August 8: Do you prefer hardcover, softcover, or electronic books? What are the benefits of your preference?

I like ebook versions of RPG texts, which are unfortunately as rare as hen's teeth. PDF is… fine. Not great. Pretty much unreadable on small screens (I sometimes have my phone's pdf viewer read them aloud while I drive, which is … differently sub-optimal), while larger screens are less easy to carry around.

Paper books are the clear winner for any book I plan to reference a lot in play, because it's still too difficult to flip to another part of a text while 'holding your finger' somewhere else in the book.

Bonus Content: I wrote about how to make e-readers suck less as reference tools three and a half years ago, with pictures – http://doycetesterman.com/index.php/2013/01/e-readers-suck-for-reference-materials-but-they-dont-have-to/

On the other hand, if I'm just reading something, electronic is fine.

I just wish we could get away from PDFs and more toward ebook formats.

 

7 comments

  1. I suffer through reading pdfs on my kindle paperwhite. MOST of the e-book versions of rpg books are vastly inferior.

    Anything that relies on artwork, graphs, callouts, or references sucks on a kindle.

    The only rpg book I enjoyed reading on the kindle was Dungeon World.

  2. Did Dungeon World do an ebook version, or is it just that the PDF isn't awful?

    Evil Hat did a few of their books as ebooks, and they aren't at all bad, but honestly I can't even find ebook versions of other games to compare them too.

  3. I got an epub version of Dungeon World. Don't know about the others. After buying 2-3 for their kindle support, I gave up.

    Here's what I remember having a kindle version:

    – Gunwave
    – Vow of Honor
    – Fate
    – Durance

  4. Definitely. I've got an old 'keyboard' kindle that at least has the 'advance/backup' buttons on both left and right edges, but the right-hand bias is strong.

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