This isn't Wizards asking, right? It's DriveThruRPG. Remember when Wizards forced DriveThruRPG to pull all the PDFs of classic D&D books they had for sale a few years ago? Good times. The worm has turned.
Wizards is partnered with them now. The DMGuild thing that the page is under is Wizard's platform for letting people publish original content coupled with WotC IP not covered by the OGL. I have some issues with how they handle IP once someone publishes something to the DM's Guild (or whatever the actual name is), but the idea is pretty nifty.
Also, WotC has been selling classic (pre-3.0) D&D books through DriveThru for at least a year (but I feel like it's been longer).
Yeah, that's what I was referring to. There was old D&D material on DriveThruRPG for a few years before Wizards up and made them pull it. This was back in 2009, a good while after D&D 4th Edition had come out. The PDFs weren't available for purchase legally again until the beginning of 2013.
I ain't gonna speculate on motivations, but the timing of these events sure does line up with certain publishing decisions that Wizards was making.
I'd say access completely lines up with their reprints. Also I from what I've heard about their business now that having the PDFs for sale is probably one of the few ways to get "new" conent for now. They do seem to be in some what of a holding pattern. Not a lot of new content and a lot of what is generated is contracted out.
I'm not sure how to interpret this. "WotC has given us permission to republish their old books, but absolutely will not lift a finger to give us access to any of them, so we've got to fall back on begging fans to scan their old stuff" is my best guess.
And then they're telling people to cut the spine off their 30-year-old collector's item for best scanning results. In exchange for $50. Good luck with that.
TSR was notorious for throwing stuff away. Like all the original artwork for many classic modules and manuals. This was also well before era of digital.
I don't know about D&D, but Wizards keeps an incredible archive of Magic products. I would also put money on it being TSR that lost things, if in fact things were lost.
> this definitely sounds like "We'll give you $50 bucks so that we can start reselling it since the rights are ours anyways. Thanks Chumps!"
I dunno, how much do you think they'll make off of a random adventure from 30 years ago? More than $50, sure—but it's not like this is highway robbery.
WotC owns the IP, so they could do any number of things:
1.) Make a derivative work for the new D&D version (everyone loves retro)
2.) Make a new video game off of the old content.
3.) Rerelease books are part of an XXst aniversary edition.
The key here being that "they" (since it wasn't really WotC, but TSR) lost a lot of physical assets (both written and visual IP), and are basically paying pocket change for people to give that back to them. Indeed, they are even having the end user do the hardest part of the work, which is the scanning. Rather than just buying the books at market prices, and then doing the work themselves.
The real question is, "Why would they ask for scans of old books and pay $50 for them", with the only commercially reasonable answer being, "Because they think that they will obtain much more that $50 woth of value, or the work required to obtain and scan it themselves is worth way more than $50".
> The real question is, "Why would they ask for scans of old books and pay $50 for them", with the only commercially reasonable answer being, "Because they think that they will obtain much more that $50 woth of value, or the work required to obtain and scan it themselves is worth way more than $50".
If you think this is a ripoff ("Thanks, chumps!"), the only possible conclusion is that any time anyone gives you money for anything, you're getting ripped off.
A more charitable reading is that dsp1234 thinks it's self-evident that only someone naive about the value to dmsguild would accept such a deal, that they should instead hold out for more, and that dmsguild is banking on that naivety, making someone who takes up the offer a chump.
It's a normative argument about the appropriate distribution of the gains from trade.
Nothing is going to help libraries except local community action to protect them (which I fully support). But that's a separate issue from this archival initiative.
The libraries of today are the community meeting and learning spaces of tomorrow.
That's if you want to use a sheet-feeding scanner, in order to save time. It's a bit of a weird suggestion, since I'd imagine the people who still have these books probably aren't the sort of people who want to destroy them just to save some time, but there are lots of other options.
You could pretty easily meet their requirements with a DSLR on a copystand. I'd do the left and right pages separately (unless you have a two-camera setup) so that everything is nice and flat.
The one oddball requirement is that users convert to CMYK. I'm not sure why they think that's a good idea. Most home scanners are purely RGB devices and they're just going to convert (shoddily) to CMYK in the driver or in a conversion program downstream. Seems like they're asking for color issues. I'd have asked for sRGB-colorspaced RGB, or "don't touch the knobs you don't understand". shrug
They're also asking for users to descreen the images which is basically a blurring feature that gets rid of the halftone that's a result of offset printing.
They're not looking for high quality archival scans, they're asking users to perform some basic workflow tasks necessary to ready the images for distribution.
It all sounds very sketchy to me. That or they're just completely incompetent.
I think Google's project is less about preserving the book, and more about indexing the content which is a subtly different goal. They care less about high fidelity reproduction and more about content acquisition.
As ctskippy speculated, I too think this is less for archival and more for "LIMITED EDITION : 500 COUNT REPRINT" commercial repurposing. However, for posterity, I certainly encourage you scan that work and submit it to as many trackers as you can and/or archive.org. Don't strip the binding and what not, of course, but you can achieve pretty high quality scans without damaging the integrity of the book nonetheless.
I never was too much into gaming but my friends have tons of good memories from many'a'Saturday spent with a good DM. It'd be great if the next generation had the same resources to play around with.
You have to strip the binding to get the scan right. I've seen lost of DnD scans in my day and the older ones are generally terrible towards the book edges due to not being able to press the page all the way down to the scanner.
This doesn't sound like it's coming from the perspective of someone looking to archive or preserve these books, but rather someone who is looking to exploit other people to produce something they can monetize with no regard for quality.
They're accepting a container format (PDF) that's just a wrapper around a JPEG, PNG, TIFF or other rasters. Or they'd like a lossy format (JPEG) with no suggested compression settings.
They'd like you to use the enhancement features/filters of your scanner software which is like Instagramming your photos. Presumably because they don't have a processing workflow in place to perform this themselves.
They want you to convert what will natively be captured as RGB to CMYK, something you generally don't leave up to amateurs if you have any interest in maintaining an accurate conversion.
That all tells me they don't care to have quality master scans they can go back to, they just want something passable they can sell to others.
To be fair, if the company doesn't have the masters any more, but they want to give people legal access, they need to start somewhere...
After they have a scanned copy, they at least have the ABILITY to re-type the text, fix the formatting, etc.
I empathize a lot with what they're trying to do.
Imagine if you're a passionate employee, who cares about the books you grew up with. They're fun to read, and you really want to give more people access to them.
After months of pushing, your bosses give-in - Sure, sell the only stuff online.. But this isn't likely to make much money, so we're not giving you a budget for the project.
This gives them a way to get started - If the titles sell, and are popular, they can go back, and argue that it's worth improving their quality. If not, at least they're legally available at ALL, and that's better than letting them be forgotten.
It also does not sound like they have much experience scanning old printed materials either. There are many little issues that can come up with graphics and text during scanning that can only be corrected by rescanning a page.
For example, if a graphic has a mosaic pattern in it having the page slightly askew when scanned can result in artificial artifacts especially when scanning at 300 DPI. Scanning at a higher resolution, 600+ DPI, then downsampling after clean up can avoid issues with graphics.
The RGB to CMYK is true as well. Scanning black and white pages then converting to CMYK can result in black colors that are not rich and/or do not match the touch up colors.
Source: I have previously interned doing manga book translation which required cutting books apart and scanning them.
This superficially reminds me of Metallica's recent request for fans to send in old materials, which have been compiled into large box sets for the reissues of Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightenting which were, in their heydey, bolstered by fan passion and tape trading. Now that the material has been curated / massaged / etc, fans can get ahold of the box sets for the one-time fee of $149.99. Each.
Sure. I'll scan 'em in and then send the magnet link to which they can point their torrent client. No? You want me to be a digital sharecropper where I do the work, send the results only to you, and you reap the profits? Mmm, gonna have to pass on that one.
I find it hard to believe that you believe that scanning a work (even if rare) that they own the rights to means that you deserve a cut of future profits. You could argue that $50 may not be enough money, but a fixed rate fee seems pretty reasonable for doing what amounts to manual labor.
I'd argue when he used the phrase "digital sharecropper", he did imply that.
There's no official definition of "digital sharecropper", but Atwood's is as good as any: "Digital sharecroppers typically get nothing in return for the content they've provided, and often give up all rights to what they've created." https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-a-digital-sharecropper...
teddyh got it right, and wowser, did you infer a lot from my pithy little comment. I mean, read what you quoted: "give up all rights to what they've created", including throwing it up on the pirate bay. Either free for all, or free for none, because i do charity work for actual charities, not multi-billion dollar for-profit corporations.
Yeah, that's insane. I think I may have some of the books in question, although in storage halfway across the country.
But there's no way I'm going to destroy them, and I have to think that the kind of person who hoards these things (including me) is NOT the kind of person who would then turn around and dismantle them.
Wizards of the Coast (and in particular Magic: The Gathering) is the most profitable part of Hasbro, too. IIRC, Magic was the highest earning property in all of Hasbro last quarter and has been at the top for a while.
I was all ready to help out because I have a stash of most of their missing 1st edition adventures (e.g. S1 Tomb of Horrors, etc.), well-preserved and in plastic... until I saw this:
> You will get best results by cutting the spine off the book and by using a sheet-fed scanner for interiors and a flatbed scanner for covers.
According to the Japanese manga scanlation scene, the best way to get the pages out without damage is to heat the spine with a hairdrier, or solder gun or even a microwave so the glue melts away. Also, buy 2 copies, one for scanning, the other for preserving.
The digital plantation OTOH knows no limit to cheapness and shoddiness. The rights owner doesn't want to rent equiment for preservation, they don't want to acquire the material they have rights to, instead they ask someone else to do the work for them, including post-processing. For USD 50. Wizards of the Coast, go away and die.
Wow, the two adventure modules I have are on the list. They were hella fun to play and would love to share so others can enjoy. They are stapled bindings though, and I really don't want to cut the pages to put them through my Doxie. Any tips on scanning them without having to cut them?
To add a little more fuel to the "this is a rip-off" fire, many of the books they're looking for in 3.5e, 3e, and 2e are not hard to come by, either in physical form on auction sites or in digital form. They don't need fans to do the leg work of finding these books for them. The only reason to do it this way is to avoid paying fair compensation for the time required to scan them.
Uhhh.. for those people yelling "rip off", you have no idea of the demand or lack of for these titles. This may be the only economical way to get these titles preserved.
The reality might just be that it just isn't worth it to do it any other way.
As someone who loves old D&D modules (and has actually bought from DriveThru), I think it's really great.
My guess is that there was someone who works for these guys who also loves old D&D modules that couldn't convince anyone to make this happen unless they did it this way.
Is there any guarantee (perhaps via some sort of license) that the materials will be made freely available to all? If not, I'm not sure what the point of working for free for someone else's gain is.
I think I speak for most hardcore D&D fans when I say that most players will be perfectly fine continuing to torrent these books for the foreseeable future. In fact, unless I missed something, I'm kind of surprised this company didn't just do that since people have gone through the trouble of converting them to PDF already.
My gut feeling is there is no way the recent stuff with Archive.org and old video games hasn't been a major cause of this "project" by Wizards. They have this huge library of stuff that could be considered abandoned, and with this they could make the argument that they haven't abandoned the works.
I have the 1995 prints of the 2nd edition core books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and also the Monstrous Manual), sometimes referred to as the 2.5 edition. They are not in this list and also not in the DMG store. While rule-wise there were almost no changes from the original 2nd edition, the layout and color prints got a complete overhaul. And before you ask, no, I'm not going to cut them up and scan, sorry.
What is also curious is that simple Google searches such as https://www.google.com/search?q=Advanced+Dugeons+and+Dragons... turn op decent scans of the materials on the very first result page. I don't think this was thought through at all. Is there some legal angle why they need someone that owns the book send them a personally scanned file?
63 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadAlso, WotC has been selling classic (pre-3.0) D&D books through DriveThru for at least a year (but I feel like it's been longer).
I ain't gonna speculate on motivations, but the timing of these events sure does line up with certain publishing decisions that Wizards was making.
And then they're telling people to cut the spine off their 30-year-old collector's item for best scanning results. In exchange for $50. Good luck with that.
That said, this definitely sounds like "We'll give you $50 bucks so that we can start reselling it since the rights are ours anyways. Thanks Chumps!"
[0] - http://www.monkeyinthecage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Ta...
I dunno, how much do you think they'll make off of a random adventure from 30 years ago? More than $50, sure—but it's not like this is highway robbery.
1.) Make a derivative work for the new D&D version (everyone loves retro)
2.) Make a new video game off of the old content.
3.) Rerelease books are part of an XXst aniversary edition.
The key here being that "they" (since it wasn't really WotC, but TSR) lost a lot of physical assets (both written and visual IP), and are basically paying pocket change for people to give that back to them. Indeed, they are even having the end user do the hardest part of the work, which is the scanning. Rather than just buying the books at market prices, and then doing the work themselves.
The real question is, "Why would they ask for scans of old books and pay $50 for them", with the only commercially reasonable answer being, "Because they think that they will obtain much more that $50 woth of value, or the work required to obtain and scan it themselves is worth way more than $50".
If you think this is a ripoff ("Thanks, chumps!"), the only possible conclusion is that any time anyone gives you money for anything, you're getting ripped off.
The alternative, sane model is known as the gains from trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gains_from_trade
It's a normative argument about the appropriate distribution of the gains from trade.
The libraries of today are the community meeting and learning spaces of tomorrow.
Unfortunately, they recommend that the books be stripped and scanned page by page for "acceptable" results. That's where I lose all interest. :(
You could pretty easily meet their requirements with a DSLR on a copystand. I'd do the left and right pages separately (unless you have a two-camera setup) so that everything is nice and flat.
The one oddball requirement is that users convert to CMYK. I'm not sure why they think that's a good idea. Most home scanners are purely RGB devices and they're just going to convert (shoddily) to CMYK in the driver or in a conversion program downstream. Seems like they're asking for color issues. I'd have asked for sRGB-colorspaced RGB, or "don't touch the knobs you don't understand". shrug
They're not looking for high quality archival scans, they're asking users to perform some basic workflow tasks necessary to ready the images for distribution.
It all sounds very sketchy to me. That or they're just completely incompetent.
Anyone know how to connect with them??
Wizards should also reach out to this team with this request...
I never was too much into gaming but my friends have tons of good memories from many'a'Saturday spent with a good DM. It'd be great if the next generation had the same resources to play around with.
They're accepting a container format (PDF) that's just a wrapper around a JPEG, PNG, TIFF or other rasters. Or they'd like a lossy format (JPEG) with no suggested compression settings.
They'd like you to use the enhancement features/filters of your scanner software which is like Instagramming your photos. Presumably because they don't have a processing workflow in place to perform this themselves.
They want you to convert what will natively be captured as RGB to CMYK, something you generally don't leave up to amateurs if you have any interest in maintaining an accurate conversion.
That all tells me they don't care to have quality master scans they can go back to, they just want something passable they can sell to others.
I empathize a lot with what they're trying to do. Imagine if you're a passionate employee, who cares about the books you grew up with. They're fun to read, and you really want to give more people access to them.
After months of pushing, your bosses give-in - Sure, sell the only stuff online.. But this isn't likely to make much money, so we're not giving you a budget for the project.
This gives them a way to get started - If the titles sell, and are popular, they can go back, and argue that it's worth improving their quality. If not, at least they're legally available at ALL, and that's better than letting them be forgotten.
For example, if a graphic has a mosaic pattern in it having the page slightly askew when scanned can result in artificial artifacts especially when scanning at 300 DPI. Scanning at a higher resolution, 600+ DPI, then downsampling after clean up can avoid issues with graphics.
The RGB to CMYK is true as well. Scanning black and white pages then converting to CMYK can result in black colors that are not rich and/or do not match the touch up colors.
Source: I have previously interned doing manga book translation which required cutting books apart and scanning them.
I find it hard to believe that you believe that scanning a work (even if rare) that they own the rights to means that you deserve a cut of future profits. You could argue that $50 may not be enough money, but a fixed rate fee seems pretty reasonable for doing what amounts to manual labor.
There's no official definition of "digital sharecropper", but Atwood's is as good as any: "Digital sharecroppers typically get nothing in return for the content they've provided, and often give up all rights to what they've created." https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-a-digital-sharecropper...
$50 for your labor, no?
But there's no way I'm going to destroy them, and I have to think that the kind of person who hoards these things (including me) is NOT the kind of person who would then turn around and dismantle them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_of_the_Coast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbro
> You will get best results by cutting the spine off the book and by using a sheet-fed scanner for interiors and a flatbed scanner for covers.
Ack. no way, sorry.
Or so I've heard :^)
The digital plantation OTOH knows no limit to cheapness and shoddiness. The rights owner doesn't want to rent equiment for preservation, they don't want to acquire the material they have rights to, instead they ask someone else to do the work for them, including post-processing. For USD 50. Wizards of the Coast, go away and die.
The reality might just be that it just isn't worth it to do it any other way.
As someone who loves old D&D modules (and has actually bought from DriveThru), I think it's really great.
My guess is that there was someone who works for these guys who also loves old D&D modules that couldn't convince anyone to make this happen unless they did it this way.
I think I speak for most hardcore D&D fans when I say that most players will be perfectly fine continuing to torrent these books for the foreseeable future. In fact, unless I missed something, I'm kind of surprised this company didn't just do that since people have gone through the trouble of converting them to PDF already.