Eratta ... errata? corrections. whatever. ... SO MANY!

[Faraer]

Until you've edited a long RPG book, you don't know what a mess it is of multiple considerations and kinds of consistency, changes with domino effects, conflicting priorities. Your editorial faculty eventually gets numbed to the content and the phrasing. It just takes a lot of skill and a lot of time, and in the RPG industry -- undercapitalized and understaffed (including at Wizards) -- companies decide to release books with tolerable levels of errors rather than spending more of their limited funds to remove, say, half of those last mistakes, which aren't perceived to seriously affect sales.

 

[DaveMage]

Until you've edited a long RPG book, you don't know what a mess it is of multiple considerations and kinds of consistency, changes with domino effects, conflicting priorities. Your editorial faculty eventually gets numbed to the content and the phrasing. It just takes a lot of skill and a lot of time, and in the RPG industry -- undercapitalized and understaffed (including at Wizards) -- companies decide to release books with tolerable levels of errors rather than spending more of their limited funds to remove, say, half of those last mistakes, which aren't perceived to seriously affect sales.

I haven't edited a long RPG book, but I have edited shorter manuals at work, and you are exactly right, especially when multiple contributors are involved...

 

[Umbran]

Consumers are notoriously accepting of error-riddled products. Just look at most software. Ever since the first software package came out with a "as is" license, we've been stuck with buggy software ranging from operating systems to word processors to games.
Food and drug safety regulations don't say that foods must be abolutely free of impurities, rather that they can't have more than a certain amount of impurity.

In some cases, error free products just can't be made with modern methods.

In some cases, it is in fact technically impossible to know if your product has imperfections. Software is a good example. It has been proven (in the mathematical sense) that beyond a certian level of complexity (which modern word processors and operating systems are well beyond) it is not theoretically possible to know that your code is bug-free.

Not to say that bugs still cannot be minimized, of course. But imagine yourself as the editor of a gaming book. The thing is hundreds of pages long. You can spell check it. You can grammar check it. And you still have a zillion little details and fiddly bits.

Or, perhaps best put - let's see you pick up a gaming book and catch more errors than the editors do

 

[Piratecat]

Cranky or not, BVB, it's a pleasure to see you.

 

[KenM]

Some of the early GURPS books had things in them like: "see page 00", they did not even go back and fix where the page refences would be. But the best GURPS eratta was when they had an eratta for the last eratta they put out.

 

[Breakdaddy]

If it bothers you that much then box your gaming supplies up and send them to me. Ill pay shipping. I am a network admin for a large hospital. The manuals written by major software vendors are just as bad, and at least Im not paying 10000 bucks a pop for D&D site licenses.

 

[BVB]

Ahoy, PC.

Eh, it's an old peeve of mine. Life goes on.
'S funny, though, to see people send hamburgers back to the fry-cook because they asked that the pickles be held, or a T-shirt returned to the store because the stitching machine left a hole under the arm, or demanding a refund from the theater manager because one of the speakers failed in the middle of the movie. RPGs, though? - a lively defense of errors.

 

[coyote6]

What everybody else said, basically.

OTOH, I was very disappointed in the 3.5e books. I'd have thought that they'd have put extra effort into catching some of the errors arising from changes made to the system. I think it shows that they made a late decision to expand the extent of the revision (IIR what various people said about the 3.5e revision correctly).

(I freely admit that a large part of my annoyance is due to my feeling that many of the changes were unnecessary. When I like the book more -- e.g., Draconomicon -- I'm much less annoyed by errors.)

(Someone mentioned SJG's errata -- they are one of the best about handling errata. Even before the Internet was widespread, you could get errata from SJG by sending 'em a list and a self-addressed stamped envelope.)

 

[WayneLigon]

RPGs, though? - a lively defense of errors.

If I don't like the burger, I'll have a new one in five minutes. Two seconds to pick a new T-shirt. An hour or maybe 24 hours to see the movie on another screen. I'd probably wait six months to a year or more for the reprinted book.

Oh, wait, no I wouldn't; the company would have gone under because of all the returns and lost business.

Not so much a 'lively defense' as a recognition that it is in fact impossible to 'get it right the first time'. After you've looked at something a hundred times, very possibly very slightly different versions of the same material many different times, it becomes extremely difficult to pick out errors. Plus the printer will also make mistakes. In fact, they always do.

 

[omedon]

has anyone ever played the half-eleven bard class in the back of the 1edADnD PHB?

The 5.5's? Ah yes, I remember them fondly.