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http://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/wizards-of-the-coast-paying-fans-to-scan-old-dnd-books



Wizards of the Coast and DriveThruRPG are asking fans to preserve history by scanning old Dungeons and Dragons Books and converting them to PDF. If you’ve got some classic D&D titles in your collection and you have access to a scanner, you can help Wizards of the Coast re-master these titles. In return, you’ll get a $50 bounty per title. The company is looking for high-quality scans, but these days, most inexpensive home scanners can handle the specifications if set correctly.



Wizards of the Coast has developed a spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14YaHq-3YhEM9J7W85f8nNb-ZM376tgTs6DwCJKgTcYc/edit#gid=1749576859) that is publicly available via Google Docs. It lists close to 600 titles that are wanting to find copies of, likely because the original master documents are missing and presumed lost.



There is a massive FAQ (http://support.dmsguild.com/hc/en-us/articles/216504408) available that lists all of the details, such as how they are going to pay users and what they expect out of the scanned documents.





so if you're a collector of gamer with some of the older stuff in the cupboard, check out the list and FAQ and see if you can help (and get paid for it hopefully)

Wait, they don't have the 3E core book files? How the heck did that happen! 3E wasn't THAT long ago

presumably once 4th came out the order came down from on high to dump all the old 'useless stuff' ?

or more likely somebody moved/retired/etc and they just lost the file... or they have it but it's labelled 409ighh4ui4 or something and they just can't find it

I might be able to provide some of that Al-Qadim, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft stuff. But, by the time I could even borrow a scanner by this weekend, they'll get it all from others.

I wouldn't be surprised if over half that stuff is still in some old grognard's collection.

Good on WotC for doing this, though.

I'm also surprised no one bothered to keep the original high quality 3e stuff on file. It's not like WOTC/Hasbro couldn't afford a few hard drives. Eh, better for us. Is that legit, though? There isn't much info there on exactly how DTRPG actually pays you. Do you have to fill out tax forms as a freelance temp employee? Do they just paypal you the money? Is it credit on their store?