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Post by Pawel on Oct 3, 2019 8:45:18 GMT
That newest Reclaimer RPG Kickstarter made me do some research about eco-friendliness of pdfs versus printed books.
And, as much as I adore my printed book collection, I can't deny the carbon footprint guilt I've now learned to feel when I look at it.
Having said that, instead of going full pdf-only "vegan" I think I'm going to just limit my printed book purchases and get pdfs/e-pubs where possible - but my most important books, I feel, must still be paper. And Blue Planet is definitely at the very top "save from fire before thinking about family" tier of my library. So yeah, I hope Jeff gives us both options in the Kickstarter (whether it's gonna be a Kickstarter or something else is another matter indeed, given the current anti-union controversy).
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benq
New Member
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Post by benq on Oct 3, 2019 14:23:07 GMT
My vote would be for both formats. I've tried running with pdf only, but I must confess I can't get used to it and find a hardcopy so much easier to deal with.
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Post by doublea on Oct 5, 2019 14:47:59 GMT
Well that's the first time I've felt guilty about the carbon footprint of my tabletop RPG books... I remember at one point during the v2 run they combined four of the books together into this essential collection, which was Natural Selection, Fluid Mechanics, First Colony and Frontier Justice. I think. I was always annoyed how -difficult- it was to find Ancient Echoes back when. I'm usually good with supplements being available as PDF as well, since I tend to use them less. That said, side-rant, the thing that makes me crazy these days is companies that charge you both for the print as well as the PDF, considering them to be entire separate purchases. At -least- give me a discount on the PDF if I bought the hardcover, come on guys.  |
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Post by grinnenbaeritt on Oct 6, 2019 5:56:34 GMT
Well that's the first time I've felt guilty about the carbon footprint of my tabletop RPG books... I remember at one point during the v2 run they combined four of the books together into this essential collection, which was Natural Selection, Fluid Mechanics, First Colony and Frontier Justice. I think. I was always annoyed how -difficult- it was to find Ancient Echoes back when. I'm usually good with supplements being available as PDF as well, since I tend to use them less. That said, side-rant, the thing that makes me crazy these days is companies that charge you both for the print as well as the PDF, considering them to be entire separate purchases. At -least- give me a discount on the PDF if I bought the hardcover, come on guys. I find the whole issue of the environmental cost of books a little of a non-starter. Whether the books is a "waste of paper" is another matter...  From my experience the business "cost" of a PDF tends to be relatively close to the cost of a "Book" if brought separately... it's the added extras of that cost and the related issue of convenience that muddy the waters. Books come with the added costs of postage (or if you are lucky enough to have a local stockist, transport to/from them..) Personal preference is a book. Environmentally, it isn't as damaging as it sounds. Not compared to the related resources required to produce the item required to view a PDF. Paper, literally, grows on trees. Trees grow and can be replaced relatively easily. Whereas, the environmental impact of extracting the metals required by computers, phones, whatever are far greater, regardless of how many PDF's you store on them. PDF's are convenient, not just to the user but also the publisher, so it's not going to go away. The reasons the costs are apparently high, is mainly due to the requirement to cover the initial costs of production (writers, editors, artwork) which are much the same as Books. Books however, also carry the costs of printing , storage and transportation BEFORE they are sold, which is the main reason that publishers like PDF's (which can be kept on a server somewhere) A LOT of publishers will often bundle a PDF with a physical copy because those initial costs have already been covered by the greater selling price of the book, I know quite a few shops that will also do this, I would expect most kickstarters to do the same, if you buy a physical copy, you get a PDF. |
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Post by Pawel on Oct 6, 2019 9:43:30 GMT
Plenty of RPG Kickstarters offer the book+pdf bundle, I imagine. We'll see what we get in a couple months. I imagine calculating the actual environmental footprint of printed books vs pdfs might come down to the amounts of devices consumed per year or decade or whatever. So it will vary greatly per person. Some of us consume 1000 pages per year, some of us go through 10,000. Some of us buy dedicated e-readers just to read, some read on devices they'd be using otherwise for other kinds of entertainment. It wasn't a terribly long research I've done so far, but the hits I'm seeing on Google are consistently around a dedicated e-reader (not a device you'd have otherwise - like a laptop or smartphone) paying off its environmental footprint at a threshold of 22-30 books (depending on who does their calculations how). Of course we all have much bigger lifestyle choices to consider to address our environmental impact - but Blue Planet RPG is certainly a franchise that encourages us to ask such questions. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 31, 2019 3:50:43 GMT
We are absolutely thinking hard about ways to address the environmental footprint of book production and ways to promote ocean conservation. We are considering options from 100% recycled materials to service promotions - like "send us a photo of you at a dune grass planting work day (or whatever) and get 20% off your backer order."
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Post by Pawel on Oct 31, 2019 17:08:48 GMT
Holy crap, this sounds so absolutely amazing!!!! <3 <3 <3
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