Bethesda Comments On Accusations Of Plagiarizing D&D Adventure

Birmy · May 13, 2019

"Alleged plagiarism." Get a spine, Bethesda, it wasn't like it was subtle. (Yes, yes, I know: "liability" and all, but still...)

Charlaquin · May 13, 2019

Wow, looks like they went to the Phillip Mucin school of apology, as well as his school of writing.

Staffan · May 13, 2019

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it sounds like a case of insufficient oversight/familiarity on behalf of the people in charge.

Warren LaFrance · May 13, 2019

Just pay the original creator of the content to re-skin their work for them and be done with it..

Wrathamon · May 13, 2019

but wizards might not want that since it's apart of their AL program

Loren the GM · May 13, 2019

I'm not really sure what else people want from Bethesda on this. They hired a writer who turned in the work, they published it, and then pulled it when they found out it was plagiarized. I don't expect the publishers at the company to have read every adventure booklet published, so there is no reason to expect they should have caught this before publishing. Pulling it is the right thing to do, investigating exactly what happened is the right thing to do (as well as figuring out ways to try to keep it from happening again), and keeping the public informed is the right thing to do.

BookBarbarian · May 13, 2019

Our contractor f-ed up is a pretty believable reason. It happens all the time.

Hanlon's razor and all that.

Swarmkeeper · May 13, 2019

Loren the GM said:
I'm not really sure what else people want from Bethesda on this. They hired a writer who turned in the work, they published it, and then pulled it when they found out it was plagiarized. I don't expect the publishers at the company to have read every adventure booklet published, so there is no reason to expect they should have caught this before publishing. Pulling it is the right thing to do, investigating exactly what happened is the right thing to do (as well as figuring out ways to try to keep it from happening again), and keeping the public informed is the right thing to do.

I dunno, maybe have someone at the company who can competently run some keyword searches online for at least 15 minutes as part of their QC procedure before publishing?

BookBarbarian · May 13, 2019

DM Dave1 said:
I dunno, maybe have someone at the company who can competently run some keyword searches online for at least 15 minutes as part of their QC procedure before publishing?

I didn't hear that it got published, I thought it was just announced with a preview.