Ha. Did You See...

[Morrus]

A couple of tiny thngs:

"ENworld" should really read "EN World"

"Ennies" should have the first "N" capitalised: "ENnies".

Other than that, I think that the letter is fantastic. I wonder if it could go into our support of Dragon a little more, though? It mainly seems to be a defence of the characterisation of EN World members (which is great!), but extending it a little to say something along the lines of "We at EN World love Dragon, as well as Paizo's other publications such as Dungeon and Polyhedron. That's why we awarded Paizo an ENnie last year. Perhaps we don't say it often enough, so we felt that this would be a good opportunity to do so - thank you to all of the staff at Paizo for doing a wonderful job! Of course there have been problems over the last year or so, but our support for the magazines remains undiminished."

 

[Tabarnak Smokeblower]

Nicely put.

TS

Oh and let's gather money to send Paizo Publishings a muffin basket

 

[Pielorinho]

Here's how the letter would look with all my suggested changes (as well as a corrected spelling of "criticisms" near the middle of the letter and a correction of parallel structure in the "In order to..." paragraph):

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 message board on which geeks rip apart games they don’t actually play, ENworld is actually populated by the largest community of Dungeons and Dragons players on the Internet. Our posting members include such industry standards as 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, including 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, also post at ENworld.

The reason 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 and have whole forums dedicated to rules questions and house rules, as well 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 forward. Our criticisms of Dragon are made out of love for the magazine and love for the game, and although threads praising Dragon are fewer than those 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 not only to 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 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, which only benefits everyone involved.

The ENworld community.

Other people are also giving good advice, but I want to include just my suggestions for now; we can do iterations of the letter than include other folks' advice.

Daniel

 

[jgbrowning]

whoa, whoa, whoa guys..... you keep providing feedback like this you might turn my little letter into something respectable..... and as we all know, that's dangerous.....




joe b.

 

[Crothian]

That's a really good sounding letter, great job on that!!

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

In all sincerity, Joe, it's good. Well done, sir.

 

[jgbrowning]

Updating from everyone's suggestions....

--------------------------------------------
This letter is from the entire EN world 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 message board on which geeks rip apart games they don’t actually play, EN world is actually populated by the largest community of Dungeons and Dragons players on the Internet. Our posting members include such industry luminaries as Gary Gygax, Monte Cook, Chris Pramas, Sean K. Reynolds, 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, including 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, also post at EN world.

The reason we have such a presence is because the people at EN world care deeply about the game. We spend hours discussing minute parts of the game. We have forums dedicated to rules questions and house rules, forums for other d20 games, and forums supporting creative fan based work through adventure contests and online 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 EN world helps propel the hobby forward. Our criticisms of Dragon are made out of love for the magazine and love for the game, and although threads praising Dragon are fewer than those 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 not only to criticize, but also to provide praise, EN world 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 influential people in the business. We at EN World love Dragon, as well as Paizo's other publications such as Dungeon and Polyhedron. That's why we awarded Paizo an ENnie last year. Perhaps we don't say it often enough, so we felt that this would be a good opportunity to do so - thank you to all of the staff at Paizo for doing a wonderful job!

Any portrayal of EN world as primarily 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, which only benefits everyone involved.

The ENworld community
--------------------------------------------

Any other suggestions?


joe b.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Wow. That just looks great!

 

[Morrus]

Still need to capitalise those "W"s in EN World... otherwise I think that's pretty darn good.

I wonder of the 3rd paragraph would be best switched with the 4th? That way we end on a very positive note, rather than one of rebuttal or defensiveness.

 

[Pielorinho]

Excellent! Only three proofreading things this time around:

* Go through and replace "world" with "World": as a proper noun EN World should be capitalized.
* Change "fan based" to "fan-based" -- the two words are acting as a single adjective and should therefore be hyphenated.
* Unless Paizo has other publications I'm not aware of, remove "such as" in the phrase "Paizo's other publications such as Dungeon and Polyhedron."

Otherwise, very cool! (And if you'll be looking for proofreaders for Expeditious Retreat press, lemme know!)

Daniel