-book unless the book isn't physically available, and even so, a perfectly formatted e-book is merely shaving off no more than a matter of seconds on the look-up time compared to with a hardback making such a hypothetical change/update hardly worth the effort. And then e-books aren't really the most profitable venture especially when you take into account the vast majority of any D&D or similar systems is already up on places like the SRD or dndtools or ect. It is all literally a google search away no matter what some one is looking for.

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Rulebooks as living documents (AKA The Case for E-Books)
« Reply #19 on: October 31, 2013, 07:10:24 AM »
The easiest solution is to just not worry about errata. If there is a problem that bad, it probably is either being kept in check or been houseruled to work in a less broken or more functional way. If it is really that big of a problem. The eventual coming of an errata then for whatever that problem thus was becomes moot as you really can just categorize the errata as the same kind of houseruling problem solving you might've already done when the problem first came up.
Oberoni fallacy.

Personally, hardbacks just come off as functional enough to not need to bother with an e-book unless the book isn't physically available, and even so, a perfectly formatted e-book is merely shaving off no more than a matter of seconds on the look-up time compared to with a hardback making such a hypothetical change/update hardly worth the effort. And then e-books aren't really the most profitable venture especially when you take into account the vast majority of any D&D or similar systems is already up on places like the SRD or dndtools or ect. It is all literally a google search away no matter what some one is looking for.

Hardbacks are functional enough to do a specific job. Show a static ruleset with no changes, in an aesthetically pleasing collectible format. It's not a matter of seconds, it's a matter of having every book in your collection in a searchable format, with up to date errata on hand, so everyone is working with the exact same information, at the highest level of balance available thus far.
This isn't relevant to digital format. I'm saying keep the nice formatting, sacrifice some ease of use and usability. Just because it's digital doesn't mean you can make it ugly.
It's VERY relevant. If you digitize, formatting is MUCH easier. If you use hardcover, you cannot digitize without making constant compromises to both the aesthetic and the information. Page limits (due to printing cost), text formatting (due to shoving in the pictures in between the rules text), the text formatting (locked in place with image tables that prevent any form of dynamic formatting from functioning).
I don't care about digital or not, I only care about the visual outcome (also avoiding page bloat).

We established that you can have neat and orderly rules information on a page following a full art version of the illustrations. Page bloat simply doesn't exist in a digital format, since if you are printing said pages, you generally aren't printing them for the pictures, so you actually end up with LESS pages overall due to better formatting. If you ARE printing for the pictures, then you have your pictures on their own page, where you aren't ALSO printing text.