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. "

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Arguments that the grippli have always been described as primitive are besides the point, as the author apparently wanted to create a more fleshed-out version of the grippli in addition to creating a faction of good yuan-ti via reintroducing and expanding upon various bits of lore that hadn't been touched since around the early 2000's in the FR book Serpent Kingdoms.

Whoever added the word "primitive" to describe a hastily-built structure possibly just thought they were using a simple adjective. However, the author of the adventure is (as far as I'm aware) best known for a series of articles criticizing Tomb of Annihilation and creating alternatives to aspects of the book he finds problematic, so of course he's going to have a lot more negative connotation of the word primitive in any context.

Basically, I think the author was probably being overambitious for what he could do with a short adventure (I'm honestly surprised he thought they'd let him add a PC race), WotC might not have been keen to reintroduce all that old lore for a short adventure (if it hasn't been retconned outright, like the origin of the yugoloths has; I know Volo's Guide makes no mention of the sarrukh as the creators of the yuan-ti, either), and whoever decided to use the word primitive to refer to a building didn't think anything of it when it matters a great deal to the original author.

 

[Dausuul]

In situations like this, where you're only ever going to get one side of the story, IMO you get a clearer picture by looking for patterns. Have we heard similar stories from others?

In this case I'm thinking back to Orion Black. There are definite echoes.

Anyway, I agree with those saying that if you're going to use somebody's name and claim to be elevating their voice, you damn well ought to make sure they've at least had a look at the final product.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I myself have always known 'butthurt' to be related to male-on-male sexual congress, and which the phrase implied the person was the one receiving it and didn't like it. And the phrase implied that receiving it was painful and unwanted, as though it was inherently a bad thing (especially for a heterosexual male). And it's consider homophobic, because that phrase joins a good-sized list of things in American language meant to suggest that homosexual sex is bad or gross and if you are a heterosexual it's like the worst thing that could happen to you. As was mentioned above... men came up with sayings like "I'm screwed" or "I'm f***ed"-- statements implying being on the receiving end of a sexual encounter-- and that being a bad thing.

And even more non-sexual things get turned into them and are made to seem bad. Heck, just look at all the comedy over the years regarding a heterosexual male getting all worked up over getting a prostate exam. A doctor conducting a standard medical procedure is considered soooooooo much a problem for this guy because the doctor is also male and digitally examining the guy's rectum... thus implying it's a homosexual act and thus is bad and the guy has huge issues with it. This was considered comedy for a long time because "Ha ha... straight man has 'homosexual encounter' and because homosexual encounters are gross, straight man now looks gross! Let's laugh at him!"

Now for me personally as a 48 year old straight male... I've grown up with these phrases and types of comedy as standard issue my whole life, so they don't trigger any response in me. But at the same time I certainly understand how and why it does trigger anger, sadness and declarations of homophobia from other people, and I can't say they are wrong. I mean for pete's sake... it's really no different than the misogynistic language that runs through American English where male things imply positives and female things imply negatives-- if you have "balls" you are brave, but if you're a "pussy" you're a coward. Or even the female / homosexual male insult that comes from a man being called a "c***s***er".

Now if people want to say that this is a whole lot of nothing and people are making issues where none exist... 1) it means you're probably like me and grew up with this language, which explains why it doesn't trigger anything feelings of negativity in you... and 2) it means you're going to be on the wrong side of history. Because anything an old person believes but a young person feels is wrong... the young person is going to outlive you and thus their opinion is going to have final say. So you either spend the rest of your days whining about "Kids today!"... or you try to be a little more understanding of where they are coming from and perhaps not be thought of as an a**hole for the rest of your life.

(And funnily enough... because 'a**hole' merely references a stinky body part that every single person has-- male / female, heterosexual / homosexual, cis / trans-- it is the one word that can be used to insult someone with no troubling language implied from it. You are merely someone from whom crap comes out of. And that can apply to everybody. )

 

[Scribe]

Wha....clearly I missed a branch of this conversation somehow.

 

[jgsugden]

Arguments that the grippli have always been described as primitive are besides the point, as the author apparently wanted to create a more fleshed-out version of the grippli ...

I disagree. The author selected IP to use (the Grippli) that had problematic elements historically, from the author's own analysis, and did not take proactive steps to address those problematic elements. If you want to write about Brer Rabbit, a German Soldier in the 1930s, or other concepts inherently associated with problematic material, the person making the decision to use that character/IP has a responsibility to proactively avoid problems. If the author took those steps, and WotC disregarded his proactive statements to avoid the use of common problematic materials associated with the Grippli, that would be another matter - but that does not seem to be the case here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I disagree. The author selected IP to use (the Grippli) that had problematic elements historically, from the author's own analysis, and did not take proactive steps to address those problematic elements. If you want to write about Brer Rabbit, a German Soldier in the 1930s, or other concepts inherently associated with problematic material, the person making the decision to use that character/IP has a responsibility to proactively avoid problems. If the author took those steps, and WotC disregarded his proactive statements to avoid the use of common problematic materials associated with the Grippli, that would be another matter - but that does not seem to be the case here.

Man what? That's EXACTLY what seems to be the case. He took active steps to re-contextualize the Grippli so they were no longer problematic. WotC then removed all that material without telling him, and after asking him to publicize what he'd written.

That's what he's said he did and WotC has not contradicted him. So currently that's the best info we have. Why are you disregarding it and creating a story out of thin air? You say you disagree but that's not so much a disagreement as ignoring all the information we have and positing a baseless alternative narrative.

Your earlier posts asked for an unreasonable standard where you felt he should apparently attempt to dictate to WotC that they not use specific words he could not necessarily have anticipated them using, and which required him to assume WotC was acting with a certain degree of bad faith and/or profound ineptitude which I feel was unreasonable.

 

[jgsugden]

I myself have always known 'butthurt' to be related to male-on-male sexual congress, and which the phrase implied the person was the one receiving it and didn't like it. And the phrase implied that receiving it was painful and unwanted, as though it was inherently a bad thing (especially for a heterosexual male). And it's consider homophobic, because that phrase joins a good-sized list of things in American language meant to suggest that homosexual sex is bad or gross and if you are a heterosexual it's like the worst thing that could happen to you. As was mentioned above... men came up with sayings like "I'm screwed" or "I'm f***ed"-- statements implying being on the receiving end of a sexual encounter-- and that being a bad thing...

Your experiences are yours. The statement was made with very limited context, the statement had no inherent relationship to homophobia, and the term has established origins and uses that are distinct from homophobic elements.

Accordingly, assuming that it was used in a homophobic way when that context is only being assumed to be there, as opposed to being there on the face of the language used, is a disservice.

 

[jgsugden]

Man what? That's EXACTLY what seems to be the case.

No. It is not. A proactive step would be discussing the historical situation with WotC and asking that it not be used. He omitted the offensive language from his draft, he included non problematic damage which was edited out, but there is no statements that he addressed the historic problematic language and characterizations with WotC. IP has baggage. If you use the IP, you need to be responsible for the baggage. We call it baggage because it travels with the IP.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Man what? That's EXACTLY what seems to be the case. He took active steps to re-contextualize the Grippli so they were no longer problematic. WotC then removed all that material without telling him, and after asking him to publicize what he'd written.

That's what he's said he did and WotC has not contradicted him. So currently that's the best info we have. Why are you disregarding it and creating a story out of thin air? You say you disagree but that's not so much a disagreement as ignoring all the information we have and positing a baseless alternative narrative.

Your earlier posts asked for an unreasonable standard where you felt he should apparently attempt to dictate to WotC that they not use specific words he could not necessarily have anticipated them using, and which required him to assume WotC was acting with a certain degree of bad faith and/or profound ineptitude which I feel was unreasonable.

I do think the guy probably would have had an easier time if he'd focused more on the good yuan-ti faction against the evil yuan-ti faction as opposed to also trying to introduce the grippli into 5e, recontextualize them from their prior presentation, bring in a bunch of obscure Realms-specific lore about the Batrachi, and make them a PC race.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No. It is not. A proactive step would be discussing the historical situation with WotC and asking that it not be used. He omitted the offensive language from his draft, he included non problematic damage which was edited out, but there is no statements that he addressed the historic problematic language and characterizations with WotC. IP has baggage. If you use the IP, you need to be responsible for the baggage. We call it baggage because it travels with the IP.

This is an inherently unreasonable position and I believe you are arguing it in bad faith. If you are not, your expectations of what a freelancer can demand of WotC are themselves the problem, and unreasonable, because a freelancer cannot, nor should be expected to guess that WotC will edit problematic language into their text, nor to guess what it will be, and educate them, a massive and well-funded corporation who should know better.

I mean come on. He was hired to write an adventure, not act as a cultural consultant or whatever. Pretty sure they hired someone else to do that, but only for specific products.