This letter is from the entire ENworld community in response to Jeffrey J Bickler's letter in issue 311.
Mr. Bickler's visit to our forums seems to have been an unfortunate one. Unlike his portrayal of a bunch of message board geeks who rip apart games they don’t actually play [I'd change this clause to improve parallel construction to, "Unlike his portrayal of a message board on which geeks rip apart games they don't actually play", but this is a minor suggestion], ENworld is actually populated by the largest community of Dungeons and Dragons players on the Internet. Our posting members include such industry standards as, [remove this comma -- it's incorrect] Monte Cook, Chris Pramas, Sean K. Reynolds, Gary Gygax, Matthew Sprange, John Nephew, Clark Peterson, Hal Greenberg, Jim Butler, Anthony Valterra, and Dragon’s own Erik Mona. Some of the best new industry professionals, like ["including" instead of "like"]Ben Durbin, Wil Upchurch, Joseph Browning and Suzi Yee, as well as a slew of Dragon's contributing authors like Mike Mearls, Ari Marmell, Brannon Hollingsworth, and Darrin Drader [insert a comma here -- it's required, in order to set off a nonrestrictive phrase] also post at ENworld.
The reason why [remove "why" - unnecessary] we have such an industry presence is because the people at ENworld care deeply about the game. We spend hours discussing minute parts of the game, [remove comma; add "and" -- required for grammatical reasons] have whole forums dedicated to rules questions and house rules [add comma] as well [add "as"] forums for other d20 games. The people who make the books, magazines, and PDFs we love to praise, as well as rip apart, understand that the feedback created by ENworld helps propel the industry, in general, [remove previous two commas; better yet, change to "...propel the industry forward"] forward. Our critisims of Dragon are made out of love for the magazine and love for the game, and although threads praising Dragon are fewer than those critisising ["criticizing"] it, we think it's only because people almost always find it easier to talk about what they don't like than what they do like.
In order too ["to"] not only criticize, but also to provide praise, ENworld created the Ennies award ceremony. These awards praise the best of the industry with a focus on d20 material. Although the awards are only three years old, and undergoing constant peer-driven procedural consideration, they are rapidly becoming the benchmark awards for d20 products. Presented every year at Gen Con, they are attended by many of the most influencial ["influential"]people in the business.
Mr. Bickler’s portrayal of ENworld as negative is far from the truth, for it is one of the most positive things in this industry: a source of direct, unadulterated feedback to the game manufacturers. This can lead to harsh criticism or to lavish praise (often at the same time, for gamers are a mixed bunch with different likes and dislikes), but most of all, it lets the game players speak directly to the game producers [add comma] which only benefits everyone involved.
The ENworld community.
