Thanks for releasing free PDFs for Tracking Sheets and the Peril in Pinebrook adventure. Unfortunately, these files suffer from major performance issues due to their excessive file sizes and lack of optimization. On devices without a powerful graphics card, they are incredibly slow to load, both when opening the file and scrolling, rendering them practically unusable for many DMs.
For instance, the Tracking Sheets take up 4–10 MB per page, while comparable tools like the Adventure Worksheet by the Dungeon Dudes manage to provide better functionality in just 53 KB (without illustrations occupying space that could otherwise be used for notes).
The Peril in Pinebrook adventure for young players faces similar issues. Despite being only 22 pages long, the PDF is an enormous 111 MB. To make it usable on my laptop, I had to manually flatten the layers and compress the file, reducing loading time and total file size to less than 10 MB. I managed to do so without significantly reducing graphics quality, as you can see here: DM section and players section(I hope it's okay to provide these tiny PDFs with elaborate bookmarks to make the adventure table-friendly for more DMs and players—if not, I'll take them down, but I encourage you to consider such formatting for future PDF products, especially if they're meant to function as tools rather than art books).
I hope you consider providing bare-bones printer-friendly versions of the Tracking Sheets (ideally in SRD 5.2) and re-releasing the current ones after flattening the graphics layers to reduce MB and RAM requirements. Flattening the layers of the "finished" product is difficult for DMs and can remove functionality, e.g. fillable fields.
Thank you! I was trying to run the game for my 10-year-old daughter and her friends on old devices and was struggling so badly. This looks to fix all my issues! Thanks again!
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New DM using 2024 DMG. Planning one-shots and small adventures that I'll eventually hope to stream on my twitch channel. Games will be hosted in my discord server using D&D Beyond. Possibly getting into using VTT as it grows out of beta. No homebrew yet since most players are new as am I. Creating fun stories with friends is the one and only rule I'll DM by. Fun and co-op are always encouraged. I can't wait to create awesome adventures!
This saved me so much time. Thank you, for all the effort, but also for helping the community when the corporation decided not to do it right the first time. My deepest appreciation.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Thank you! I was trying to run the game for my 10-year-old daughter and her friends on old devices and was struggling so badly. This looks to fix all my issues! Thanks again!
New DM using 2024 DMG. Planning one-shots and small adventures that I'll eventually hope to stream on my twitch channel. Games will be hosted in my discord server using D&D Beyond. Possibly getting into using VTT as it grows out of beta. No homebrew yet since most players are new as am I. Creating fun stories with friends is the one and only rule I'll DM by. Fun and co-op are always encouraged. I can't wait to create awesome adventures!
I'm glad to hear that it helped you! I hope WotC have accessibility in mind for future PDFs.
This saved me so much time. Thank you, for all the effort, but also for helping the community when the corporation decided not to do it right the first time. My deepest appreciation.