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Originally posted by Steve Wieck
Hello, Steve Wieck at White Wolf here.
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Thanks for posting here, Steve.
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What I'd really like is better, specific feedback of just what features people feel are missing here so that we can do something about them.
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When I first heard about the Exalted freebie, I went to your site and tried to DL it. After two hours, I gave up in frustration and proceeded to write some highly critical posts about your business. You should know that lots of people here at RPG.net stood up for you, and since I wanted to be sure I was being fair, I took another crack at DL'ing the file.
The short version is that I figured out how to do it, and got the file. Thanks for that, BTW.
But it left me with a sour taste in my mouth for all the hoops I had to jump through. And it made me extremely uneasy about your service. Especially compared to RPGNow, where I never have to jump through a single hoop.
Point #1 The extra steps necessary to download product from your service make it less likely I will spend money with your service.
When I got the Exalted PDF, I was excited. I have long wanted to create handouts for my PCs and NPCs that detailed their Charms, along with errata, commentary and Power Combat notes.
So imagine my surprise when I find that the restrictions on the PDF limit me to cutting and pasting 10 pages every 10 days. That won't possibly allow me to generate that handout for a single 100 XP PC, much less their opposition. So that means with three PCs, I'll have to wait one month to generate those documents, by which time I'll have to generate them again, to account for experience changes.
This doesn't even take into account the handout on Nexus that I would like to generate for the PCs, or the creation of detailed combat summaries, or the charms for NPCs, etc. I am aware that WW has made charm cards available on their site, but I can't modify these for my own use.
I would like to point out that each of my players has a copy of the core rules. I have two copies myself, as well as every supplement for the game. This is not a question of wanting to get more than I have paid for. It's a question of utility.
I want to spend money on this sort of product, Steve. I want to buy those Mage supplements I missed that are now out of print. I want to spend 10-15 dollars for each of the Exalted fatsplats so that I can use them for the purposes outlined above.
But it is not worth the money at half the price if I can’t use the material in the way that I want to use PDFs.
Point # 2 The restrictions placed on DRM PDFs reduce their utility and make it unlikely that I will buy them.
Finally, I want to state that I have been a long-time customer of yours. My shelves are filled with a near complete run of White Wolf magazine. I bought most of your early supplements before Storyteller and Ars Magica. (Remember the Campaigns book that you wrote?) I have four shelves of books with White Wolf or Sword and Sorcery on their spine. Mage was one of the most successful campaigns that I have ever run, and I am immensely grateful to you personally for that.
But you guys are wrong on this one. You are wrong for the objections you enumerated, and for the two reasons I mentioned in this post.
Reread the post by the author of Magical Medieval Society. He hit the nail on the head. I want to spend money on your products, Steve. Please make it easier for me to do that.