Check Out The First 3 Pages Of TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL

CapnZapp · Mar 7, 2017

Ath-kethin said:
So I can wait until they fix it.

Welcome to a new world where editing is faintly remembered as a cost-cutting measure.

dave2008 · Mar 7, 2017

Ath-kethin said:
Fair enough.

But I run into more of a problem when the text includes fragments of sentences that aren't completed - what information is missing? Minor typos don't bother me. Nonsensical fragments make me wonder who if anybody did the proofing on the text.

I have better things to do with my $50 than spending it on BYOE ("Bring Your Own Editor) products.

We have at present a total of five pages (of which I am aware; the count may have gone up), with issues on nearly every one of them. That doesn't speak to well of the product as a whole.

So I can wait until they fix it.

Fair enough to you as well! To be clear I am not disparaging your approach, everyone has their triggers. I just wanted to understand. As a follow up, would you not purchase this product if it was never corrected?

Some people simply cannot get past typos or grammar errors (just like I could never get passed the graphic design of the 3e-3.5e WotC products) and will not buy a product with what they deem as to many. I was just wondering if that was your issue as well. I simply didn't play 3e-3/5e because I couldn't get past the way the books looked. We all have our issues. I purchased one 3e-3.5e product, the Draconomicon and that was because my love of dragons overpowered my hate for the format.

ClearlyTough69 · Mar 7, 2017

phantomK9 said:
Can it be easily ported as a pyramid? What is the general shape?

Check this thread out for a map from the cartographer himself (this was for third edition Return to the Tomb of Horrors I think), but it looks pretty much unchanged from the original. By old school standards, it's not an extensive dungeon, and it's only on one level - but still a killer. You could easily fit it into a pyramid.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?155866-Tomb-of-Horrors-Map

Ath-kethin · Mar 7, 2017

dave2008 said:
Fair enough to you as well! To be clear I am not disparaging your approach, everyone has their triggers. I just wanted to understand. As a follow up, would you not purchase this product if it was never corrected?

Some people simply cannot get past typos or grammar errors (just like I could never get passed the graphic design of the 3e-3.5e WotC products) and will not buy a product with what they deem as to many. I was just wondering if that was your issue as well. I simply didn't play 3e-3/5e because I couldn't get past the way the books looked. We all have our issues. I purchased one 3e-3.5e product, the Draconomicon and that was because my love of dragons overpowered my hate for the format.

I played 3.x pretty extensively, though I had my own issues with the book. My issues started when they cut the page count from 192 to 160. By itself, though, that wasn't too bad. But then they started increasing the font size and adding useless padding (prestige classes going from a few paragraphs to multiple pages in length), and it became clear that they were doing whatever they could to reduce the actual useful content of the supplements. Add to that the endless glut of new feats and spells and whatever, and I was just out.

Regarding 5e: I find the useful content of the adventures slight enough that I haven't found them to be of great enough value to purchase. I love Volo's Guide, and I had high hopes for the new adventure collection as well. If the editing in the book as a whole is as lousy as it is in the previews, though, I will pass. A typo here and there is one thing; half-sentences and completely incorrect words are quite another.

It's the kind of stuff that gets caught and corrected from printing to printing, so I'll just wait til they have it fixed. I have no shortage of adventures at the moment anyway, and given the massive overhauls I need to make for any published WotC adventure to make it for my campaign, I can sit on this one a bit.

machineelf · Mar 7, 2017

Ath-kethin said:
Wow. Reading though the excerpt here and the Tomb of Horrors preview, all I can say is: these better not be final proofs. There are typos and editing mishaps galore.

I guess a better way to frame that is: I will definitely be waiting until I see a finished copy before plunking down money for this one. I can wait a printing or three if I have to.

Just curious, what typos did you find?

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk

Queer Venger · Mar 9, 2017

Fanboy crushing... This book cannot come soon enough, Im already formulating where Im putting the Tomb of Horrors in my Forgotten Realms campaign...

Prakriti · Mar 9, 2017

robus said:
The words "Draft" would have been enough to give it a pass. But this has the appearance of being the copy that's going to be sent to the printers. After all the map/key trouble they've had you'd think it would be a little more of a concern!

Yep. The errors in the Volo's Guide previews were never corrected, so I wouldn't expect these to be corrected either. And as a compulsive copy-editor, I share [MENTION=6798775]Ath-kethin[/MENTION]'s chagrin.

All the books have had significant errors, and sometimes they are big enough to cause confusion, such as this wonderful example from Storm King's Thunder: "The couatl knows that Wormblod is away, searching for a missing concubine named If the characters present proof [...]" (p. 88).

There is clearly a name and a period missing between "named" and "If."

JohnnyZemo · Mar 9, 2017

Prakriti said:
Yep. The errors in the Volo's Guide previews were never corrected, so I wouldn't expect these to be corrected either. And as a compulsive copy-editor, I share @Ath-kethin's chagrin.

All the books have had significant errors, and sometimes they are big enough to cause confusion, such as this wonderful example from Storm King's Thunder: "The couatl knows that Wormblod is away, searching for a missing concubine named If the characters present proof [...]" (p. 88).

There is clearly a name and a period missing between "named" and "If."

Also, check out the diagram on p. 17 of Storm King's Thunder, where cloud giants are referred to as "coud giants" and the word "Storm" appears as "STorm." Ouch.

I like Volo's a lot, but after giving some of the entries a closer reading over the past couple of weeks, I think a lot of the writing is not as polished as it was in the three core books.

Ath-kethin · Mar 9, 2017

JohnnyZemo said:
Also, check out the diagram on p. 17 of Storm King's Thunder, where cloud giants are referred to as "coud giants" and the word "Storm" appears as "STorm." Ouch.

I like Volo's a lot, but after giving some of the entries a closer reading over the past couple of weeks, I think a lot of the writing is not as polished as it was in the three core books.

It's not like the core books are error-free. But they at least don't seem to be missing words or full of sentence fragments.

I bought Volo's Guide mostly for the potential collectibility of the FLGS cover. I honestly didn't expect it to be such an awesome book. But if that cover had not existed, I would have taken the same track I am with Yawning Portal - wait until the second or third printing, when it will read a bit less like something run through Google Translator. I have no real use for the adventures, so I hadn't even noticed issues with Storm King's Thunder.

Ath-kethin · Mar 10, 2017

secondhander said:
Just curious, what typos did you find?

Sorry it's taken a few days to provide the examples; I'm rarely at my computer anymore, and referencing things on my phone is a pain. So here we go:

3-Page Preview

First sentence under "Introduction:" capitalization is all over the place.

Bottom of Page 4, last line of left column: extend the campaign beyond what? At least one word is clearly missing here.

Bottom of Page 5, last line of left column: "Appendix" should be capitalized.

Tomb of Horrors Preview:

First page, in the sidebar under Eberron: "among Shargon's Teeth." That's the entirety of the "sentence."

In addition, both previews are rife with run-on sentences and repetitive wording. I don't expect that those issues will ever be resolved, no matter how many printings the book sees, but it still makes me sad. These are issues most of us have weeded out of our writing by the time we graduate from high school.

Don't get me wrong; my own writing is far from perfect, and I don't imagine anybody's is. But it doesn't speak too well of the editing staff of a major company to have so much stuff like this slip through the cracks - my writing isn't perfect, but that's why I have other people look it over before publication. Which means that when my writing does hit the streets, it actually reads better than most of the stuff in these previews. I mean seriously, four issues in five pages? That's a baaaaaad proportion.

Check Out The First 3 Pages Of TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL

CapnZapp

Legend

dave2008

Legend

ClearlyTough69

Explorer

Ath-kethin

Elder Thing

machineelf

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Queer Venger

Dungeon Master is my Daddy

Prakriti

Hi, I'm a Mindflayer, but don't let that worry you

JohnnyZemo

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Ath-kethin

Elder Thing

Ath-kethin

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