Farcaster
Friday 03-14-2008, 07:00 PM
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/digital/fiona/dp/v3-screen2._V4948245_.jpg (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA?ie=UTF8&tag=penandpaperga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000FI73MA)I promised some time ago to write up a review on the Amazon Kindle (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA?ie=UTF8&tag=penandpaperga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000FI73MA) after I got it in my eager little hands. After waiting almost three months from the time I ordered it, at last it arrived. This is perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Kindle - that it takes so damned long to get one. Luckily, the wait time seems to be getting a little better. Recently, my parents ordered one, and it took about a month from the time they ordered it until it was shipped out.
So, is it worth the wait? I definitely think so. I've been using mine for a couple of months now, and I have been exceedingly happy with it. As a replacement for the paperback book, it excels. It is very comfortable to read, and I personally found that adjusting the font size to be a little larger than standard print noticeably increased my reading speed. I am also completely in love with the fact that I can browse the Kindle selection from home (on my Kindle or on my computer) and have my selection ready to read in less than a minute. Oh, and it is true what they say about the display being simply amazing. You have to see it to believe it.
But, there have been hundreds upon hundreds of reviews written about the Kindle, so I will try not rehash what you can read about in detail all over the net. You may be wondering though how you might use the Kindle to enhance your pen and paper gaming. I hate to have to say that while the Kindle is so much more pleasant to read on than the standard paper back, it is a long way from replacing your RPG reference materials. Why do I say so?
After tearing through my first digital book, I decided to see how I could use the Kindle to enhance my gaming. PDF conversions are still in the experimental stage, and they have already said that the conversion of multi-columnar books into the native Kindle format is still kludgey. But, they do support conversion of Microsoft Word documents. As luck would have it, Wizards of the Coast makes the d20 SRD (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35) available in RTF format, so I decided to try loading that bad boy in. I figured that since the Kindle automatically indexes books you load onto it, it would be an excellent resource when I needed to look up something during a game.
The first problem that I ran into, which admittedly is not Amazon's fault, is that the d20 SRD is actually divided into a gazillion and a half separate documents. If I just loaded this up straight into my Kindle, I'd end up with a very cluttered library. Of course, one thought I did have on this is that I could throw them on a memory card and only load them up when I needed them. I didn't try this approach though.
Instead, I decided to run a test and combine the seven Magic Items documents into one file and upload that to my Kindle. Unhappy days though, I found that the Kindle did not support Rich Text Format (RTF). So, I first had to load the document up and convert it to MS Word format. After I did this, I could then send it off to Amazon to be automatically converted and emailed back to me. Once I sent them a format they could convert, I received my Kindle ready document back through email almost instantaneously. Happily, I connected my Kindle to my computer via USB and copied over the AMZ file.
The result was kinda sloppy. First, even when I reduced the font size to its lowest setting, I still wasn't getting that much on one screen. And at anything other than the smallest font, the line spacing was way too much. While this wasn't a problem reading a typical book, this turned out to be especially problematic for my converted SRD.
The biggest problem that I found was that the tables did not keep their native format. Instead, the cells that were supposed to be spanning across the page, were printed line by line after each other. This made deciphering the table difficult, and the limited screen size and line spacing exacerbated the problem. Had I started with the Monster section instead, which is basically table after table, I would have ended up with a pretty much unusable document.
Still, I did like the fact that I could plug in a search, like "Ring of Protection" and instantly get links back to the exact section the Ring of Protection showed up in. The pitfall of the Kindle's indexing engine as it stands right now though is that you cannot specify a specific book to search. So, if I were to search for a more generic term in my library, such as "magic armor," I would get hits from any books I had downloaded that contained those words as well. Even if there was nothing else loaded, I would still have to fish through the all the results where the words "magic armor" appeared in my SRD. Thankfully, the Kindle does give a snip of the surrounding text, so you can figure out if it is the right section before you click on it.
Ultimately, I decided that the Kindle just didn't measure up as a replacement for reference material. Although there are no officially released RPG books on the Kindle that I know of, I did try loading up a couple computer related books. Most of these types of books use a lot of tables, charts and pictures, just like your typical RPG book would. And it is here that the Kindle doesn't do well. The tables in the computer books I downloaded were first converted into pictures and were not treated as normal text. But, while they kept their formatting, they were also zoomed out on the screen. Even when zooming in, often the tables aren't all that clear to read. Worse, that one table can end up spanning multiple pages.
I suspect that many of the RPG publishers will came to the same conclusion that I did and will probably wait until a new and better model comes out. Out of curiosity, I queried the press department of Wizards (in January) to see if they were planning on publishing any of their RPG materials or books on the Kindle and the response was less than enthusiastic,"Dear Mr. Howard,
Thank you for your email.
Wizards of the Coast is always looking forward in how to best publish or books and RPG's. We do not have any plans at this time we can discuss publicly.
I'm sorry I can be of specific help.
Best regards,
Pat
Corporate Information"
To date, they still haven't released any of their fiction lines on the Kindle, which is unfortunate, because I do enjoy some of the Forgotten Realms and Dragon Lance novels.
So, overall, I still love my Kindle and I would recommend it to anyone who loves reading and has a few hundred bucks burning a whole in their pocket. But, before you run out and purchase one, I suggest you first check out their book lineup and see if your favorite authors have books published with them. WotC doesn't at this time, but I did find one of my favorite authors, R.A. Salvatore, does have all of his non-Forgotten Realms books available digitally. There was also plenty of Terry Brooks and Raymond Feist, or Stephen King for you horror fans.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm sure I have bored you enough, and I have a book to read or something...
So, is it worth the wait? I definitely think so. I've been using mine for a couple of months now, and I have been exceedingly happy with it. As a replacement for the paperback book, it excels. It is very comfortable to read, and I personally found that adjusting the font size to be a little larger than standard print noticeably increased my reading speed. I am also completely in love with the fact that I can browse the Kindle selection from home (on my Kindle or on my computer) and have my selection ready to read in less than a minute. Oh, and it is true what they say about the display being simply amazing. You have to see it to believe it.
But, there have been hundreds upon hundreds of reviews written about the Kindle, so I will try not rehash what you can read about in detail all over the net. You may be wondering though how you might use the Kindle to enhance your pen and paper gaming. I hate to have to say that while the Kindle is so much more pleasant to read on than the standard paper back, it is a long way from replacing your RPG reference materials. Why do I say so?
After tearing through my first digital book, I decided to see how I could use the Kindle to enhance my gaming. PDF conversions are still in the experimental stage, and they have already said that the conversion of multi-columnar books into the native Kindle format is still kludgey. But, they do support conversion of Microsoft Word documents. As luck would have it, Wizards of the Coast makes the d20 SRD (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35) available in RTF format, so I decided to try loading that bad boy in. I figured that since the Kindle automatically indexes books you load onto it, it would be an excellent resource when I needed to look up something during a game.
The first problem that I ran into, which admittedly is not Amazon's fault, is that the d20 SRD is actually divided into a gazillion and a half separate documents. If I just loaded this up straight into my Kindle, I'd end up with a very cluttered library. Of course, one thought I did have on this is that I could throw them on a memory card and only load them up when I needed them. I didn't try this approach though.
Instead, I decided to run a test and combine the seven Magic Items documents into one file and upload that to my Kindle. Unhappy days though, I found that the Kindle did not support Rich Text Format (RTF). So, I first had to load the document up and convert it to MS Word format. After I did this, I could then send it off to Amazon to be automatically converted and emailed back to me. Once I sent them a format they could convert, I received my Kindle ready document back through email almost instantaneously. Happily, I connected my Kindle to my computer via USB and copied over the AMZ file.
The result was kinda sloppy. First, even when I reduced the font size to its lowest setting, I still wasn't getting that much on one screen. And at anything other than the smallest font, the line spacing was way too much. While this wasn't a problem reading a typical book, this turned out to be especially problematic for my converted SRD.
The biggest problem that I found was that the tables did not keep their native format. Instead, the cells that were supposed to be spanning across the page, were printed line by line after each other. This made deciphering the table difficult, and the limited screen size and line spacing exacerbated the problem. Had I started with the Monster section instead, which is basically table after table, I would have ended up with a pretty much unusable document.
Still, I did like the fact that I could plug in a search, like "Ring of Protection" and instantly get links back to the exact section the Ring of Protection showed up in. The pitfall of the Kindle's indexing engine as it stands right now though is that you cannot specify a specific book to search. So, if I were to search for a more generic term in my library, such as "magic armor," I would get hits from any books I had downloaded that contained those words as well. Even if there was nothing else loaded, I would still have to fish through the all the results where the words "magic armor" appeared in my SRD. Thankfully, the Kindle does give a snip of the surrounding text, so you can figure out if it is the right section before you click on it.
Ultimately, I decided that the Kindle just didn't measure up as a replacement for reference material. Although there are no officially released RPG books on the Kindle that I know of, I did try loading up a couple computer related books. Most of these types of books use a lot of tables, charts and pictures, just like your typical RPG book would. And it is here that the Kindle doesn't do well. The tables in the computer books I downloaded were first converted into pictures and were not treated as normal text. But, while they kept their formatting, they were also zoomed out on the screen. Even when zooming in, often the tables aren't all that clear to read. Worse, that one table can end up spanning multiple pages.
I suspect that many of the RPG publishers will came to the same conclusion that I did and will probably wait until a new and better model comes out. Out of curiosity, I queried the press department of Wizards (in January) to see if they were planning on publishing any of their RPG materials or books on the Kindle and the response was less than enthusiastic,"Dear Mr. Howard,
Thank you for your email.
Wizards of the Coast is always looking forward in how to best publish or books and RPG's. We do not have any plans at this time we can discuss publicly.
I'm sorry I can be of specific help.
Best regards,
Pat
Corporate Information"
To date, they still haven't released any of their fiction lines on the Kindle, which is unfortunate, because I do enjoy some of the Forgotten Realms and Dragon Lance novels.
So, overall, I still love my Kindle and I would recommend it to anyone who loves reading and has a few hundred bucks burning a whole in their pocket. But, before you run out and purchase one, I suggest you first check out their book lineup and see if your favorite authors have books published with them. WotC doesn't at this time, but I did find one of my favorite authors, R.A. Salvatore, does have all of his non-Forgotten Realms books available digitally. There was also plenty of Terry Brooks and Raymond Feist, or Stephen King for you horror fans.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm sure I have bored you enough, and I have a book to read or something...