Sources & Stores

[SckizoBoy]

In this digital age and with the pandemic still going strong in areas, where do you guys get your books and supplements from?

My local DM typically has bootleg sources to distribute (though he still buys physical copies of several books), but since I'm primarily an ink and paper addict and realise the need to adapt (especially given I live in a country that doesn't have much product published in my first language), I was wondering where folks usually get their e-books/.pdf stuff from? Publisher webstores directly or third party stores (feel free to discuss preferences/pros/cons etc.)?

 

[Kae]

I'm going to be completely honest here, there's no gaming stores where I live at least not anymore (My friends used to own the only one but that closed), so I don't have many opportunities to acquire games, so what I normally do is try to buy a PDF if it's available or if it's not too expensive we'll organise and all buy the book at the same time online to save on shipping and other stuff like that, as for stuff that's out of print, I just look it up in the Internet I'm sure you know what that means, but you know if we're playing an obscure game we normally only own one copy of it so it's kinda necessary since buying multiple copies off of Ebay would be too expensive and it's just faster for multiple people to have access to it than passing around the book over and over again, or taking turns with the book before the campaign starts so we can have our characters ready.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I'm going to be completely honest here, there's no gaming stores where I live at least not anymore (My friends used to own the only one but that closed), so I don't have many opportunities to acquire games, so what I normally do is try to buy a PDF if it's available or if it's not too expensive we'll organise and all buy the book at the same time online to save on shipping and other stuff like that, as for stuff that's out of print, I just look it up in the Internet I'm sure you know what that means, but you know if we're playing an obscure game we normally only own one copy of it so it's kinda necessary since buying multiple copies off of Ebay would be too expensive and it's just faster for multiple people to have access to it than passing around the book over and over again, or taking turns with the book before the campaign starts so we can have our characters ready.

Yah, that was sort of what I was after: where you tend to buy the pdf's from. I know of a couple of sites, but can't really attest to their reliability/legitimacy. Or do you (individually, you, that is) just get it from where you can find it?

 

[Kae]

Yah, that was sort of what I was after: where you tend to buy the pdf's from. I know of a couple of sites, but can't really attest to their reliability/legitimacy. Or do you (individually, you, that is) just get it from where you can find it?

Depends on the game, some I actually don't own the PDF for but I bought them in Fantasy Grounds (CoC, D&D & Pathfinder mainly) which doubles as a program to assist with campaigns, others I have on DM's Guild (Mostly supplements for 5E), there are a few independent games that I have on itch.io and others I have purchased directly from the game's official web page like Burning Wheel for example, oh yeah and there are a few things I got through Humble Bundle too, I think I also bought some Pathfinder stuff from Paizo.com, so basically all over the place.

Also I don't own any games there but you can also find RPGs on Amazon.com, no idea if they are PDFs or just Kindle files though, most companies sell the PDF files directly from their official web-page though.

 

[SupahEwok]

DriveThruRPG.com is probably the most extensive market for tabletop digital books in the world.

thetrove.net is where you go for PDF's that have fallen off of the back of the internet truck.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Yup, drivethrurpg. You can always download a new copy from your account and they do update them sometimes so you don't need loads of errata sheets

 

[SckizoBoy]

Depends on the game, some I actually don't own the PDF for but I bought them in Fantasy Grounds (CoC, D&D & Pathfinder mainly) which doubles as a program to assist with campaigns, others I have on DM's Guild (Mostly supplements for 5E), there are a few independent games that I have on itch.io and others I have purchased directly from the game's official web page like Burning Wheel for example, oh yeah and there are a few things I got through Humble Bundle too, I think I also bought some Pathfinder stuff from Paizo.com, so basically all over the place.

Good to know. I'll have to keep my eye on Humble Bundle as I've not really had much inclination to buy from them (charitable causes notwithstanding), but given that RPG books tend to run up a pretty penny, it'll be worth the look in.

DriveThruRPG.com is probably the most extensive market for tabletop digital books in the world.

Yup, drivethrurpg. You can always download a new copy from your account and they do update them sometimes so you don't need loads of errata sheets

Huh, I'd heard DriveThruRPG has a bit of a bad reputation, but mostly for printed products, couldn't say for digital format products. I'll have to give them another look.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Huh, I'd heard DriveThruRPG has a bit of a bad reputation, but mostly for printed products, couldn't say for digital format products. I'll have to give them another look.

Never bought anything printed off them, for that I'd just order off the company.

It's been a while since I got anything from them, but being a digital store there is a certain amount of relatively amateur stuff on there you should avoid but I think that would stand for most shopping experiences, even IRL.
It's good for picking up stuff that you can't get physically anymore too.

Humble bundle does do some good stuff, it's obviously a bit random as to what you can get but I got all the WHFRP V2 books and V1 MRB off them for a very low price despite having physical copies of them all anyway because the price was that good. I think I paid £20 for the lot and could have paid less if I'd wanted to.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I don't claim to be an avid tabletop gamer, but there's a store near me called Madness Games and Comics that brought me pause. I didn't even know what 80% of what I was looking at was, but it was still fun just wandering and wondering; put me in the mindset of younger me who could spend hours perusing comic shops. Pretty impressive spread; looks like they do online sales via an email address if anyone's interested.

 

[Tireseas]

DriveThruRPG.com is probably the most extensive market for tabletop digital books in the world.

I'm going to second this. It's a good site (if a little dated in design), often at better than expected prices with searchable PDFs. I got my copy of IDENTICO through them. They also sell a lot of modules, including modules from past seasons of D&D's Adventurers League, that are difficult to obtain otherwise.

Their Twitter page is a great place to browse independent content they sell as they often retweet the creators and authors of the products they sell.

 

[Satinavian]

I tend to go with publisher stores. No reason to pay the man in the middle.