Kindle Fire

It's not often that cnet's Eric Franklin and I both talk about the same thing. In fact, I tend to avoid discussing too many tech things in part because I don't want to be mistaken for him - he's an expert in his field, and electronics are his field.

Last week, however, my Kindle Fire arrived.

Fair warning: This post has three videos in it, so those of you reading via RSS (or Kindle) may not be able to see the videos. I've filled in text overviews so that the videos are optional, and I am really hoping that their formatting doesn't make this entry illegible for you.

When gaming, I like having two copies of the necessary books - one for the GM and one for the player(s). Having a tablet gives me a shortcut for this - I can have one print copy for the players, and then the tablet for my own reference. DriveThruRPG has been a godsend for me on several fronts - and, with the addition of my Fire, it has potential to be even more useful (and dangerous to my wallet).

Some of you may recall that I have a Kindle DX that I have been using to read PDF files for several years, now. As a pure reader, it was exceptional ... most of the time.

Some of you may also recall that there is one PDF that has been the bane of my Kindle's existence: Houses of the Blooded.

It took upwards of ten minutes to render a single page of this particular file on the DX, which made for some very frustrating reading. Even then, the render was ... less-than-perfect. And the "convert" option that Amazon advertised turned it into an unreadable hash. So did conversion via Calibre.

Now, keep in mind: I have had my Fire all of two days at this point.  There is probably something I'm overlooking for one or more of these programs that would improve the few negative portions of this experience.

So here is my Kindle Fire with its built-in PDF reader showing how it can read Houses of the Blooded:

Not too shabby. It loads quickly, it scrolls smoothly, it zooms well.  In fact if I were just reading the PDF and not trying to use it to run a game, I'd use this built-in reader nearly every time. It's fast, it's smooth, and it looks good. Not only that, but it remembers where I left off.

But it won't work At The Table, because there's no search option. If I don't know what page something is on, I have no fast way to look it up.

Adobe also produced a version of their Acrobat Reader for the Android Platorm.  It's free for the Fire, so I gave that one a spin, too.

I was less impressed with this one.  It was slower than the built-in reader, and just plain didn't look as good. But it has a few bells and whistles that the barebones reader lacked. Most notably, the ability to search the file.

For a free At The Table file reader, this one gets the nod - If I'm looking for a rule, I can search for a word that is in that rule and have a shot at finding it relatively quickly.

Finally, I used QuickOffice Pro - it's not free, though. This software allows you to open more than just PDF files - there is a free version that lets you read these other files, but not change them.  The pro version lets you both open and modify Word and Excel files and, as an added bonus, lets you read PDF files.

It had a few rendering artifacts here and there, but on the whole it was much faster than the Adobe software AND was searchable.  If I were using my Fire at the table, this is the app I would use. QuickOffice can integrate itself with your Dropbox and Google Docs, too, making it easy to put the files onto your Fire without needing to move them around (most of my DriveThruRPG library has been migrating to my DropBox as a convenient storage area).

All in all, I will definitely be packing my Fire along as a game aid. For the first time to see if it's as useful as having the book (without being too distracting). After that, I suspect it'll be just another game aid. Much like dice or pencils are.

The Kindle: One Week On

I've had my Kindle DX for about a week, now. It's long enough to be learn a great deal - both good and bad.



As you know, I wanted the Kindle DX because of its larger screen, so I could read gaming .pdf files from a variety of sources. My wife has the smaller size, so I can easily do side-by-side comparisons. After a week, I'm sure I made the right decision. You see, the Kindle .pdf reader could still use some work.

I hadn't expected perfection, so I'm not hugely disappointed - in fact, the .pdf reader has worked well enough for most of the pdf's I tried to read on it.

Last week, I used Houses of the Blooded as an example of a .pdf I wanted to read on my Kindle. Houses of the Blooded is the only PDF which I have had zero luck on. It takes ten minutes to load, and then almost five minutes to change pages. It's frustrating and annoying. Yes, I can read it, but it's far too slow to be worth the effort. Why? HotB is big. 31 MB. I don't know how much RAM the Kindle has, but I've noticed most Kindle files are less than 5 MB. I've also noticed that pages with images are slower than pages without. HotB has images (even if it's just a background image) on nearly every page.

By contrast, The Kobold Guide to Game Design, Volume II opened perfectly. The cover page is a bit slow to load, but once I'm past the cover, it's pretty fast.

Other .pdf files have been mixed. For example, as a D&D Insider, I can download issues of Dragon Magazine. If you download the sample issue, you'll see that Dragon is published in landscape format. The Kindle .pdf reader auto-fits documents to the width of the screen. On my Kindle DX, it reminds me of watching letterbox films on a standard 4:3 TV - the image is shrunk down and there are gaps across the top and bottom of the page. If had my wife's Kindle, I wouldn't be able to read it due to its small size. When I rotate the Kindle, it does rotate the image - but it still auto fits to the width, so the bottom inch or so of text is cut off. I can jump to the next page to reach it, but it means jumping back and forth to read pages with multiple columns of text.

Amazon also makes a "conversion" option available. You can e-mail files to them, and they will convert that file to a native Kindle file format. I'd love to have a web interface for this - some files are just too big to e-mail. The PDF conversion is (of course) imperfect, however. I converted the Kobold Guide as a test, and it lost some formatting (including page breaks) but was perfectly legible.

After working with my office's IT guy for a while, I managed to get HotB e-mailed to the conversion address (not many ISP's will allow e-mail attachments that large). It came out almost completely unreadable. Images were compressed to a ridiculous degree, and the text was split randomly - I don't know if the columns or margin notes threw it or if it was something else. Either way, I wouldn't have been able to use it to run a game.

I tired a couple of other IPR books, including the now apparently out-of-print Thousand Suns. Once I got past the cover, it read just fine. It was a little slow to change pages, but nothing on par with HotB.

I know it sounds like I'm down on the Kindle, but I'm not - really. I think that all of the above issues can be fixed with a few software updates - and I know that Amazon is hard at work on the next generation of the software.

In the not-too-distant future, I very much hope that some publishers will publish specifically for the Kindle. It's dangerously convenient (by which I mean "my wallet is a bit unhappy with me").

Or maybe gaming publishers will release .pdf files which are better-optimized for the Kindle (and other e-book readers) - whether that means releasing two versions of their games on .pdf or not, I don't know. But I wouldn't mind buying an "image-light" version of a book.

I have found other gaming uses for the Kindle. For example, I created my D&D character using the Character Builder from D&D Insider. I then printed that character as a .pdf, and put him on the Kindle. Now I don't have to worry about losing the character sheet - all of his stats are right there. My scanner at home is capable of scanning to .pdf, as well, so I can put other characters on there if I want to.

I think that eBook readers such as the Kindle have a legitimate place in the future of roleplaying.

As an aside - does anyone know if the Dresden Files RPG will be available in .pdf? Because I'd like to take advantage of Evil Hat's Brick & Mortar PDF Guarantee. Since the FATE RPG file loaded just fine, I'm guessing Evil Hat's other games will load, also. Maybe this is the kick I needed to finally pick up Spirit of the Century ...