"Unprintable PDFs?!? Go pound sand Osprey Games" Topic

Bought the PDF of Lion Rampant 2nd Ed. I was going to print out the rules pages. I like to have a "working" copy where I can scribble notes, house rules, etc.
But you can't print this PDF.

WTF?!?

NOWHERE in the product listing that I could find were you told this was a "read only" file!!

//old man yells at cloud rant over

I would assume that any pdf I purchased could be printed. Actually, I can't say that I am even aware of pfs being unprintable.

I agree they should have told you that ahead of time.

It is on their website, but it's not very obvious:

link

Meanwhile, I bet there's a workaround. I googled and while most people talked about screenshots, several people described methods that would let you print or remove all restrictions from PDFs like this.

And the rest of us are no informed.

Pretty sure with r/w/x permissions this can be done. I believe I ran into this once too. They did not want you printing copies and giving them away for free.

I asked chatGPT for an answer, it produced five, three of which might work.

They did not want you printing copies and giving them away for free.

That's certainly true, but they they should have watermarked instead. After all, have you seen how many Osprey PDFs are spread all over the internet?

I am glad they've gone digital and I hope they are successful, but at a glance it looks like they might be facing some hiccups.

They did not want you printing copies and giving them away for free.

You mean like sending the file to all my friends via email?

I own the hardback. I wanted to have a copy I could mark up. So I did the right thing and bought an ebook.

Made my own by making a photocopy of the hardback pages I need.

This seems awful short sighted. Email, photocopiers and teenagers all exist. I guess they just don't want old farts giving away copies for free…..

Try opening it in one of these PDF alternatives;
link

Also: link

If it is an eBook try this: link

Good luck,
Wolfhag

I agree. I have purchased hard copies _and_ digital copies of most of the blue book series from Osprey. I don't seem to have any trouble printing the ones I've got, so I suspect this is a recent development; and it means I won't buy any more digital products from Osprey. But these sorts of prohibitions are easy to get around for folks who want to do so; digital rights management features make a file harder to copy, but for those so inclined it is by no means impossible to do so.

Teenagers, heck! 10-year olds probably know all the hacks.

I like to print them and put them in a notebook so I can annotate them while playing. I can also put charts and other documents in the pockets of the notebook.

What good are rules if you can't use them during a game? I would want my money back. Another reason for making them unprintable is to boost hard-copy book sales. However, if the hard copy is not available, that's when I order the PDF but if I cannot have it during the game, what good is it? Obviously, a decision made by a non-wargamer.

I am not an advocate of pirating books, software, or anything else, but I have no compunction about removing restrictions on something I purchased to allow my use of it

Those Authors/Companies that produce a print=friendly version are to be congratulated.

I had something similar with a 600pg RPG rulebook, I only needed 23 pages of it but I couldn't export them. I ended up printing to XPS Document Writer to make the file of the needed pages.

That's just wrong……

Sad.

I routinely buy PDF rules from Too Fat Lardies and they are very printer friendly. Some of their bundles are sold with both PDF and hardcopy as well. Sometimes I buy PDF to cut out the shipping costs.

Glad I bought the hard copy of LR2 through Amazon and avoided shipping as well.

The "new" Osprey is a mere shadow of its former self, sadly.