Perhaps realising it had an excessively large back catalogue of quality role-playing content not making any money for it, Wizards of the Coast has digitally scanned a staggering amount of old D&D adventures, converted them to PDFs and uploaded them to a new site, called “Dungeons & Dragons Classics”.
As you’d expect, it’s not free — prices for the PDFs ranging from $US4.99 to $US9.99, with a few more expensive outliers for complete sets and the like. According to a piece on Wired, the collection currently contains over 80 products, ranging from 1st Edition all the way to 4th. I didn’t realise 4th Edition was considered a legacy product, but then, it is over five years old (!).
Speaking with Wired, WotC’s Liz Schuh had a rather enlightened perspective regarding the publisher’s decision to dig its old stuff out of the cupboard:
“A lot people have a passion for and memories of these older products … We don’t want them to go to torrent sites. Why not give them a legal route?” Schuh added that idea of re-releasing old products was a result of listening to fans on the forums, with the goal of letting “people play the D&D they want in the format they want”.
The PDFs themselves are completely new scans and are searchable, which suggests it isn’t a half-hearted money grab. Hopefully, the site will prove to be a success and show that yes, reasonable prices combined with a quality product will always be received warmly.
Dungeons & Dragons Classics [Official site, via Wired]
Image: Nathan Forget / Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0
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