In the days of MMO gaming and online play, the idea of sitting around a card table and actually playing with people in the room must seem almost quaint to some. There is still much joy to be had in playing table-top Dungeons and Dragons however, although Wizards of the Coast is now dealing with some modern problems. Rampant piracy of its products has led the company to sue a number of individuals and to yank all the for-pay PDF files from the Internet.

Wizards of the Coast has filed three lawsuits against eight defendants�(via TechDirt) from the US, Poland, and the Phillipines. The complaint? That the defendants allegedly bought digital copies of the Player's Handbook 2, and then uploaded them to certain file-sharing sites. As of yesterday, the PDF files were not available for purchase legally.

Ars called Wizards of the Coast PR Manager Tolena Thorburn to talk about the situation. She denied that the company took down the files themselves. "We have relationships, contracts with those companies," she explained to Ars. "What we did is we terminated our contracts. When we terminated the contracts, the files come down. The reason? The severe increase of piracy of the products."

Wizards of the Coast products have long been easily available online... if you know where to look. At what point does the problem get bad enough for a move this drastic? "There wasn't a specific number for us," Thorburn said. "In these lawsuits, which are public information, you would see that this specifically revolves around the players handbooks. They were released and, the same day, there were thousands of copies being downloaded illegally. It's very frustrating for us."

We asked if, at the moment, there was any way to download the PDF files legally. "There should not be," she told Ars. "You can buy the books online, but not the pdfs." This has frustrated many fans, and some blogs are pointing out that now the only way to get these books digitally is to pirate them. Thorburn wouldn't say whether or not the files will be coming back, or when, but she did say Wizards is "actively exploring other avenues for digital distribution."

How do you stop these books from finding their way on to BitTorrent trackers? It's a tough question, one that software companies haven't yet found a good answer for. It's even harder for companies selling information in physical form; copying the content is as easy as brewing a pot of coffee and connecting a scanner to your computer. You can add DRM to the files to protect your intellectual property, but that again simply makes the pirated product more appealing. Having no legal way to buy the files is a damaging strategy in a time when a dungeon master is almost as likely to have a laptop as he is to have a pad of paper.

"It's a difficult problem to have, and it's one that plagues our industry," Thorburn said. "We didn't do this lightly, and we understand our fans enjoy that format. Most of the fans who have legally purchased PDFs are also customers who have the physical product. Until we have another digital solution, I think our fans at least are not being deprived of the product, and I think that's really important, that they have the product that they know and love."