TSR NuTSR Sells Rebound 1E Core Rulebooks For $650 Each

CleverNickName · Mar 30, 2022

And a shout-out to Professor Dillard, my Comp 101 professor at university, who gave me (and nearly the entire class) a grade of 0% on the first assignment because of grammar mistakes. "This is not grammar school," he dryly informed us.

Seriously, this guy would stop reading your paper and give it an immediate zero if he spotted a single grammar mistake or spelling error. He didn't have time or patience for such foolishness. On one hand, fair enough. On the other hand, @#@$%$^#$%.

Umbran · Mar 30, 2022

CleverNickName said:
Seriously, this guy would stop reading your paper and give it an immediate zero if he spotted a single grammar mistake or spelling error. He didn't have time or patience for such foolishness. On one hand, fair enough. On the other hand, @#@$%$^#$%.

I mean, except for how reading for grammatical correctness to notice every little mistake takes more time and attention, such that his not having time was really his own fault...

Grendel_Khan · Mar 30, 2022

glass said:
Although funnily enough, "a fan of the Beatles'" should have an apostrophe, for small values of "should". Almost nobody actually includes it, but OTOH, almost everyone would say "a fan of mine" rather than "a fan of me".

_
glass.

The fan example is not applicable here, since the context isn't possessive. And I think you're getting tangled up in references to specific words, such as "of," but English isn't a programming language. It's fluid.

A fan of the genre of horror is not called a horror's fan. A fan of a sport isn't a sports' fan. If you're a fan of the thing, plural and singular don't apply, because it's not possessive. If anything, you could argue that applying an apostrophe to something like the Beatles and a fan would imply that the Beatles have one fan. Just the one. In other words, that person there isn't one of many fans of the Beatles, but the Beatles' sole fan.

Anyway, we really, really should move on. The rules are the rules. The only time they're really debatable is when an "incorrect" usage becomes so common that it's overly fussy and distracting to always insist on the correct version. Thankfully, only NuTSR is still accidentally keeping this messed-up approach to apostrophes alive.

CleverNickName · Mar 30, 2022

Umbran said:
I mean, except for how reading for grammatical correctness to notice every little mistake takes more time and attention, such that his not having time was really his own fault...

Honestly, I think it was all psychology. He probably noticed a lot of lazy writing in that first assignment, so he wanted to put the fear into us. Maybe he wanted to force us to be more diligent with proofreading and spell-checking.

In Comp 102, he was much more reasonable. Maybe because we had learned better habits, maybe because he had relaxed a bit, maybe both.

Fifth Element · Mar 30, 2022

glass said:
Although funnily enough, "a fan of the Beatles'" should have an apostrophe, for small values of "should". Almost nobody actually includes it, but OTOH, almost everyone would say "a fan of mine" rather than "a fan of me".

Almost no one includes it because it is generally not considered to be correct - it's what you call a false possessive. You would write a fan of the Beatles' music, but not a fan of the Beatles.

And I say generally because again it's all arbitrary nonsense, and there is no authority.;

Jer · Mar 30, 2022

CleverNickName said:
Honestly, I think it was all psychology. He probably noticed a lot of lazy writing in that first assignment, so he wanted to put the fear into us. Maybe he wanted to force us to be more diligent with proofreading and spell-checking.

It's an old teaching trick - you make sure you set your expectations up front, then you enforce those expectations from the first assignment. As long as your expectations are reasonable your students will mostly rise to meet them. If you're lenient on your first assignment and try to get the class to meet higher expectations later many of them won't.

It works pretty well as long as your expectations are reasonable. And that's where some instructors run into problems.

Fifth Element · Mar 30, 2022

Umbran said:
Nope. Because the individual book is not for players-plural. The individual book is for a player-singular. So, as an example, you have the Boy Scout Handbook, where even though there are thousands of boys, the book is for the one individual.

That's a massive stretch. The book is just as much for all the players at the table as it is for each individual player at the table. I know when I was playing 1E we had exactly one PHB for the table. To wit:

Fifth Element · Mar 30, 2022

CleverNickName said:
On one hand, fair enough.

I'm not sure that this is a reasonable use of the word "fair."

Umbran · Mar 30, 2022

Fifth Element said:
That's a massive stretch. The book is just as much for all the players at the table as it is for each individual player at the table.

Then how come it is written as if the author is speaking to an individual, instead of a group?

Fifth Element said:
To wit:

View attachment 154568

Yeah, but you know, when looking for how to write stuff today, I generally like example references that are less than a century old. Or maybe it should be called "Ye Olde Booke-of-Hande for Plaerf" and none of us could be happy about the construction.

Jer · Mar 30, 2022

Umbran said:
Yeah, but you know, when looking for how to write stuff today, I generally like example references that are less than a century old. Or maybe it should be called "Ye Olde Booke-of-Hande for Plaerf" and none of us could be happy about the construction.

But we're not talking about how to write for today - we're talking about Gary Gygax and his old-academicish style of writing. I can totally see him leaving the apostrophe off not by accident but because he was writing the way he wrote. After all, it was only 1e AD&D that called it a Players handbook instead of a Player's Handbook.

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