D&D 5E [Merged] Candlekeep Mysteries Author Speaks Out On WotC's Cuts To Adventure

In an event which is being referred to as #PanzerCut, one of the Candlekeep Mysteries authors has gone public with complaints about how their adventure was edited.

Book of Cylinders is one of the adventures in the book. It was written by Graeme Barber (who goes by the usernames PanzerLion and PoCGamer on social media).

Barber was caught by surprise when he found out what the final adventure looked like. The adventure was reduced by about a third, and his playable race -- the Grippli -- was cut. Additionally, WotC inserted some terminology that he considered to be colonialist, which is one of the things they were ostensibly trying to avoid by recruiting a diverse team of authors for the book.

His complaints also reference the lack of communication during the editing process, and how he did public interviews unknowingly talking about elements of an adventure which no longer existed.

"I wrote for [Candlekeep Mysteries], the recent [D&D] release. Things went sideways. The key issues were that the bulk of the lore and a lot of the cultural information that made my adventure "mine" were stripped out. And this was done without any interaction with me, leaving me holding the bag as I misled the public on the contents and aspects of my adventure. Yes, it was work-for-hire freelance writing, but the whole purpose was to bring in fresh voices and new perspectives.

So, when I read my adventure, this happened. This was effectively the shock phase of it all.

Then I moved onto processing what had happened. ~1300 words cut, and without the cut lore, the gravity of the adventure, and its connections to things are gravely watered down. Also "primitive" was inserted.

Then the aftermath of it all. The adventure that came out was a watered down version of what went in, that didn't reflect me anymore as a writer or creator. Which flew in the face of the spirit of the project as had been explained to me.

So then I wrote. Things don't change unless people know what's up and can engage with things in a prepared way. So I broke down the process of writing for Wizards I'd experienced, and developed some rules that can be used to avoid what happened to me."

He recounts his experiences in two blog posts:

• What happened? Writing for Wizards Part 1
• What Happened? Writing for Wizards Part 2

The author later added "Wizards owns all the material sent in, and does not publish unedited adventures on the DM Guild, so there will be no "PanzerCut". I have respectfully requested that my name be removed from future printings. "

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Magazine or Game books all about the economics of words. You have so many pages and so much space on each page. Whatever they include from your piece is taking away from somebody else. Add in art, side bars and Stat blocks and you have even less words to work with. And it will get political, not in the voting type of politics, but everybody will be lobbying the editor for more space and more bells and whistles for their article. Publishing something like this is a numbers game.

I can see you don't fully understand the incompetence involved.

The editor should have been more clued-in about the overall goal of the product. His boss should have ensured that. The lack of communication with authors they were explicitly trying to be more inclusive with reeks of failure. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have edited it, but it does mean they should have been more circumspect, transparent, and not used a word so obviously off-key that even some 43-year old white dude like me goes "Hmmmm" when he sees it.

Especially when, as WotC knows, Panzer runs a blog where he discusses exactly this kind of thing. At length.

 

[The Glen]

We've got one side of the story. There's a lot of questions that need answering.

What was the word counted specified when the project was assigned? According to Panzer's tweet he submitted around 7500 words, they chopped it down to about 5500. So 2000 words gone, on average without art that's about 4 pages. That means the editor had to chop a quarter of the work off. If the tweet is true, he included a large amount of background on the grippli and lore. That means you have to get a continuity editor involved if that wasn't part of the original assignment. If a writer goes way off the assignment parameters, the editor is going to deal with them a lot harsher than somebody who follows instructions. Go too far afield and the editor is going to lock you out of your own work while corrections are made.

We'll never know WOTC's side of the issue, standard corporate practice. If we could ask them, you would want to know the assignment requirements and theme, as well as restrictions on space and if applicable continuity. Can't include characters that aren't born yet if you set it at a certain date. There are also restrictions on who you can use, especially if they are going to be in another planned book. Not saying his complaints don't have merit, but without knowing the initial requirements set forth and how far he deviated from them, can't make an opinion on incomplete information.

 

[Zaukrie]

All they really had to do was communicate during the process.....and not add the word primitive. That would have done a lot.....I can understand cutting a lot of the lore and background.....but simple communication helps a lot in situations like this.

 

[IndigoTraveler]

I wonder if the way WoTC is handling races/Lineages now had somewhat of an effect on having them remove stuff.

Like if PanzerLion was doing te standardized dnd guideline of Race, ASI increases, etc, etc.

 

[jerryrice4949]

We've got one side of the story. There's a lot of questions that need answering.

What was the word counted specified when the project was assigned? According to Panzer's tweet he submitted around 7500 words, they chopped it down to about 5500. So 2000 words gone, on average without art that's about 4 pages. That means the editor had to chop a quarter of the work off. If the tweet is true, he included a large amount of background on the grippli and lore. That means you have to get a continuity editor involved if that wasn't part of the original assignment. If a writer goes way off the assignment parameters, the editor is going to deal with them a lot harsher than somebody who follows instructions. Go too far afield and the editor is going to lock you out of your own work while corrections are made.

We'll never know WOTC's side of the issue, standard corporate practice. If we could ask them, you would want to know the assignment requirements and theme, as well as restrictions on space and if applicable continuity. Can't include characters that aren't born yet if you set it at a certain date. There are also restrictions on who you can use, especially if they are going to be in another planned book. Not saying his complaints don't have merit, but without knowing the initial requirements set forth and how far he deviated from them, can't make an opinion on incomplete information.

Well this is no fun . I agree though. People always jump to conclusions but who really knows the truth. WOTC and this author, and they both probably see the ‘truth’ quite differently.

So much for a review thread.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Generally yes, that is what happens when you turn in your manuscript. They're not publishing you, you're writing to spec for them.

When I found the Twitter thread earlier today I asked a family friend who had done freelance writing in the past and his response was, "Yeah that sounds pretty normal. They always ask for more than they need," and, "It almost looks like they asked for a cut. His cut was less than 200 words. That's not really a cut. The writer should've expected them to cut more to get it to fit and they did."

Sucks that they used a word he's uphappy with, though. I haven't written for hire before, but I have produced technical writing that has been later edited and trimmed, often significantly upon later revisions. I'm familiar with someone butchering what you were trying to say. It really does feel like someone dressing you like a clown when they leave your name on it.

 

[MNblockhead]

Chris Perkins discusses the editing process in the latest episode of Dragon Talk podcast. He's pretty clear about how it works, but his characterization of the communication process does not fit with the quoted tweet where the author seems to not have known about the edits until after publication. My experience is more limited. Way back in the day I published something as a kid in Dragon Magazine and I just sent it in, got a contract to sign, signed it and didn't know what the final article would look like until I saw it in the published magazine. More recently, I published something with ENWorld En5ider and there was a lot of back and forth with the editor (who was excellent) and while there were significant changes, they were for the better and there were no bad surprises when it was published.

My only other publications were in peer-reviewed journals and industry publications, which is a bit different in terms of process and a lot different in that I don't think your ego is a as tied to academic writing as it is with creative writing. At least for me.

 

[Charlaquin]

When I found the Twitter thread earlier today I asked a family friend who had done freelance writing in the past and his response was, "Yeah that sounds pretty normal. They always ask for more than they need," and, "It almost looks like they asked for a cut. His cut was less than 200 words. That's not really a cut. The writer should've expected them to cut more to get it to fit and they did."

Sucks that they used a word he's uphappy with, though. I haven't written for hire before, but I have produced technical writing that has been later edited and trimmed, often significantly upon later revisions. I'm familiar with someone butchering what you were trying to say. It really does feel like someone dressing you like a clown when they leave your name on it.

I think your friend missed a zero. They seem to have cut about 2,000 words, not 200. From about 7,500 to about 5,500. Over a quarter of the piece.

Now, I get that cuts are expected to be made in editing, especially with freelance work. That the piece was cut down - even that it was significantly cut down - doesn’t seem to be the core issue, as I understand it. The issue is that the cut seems to have made the final piece less inclusive, at a time when WotC has been publicly trying to project an image of inclusivity, and that they seem to have made the cut without informing the writer, who also happens to run a blog about inclusivity in gaming.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We've got one side of the story. There's a lot of questions that need answering.

What was the word counted specified when the project was assigned? According to Panzer's tweet he submitted around 7500 words, they chopped it down to about 5500. So 2000 words gone, on average without art that's about 4 pages. That means the editor had to chop a quarter of the work off. If the tweet is true, he included a large amount of background on the grippli and lore. That means you have to get a continuity editor involved if that wasn't part of the original assignment. If a writer goes way off the assignment parameters, the editor is going to deal with them a lot harsher than somebody who follows instructions. Go too far afield and the editor is going to lock you out of your own work while corrections are made.

We'll never know WOTC's side of the issue, standard corporate practice. If we could ask them, you would want to know the assignment requirements and theme, as well as restrictions on space and if applicable continuity. Can't include characters that aren't born yet if you set it at a certain date. There are also restrictions on who you can use, especially if they are going to be in another planned book. Not saying his complaints don't have merit, but without knowing the initial requirements set forth and how far he deviated from them, can't make an opinion on incomplete information.

Your characterisation of the problem here is at odds with Panzer's, to the point where you're unfortunately close to actual "strawman" territory.

You say you don't know if his complaints have merit, but your entire post is a tangent about one specific complaint singular, you don't actually address the complaints plural.

Instead you have made up a bunch of theoretical restrictions which don't match with what anyone who has worked on this sort of thing for WotC has described, some of which are clearly not relevant to Panzer's piece, even if they existed outside your theory, something we have no evidence for.

His main complaint is easy to say is true and would be extremely straightforward for WotC to refute. That being that there was no communication or transparency from WotC on this, which lead to him describing his piece to journalists and the like inaccurately. That's obviously embarrassing to him and WotC, given this was explicitly an exercise in finding more diverse voices and to help set the future of D&D. Just to be clear as maybe you don't know, Panzer is also know as POCGamer and runs a blog under that name where he discusses issues of race particularly as they relate to tabletop gaming.

Even if you don't know that, WotC do.

Anyway, if WotC had communicated, they could easily say so. But we've heard from others that it's pretty random and seems to be down to the editor. That doesn't point to a high level of professionalism nor strong management from WotC.

His second complaint is the use of the term primitive. This is irrefutable. It happened and is obviously off-beam and a careless error at best.

Your post is somewhat tangential to his third complaint, that of how much they cut. Panzer isn't an idiot. Several posts, including yours, misleadingly hint at naivete on this part or worse, attempt to patronizingly explain "how this works" . Panzer knows how it works. His objection wasn't that it was edited or edited harshly, but that what they took changed the context and meaning of the adventure significantly.

Again the lack of communication matters because he did interviews discussing it, and his particular editor didn't bother to inform him of the cuts (some other editors behaved similarly, some did not, according to others involved).

So if you think WotC can have some story that makes them look good here, you're not looking at the facts or the actual complaint. There's no real possibility Panzer is lying re communication, it would damage his brand and easily be disproven. So the embarrassment and recontextualization of the adventure are factual. As is the primitive thing. At best WotC might say "well we asked for 5000 words" but frankly I don't think someone whose job is writing of this kind turns in nearly 7200 words when told there's a 5000 hard cap. More likely WotC specified something like 5000-8000 or the like.

Anyway, TLDR is you addressed one of three complaints and arguably the least serious one, your restrictions are theoretical and some not even theoretically relevant, and theres basically no way WotC's side of this story gets better than "well we asked for less words" and even that seems somewhat doubtful.

Again too this book was designed as PR for WotC so an own goal there.

As a totally personal aside I was disappointed because the stuff cut referenced the Days of Thunder part of Realms lore, which is one of my favourite bits!

 

[TheSword]

Again too this book was designed as PR for WotC so an own goal there.

The book was designed as a rpg book. It wasn’t a manifesto.

I suspect they weren’t trying to change the world, just adapt. It sounds like some things landed, some didn’t.

The word primitive being included is insensitive (though I can totally understand why it was included in the description, just not that it was very savvy). Nothing that can’t be fixed on the reprint.

Being angry that the PC race, background and magic items are cut, is just being petulant. Outrage over those two elements is uncalled for.

I have the book on Roll20 so can’t see page counts. Now if Panzer found his adventure was cut to be smaller than everyone else’s then I would start to understand. However if his adventure was too long and got brought in line with the others then that is fair enough.

Over all, it’s a shame that he felt burnt. Plus a shame he felt so strongly as to tweet it. It doesn’t bode well for future works.