Since the topic is implied in a few other threads...
What games that you got in PDF have you run, and did you print out the game?
Mouse Guard: printed out a loaner copy for a friend; got it back. Ran a 6mo campaign with that printout, the PDF on my ebook reader, and a copy of the book.
Burning Empires: printed out only the Human Lifepaths, skill chapter, and trait chapter, plus the forms.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: printed out only the Character Generation cheat sheet from the back and the character sheet; 9p total.
Mongoose Traveller: Playtest - yes, printed. Final: no; I've used it only for solo-play activities (T&C, Ship Building, Character Gen)
Mazes and Minotaurs: Yes, made nice 5x8 booklets!
Cyclopedia D&D: Ran a pickup session from PDF on laptop; have several hardcovers, tho...
T&T 7.5: have run sessions with only PDF available, but own dead tree
Traveller T20: Playtest - printed off 15 of 22 manuscripts. Use final manuscript draft; have never used my two comped hardcovers for actual play.
EABA: printed off EABA; never bothered printing STUFF.
Arrowflight: printed out PDFs, because I didn't have an ebook reader nor working laptop at the time. Still using that stack of comb-binds many years later.
There are a few others, but I can't remember the names right now, that I printed out.
Probably half what I run are games in development, and these are always pdf. The other games - my own finished games or others - are probably a third from pdf. Even when I run from a print book, I like having the pdf to print out character sheets and various sections for the players.
-clash
Only Coyote Trail.
I ended up printing it out eventually though. Does that count?
I ran a Labyrinth Lord game. It was an online pbp game. But I do have a print copy kicking around here at the house.
Star Cluster 2.5, Cold Space, Hard Nova, Cold Space, JAGs Wonderland, d4-d4, Spirit of the Century...and the list goes on and on. I have printed out a few pages of certain PDFs but that's it. I use my laptop at the game table and refer to it when necessary.
A few very short sessions of Swords & Wizardry with a visiting friend.
I use a BRP PDF on my girlfriend's laptop when we play our Beatrix Potter games, but I've got the hardcopy book there too.
Quote from: flyingmice;331914Probably half what I run are games in development, and these are always pdf. The other games - my own finished games or others - are probably a third from pdf. Even when I run from a print book, I like having the pdf to print out character sheets and various sections for the players.
-clash
This. Very much this.
If I am going to run a game that I got on PDF, I always have it printed.
I have not yet bought a PDF-only RPG, just PDF-only supplements and magazines. All the PDF games that I have run have been freebies like Fudge, Mazes & Minotaurs, Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, etc.
I'm not comfy running a game off pdf, I always get at least the sections I need printed out. Or I peruse the free pdf then buy a hardcopy from Lulu, as with Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord, both of which I've run successfully, and BFRPG - mostly to see what the coil binding was like!
Quote from: JohnnyWannabe;332055Star Cluster 2.5, Cold Space, Hard Nova, Cold Space, JAGs Wonderland, d4-d4, Spirit of the Century...and the list goes on and on. I have printed out a few pages of certain PDFs but that's it. I use my laptop at the game table and refer to it when necessary.
Cold Space! The game so nice he mentions it twice! :D
Yeah - all those and The Terran Story too! And Creep Chronicles, and Shebang! The list goes ever on! :P
-clash
BASH- I printed out first.
FATE. One of the PCs printed and bound three copies b/c she worked at a copy shop.
I plan to run OpenQuest before the end of 2009, and that will be from a pdf.
Encounter Critical
Berin Kinsman's Bad Attitudes
Phillipe Tromeur's Wuthering Heights
I've run Kill Puppies For Satan from PDF. Fun game too.
Printed from PDF, I ran games of Arcana Unearthed and Iron Heroes that way.
I remember using the Ptolus PDFs directly during a game for quick reference, as well as chunks of the Veiled Society classic D&D module to cherry pick some components during the game.
Aside of that, I have a hard time remembering.
There must be other classic materials I printed out and used, but that doesn't come back to me right now.
Savage Worlds Test Drive - of course I did a printout; I even did a German translation (that was before the publication of the 1st edition hardcover).
Donjon Krawl (by Clinton R. Nixon, later renamed Donjon) - again, I printed it; not from a PDF though, I believe it was a HTML page that I made into a Word doc.
Inter Alia - a long-forgotten, Over the Edge-style, minimalistic, universal rule engine. Printed.
Since I don't want to have a computer running and humming at my gaming table I have to print all PDFs I intend to use.
Quote from: aramis;331901Since the topic is implied in a few other threads...
What games that you got in PDF have you run, and did you print out the game?
Dead Meat - Sean Wipfli - loads of fun on a few sparse pages. I printed the pages out.
d20 Modern - WotC - Run from a laptop
Star Wars D6 - WEG - Run from a laptop
Active Exploits - Precis Intermedia - An occult/WWII homebrew setting. I think I printed the skill list, but everything else was on PDF. However, the first few times we played I didn't have access to the PDF during gameplay (pre-laptop).
Pete
I've always been a diehard fan of physical books, but I'm starting to appreciate the advantages of printing PDFs.
So far, I've printed PDFs of supplements of The Riddle of Steel (The Flower of Battle, Of Beasts and Men, and The Companion) for a game that unfortunately folded, and the PDF of Usagi Yojimbo. I've got those PDFs in book version too, and books are great for recreational reading, but for actual play, I prefer printed and bound PDFs.
I no longer have a laptop, but even if I had it, I'd never use it to run a game. What if anything happens to the laptop?
I've never run a game exclusively from PDF.
RPGPundit
I've never run a game exclusively from PDF.
RPGPundit
I should note that I don't have a proper printer, so I rely on players to print things; sometimes they don't manage to. And I always GM at home, if I were having to schlep the laptop around - well, I wouldn't, I'd print something out.
Mostly it's just homebrewed systems like GAMERS. But with those, the rules are so simple I don't have to look things up on the pdf anyway. The file sits there open on my laptop just in case.
Pathfinder for the last 2 months but no longer, the Books have arrived!