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. "

 

[Charlaquin]

This is a long and convoluted thread, so maybe someone mentioned this already and I missed it.

Leaving aside WotC's dubious choices and the author's understandable disappointment and surprising naïveté, I am surprised that authors did not get page proofs before it went to press. Admittedly, I have not written for RPGs except for a one or two things about 20 years ago - but in every print publication to which I have submitted something and had it accepted there was a round of page proofs. Usually, this is just looking any minor fixes, but the proofs basically look like the piece will look and be laid out, so you have a chance to object.

Maybe I'm the one who is naïve, but it seems like a bad call on Wizard's part to skip that process.

Nah, I don’t think that’s the standard in the RPG industry. Unfortunately.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Based off of another tweet, it seems that Panzer got Warlorded. The highest priority for WOTC is to mantain the "classic" feeling of D&D, and that means cutting out anything that isn't tradional. But if that's your highest objective, why would you recruit a writer who wants to reform the underlying ideas of D&D?

I am honestly surprised wotc still cares about that most of the new guard plays will take anything that looks cool and works and this late in old guard will just not use it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Grippli honestly strike me as redundant when we've already got bullywugs and grungs, and trying to introduce a new PC race in a freelance adventure is a bit much.

I think there's plenty of conceptual space between all of them. D&D could likely even use more frog races -- if I was going to do a dungeon modeled on EverQuest's Guk (and everyone who's played EQ just felt their eye twitch), none of those three would really fit the bill, and I'd need to make something more.

Bringing back a classic monster in a compilation adventure seems fine to me, and in keeping with how WotC has been doing their adventures since 5E. A new race feels like something that would need to be run all the way up the flagpole, though. Even if Panzer's first editor signed off on it (and do we know if that happened?), it might not have been their call.

There might, for instance, be a book coming out later this year with a bunch of anthropomorphic animals and, for all we know, frog-people were on the list.

 

[Bacon Bits]

You apparently missed nine months of WotC agreeing that D&D had done poorly by minority groups over the decades and promising to do better.

When you take indiginous refugees in a story and describe their buildings as "primitive," there are going to be a lot of people who find that to be a value judgement on those people. WotC has allegedly gone through training and in-house discussions about this -- see the very light updates to the Vistani in Curse of Strahd. Describing indigenous peoples and their works as "primitive" is the kind of thing you'd expect a company trying to do better to have prevented.

Yeah, and they did it at least twice.

Spoiler: Minor spoilers

Once was the description of the homes in a hastily built village, and the second is the description of the artwork or hunting trophies in a second area. There may be more. I stopped looking when I found the second instance.

The part that gets me is that the term "primitive" doesn't really add anything to the descriptions of the homes or artworks except to make them seem undeveloped, unrefined, or uncivilized. Like it's just a value judgement. I'm not even sure why the quality of the the homes or decorations matter.

When I DM these sort of things I try to shape value judgements like that into my answers to the PC asking to reflect their own shaded perceptions. If the Dwarf player asks me about the homes, I'd say they were sturdy, but not built to last or for defense, and you still don't understanding choosing to use wood instead of stone for a home. If an Elf player asked me about the homes, I'd say they were plain wooden structures that seem to fit well with their surroundings; they're not like what Elves would make, but they seem well-suited to the place and people. If a Human PC asked, I'd describe them as on the small and unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable looking.

I wonder if all the editor did was open up their lore book, find the last references to Grippli, and use whatever that said. I've gotten rid of a lot of my obscure 3e and 4e stuff, but the 2e Monstrous Compendium was the last time I can find them statted out. That book is from 1989. It begins their entry with, "Grippli resemble small, intelligent, humanoid tree frogs. They have a primitive culture and are nonaggressive."

 

[Charlaquin]

Yep, that sucks. It also is not uncommon or necessarily indicative of anything other than a swamped editor, an individual bad editor, etc.

Again, just because it’s common doesn’t mean it should be.

 

[Charlaquin]

Does anyone have the book on D&DB, to do a search for "primitive" in the module. Upthread there is a post suggesting it is a term to describe some buildings (and not the typical or main ones). It seems if folks are hung up on one word we should know the context of that word's use.

The only context that really matters here is that it’s a word the person who the product was sold as elevating the voice of specifically avoids using and objects to having been inserted.

Like, we can debate about whether or not “primitive” is an inherently colonialist word or if there is any context where it’s an appropriate adjective to use until the cows come home, but that doesn’t really address the issue at hand. If it was any other word, the issue would have been the same. They inserted a word the author would not want associated with their name into a product that their name was being used to sell, without the author’s consent or even knowledge. That’s not acceptable.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's also possible that the work turned in was poorly written and/or far too ambitious for a freelancer. WotC doesn't want you fundamentally changing something in the game with your one shot adventure.

This does seem likely to be the reason for the edits. But again, the problem is not that it was edited, but that they edited it in a way that runs directly contrary to the perspective they pat themselves on the back for elevating.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ramshackle suggest badly built. A log cabin might be well build but would be primitive in comparison to proper board and beam construction.

And herein lies the issue with the word. To call a log cabin primitive in comparison to board and beam construction implies a hierarchy of building design, in which board and beam lies above log construction, despite not necessarily being more structurally sound. On what basis is this hierarchy defined? What makes one construction method more or less “advanced” than another? Historically, the answer has been that the methods typically used by white folks are the ones that get placed higher on that scale.

 

[Von Ether]

Sadly, RPG editors communicating with freelancers is not an industry standard. Some of that comes from either:

• The (wrongly) assumption that it would be faster to do a rewrite instead of working it out with 'lancer.
• The editor is also the line developer/owner of the company and the work doesn't line up with the editor's unspoken expectations.
• A lack of training on workflow for publishing.
• A lot of times, all of the above.

Sometimes a very late submissions will also trigger an editor's bad habit vs keeping communication open, but 9 times out of 10, it's an editor thing.

And it happens quite often in RPGs, periodicals and small press.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Ramshackle suggest badly built. A log cabin might be well build but would be primitive in comparison to proper board and beam construction.

They weren't badly built, but they were hastily built.

Spoiler: Minor spoilers for the adventure

The adventure starts when the PCs find a Grippli trading post whose residents recently fled their original village, relocated, and had to start over. The homes they have had to be built quickly.

However, it doesn't really matter, because they use the same word again.

Spoiler: Another minor spoiler

When you get to their original village the adventure describes the hunting trophies used to decorate that village as "primitive". By describing the decorations and artwork as primitive, they pretty clearly imply the culture of the Grippli is what's primitive.