How hard editing really is:

[jester47]

Editing is a very difficult thing to do flawlessly. As is printing a book without mistakes. A good case study in this is the Textbooks known as The Art of Computer Programming by Don Knuth. The book (or set of books) was first published in the seventies. The author has always offered people who can find mistakesin the book a payment of a buck or two. These mistakes ranged from mistakes in grammer and punctuation to any of the topics covered.

They have been doing this for 25 years and it is still not perfect.

Books covering technical stuff have mistakes, and they are very hard to run to ground.

Aaron.

 

[Drawmack]

Yes this is true, however there is a certain level of correctness that I want. For example if I notice more then 1 or 2 errors every 100 pages on a casual read that is poor editing. I also understand that game mechanics books are double difficult because you have english, game mechanics, industry standards, and a couple of other things at play all at once. But the level of editing that goes with rpg books these days is appaling.

 

[JohnClark]

I don't know if I would call it appalling, it's just that there have been some high-profile examples of poor editing (Stronghold builders guide book for instance) that I think make it seems worse than it actually is.

 

[Number47]

I hope you don't mean the core books when you say that. I find the core books to be amazingly error-low. I can't say error-free because such a thing is a virtual impossibility. I also cannot comment on other books out there because I am a core-rules plus homebrew kinda guy.

 

[DonAdam]

Grammar and misspellings don't bother.

Leaving out a base attack bonus on a chart? That's basic.

What about Savage Species? There are several paragraphs that refer to how quickly monsters should get skills and feats that are contradicted by the rest of the book.

As far as acceptable errors, the original Star Wars d20 book said that armor did stack with class defense bonus on one page and that it did not on another.
While that's a huge difference of meaning (100% different... that's all the percents there are) it is understandable, since it is only one word, and it is something that is easily clarified.

Compare that to the Savage Species example, where either way whole sections of the book have to be rewritten if you want it to be consistent with itself. Silly.

 

[Sagan Darkside]

It would be nice to see editing get better, but I am not too worried about it. Though I would prefer poor writing over poor stat blocks.

Btw- how hard is it to be a lion tamer?

SD

 

[ichabod]

RPG books are not that bad. Based on personal experience, I can say that math text books have the same level of errors as the typical RPG book. I have also talked with people in the legal publishing industry who say error rates are about the same there. Technical documents are going to have errors in them.

 

[Hardhead]

I don't know if I would call it appalling, it's just that there have been some high-profile examples of poor editing (Stronghold builders guide book for instance) that I think make it seems worse than it actually is.

How can it be worse than that, though? We're not talking about game mechanics gaffs or miswordings, or even minor gramatical errors. We're talking about characters that change gender. We're talking about sentances that cut off for no apparent reason.

SS, I've noticed has had it's share of editing gaffs as well, the H/Ogre comes to mind for instance (is it a humanoid, a giant, or both? Different parts of the book say different things, and all those stances can be defended.)

I'm left wondering if WotC even has and editing department anymore.

Yes, editing is hard. That's why you're supposed to have multiple editors triple-check everything, not one guy that does it all.

I can forgive Sword and Fist because it was the first book like it ever published. They've had years to get it right by now, though. They should have the basics down pat, but the constant WotC layoffs have pretty well hampered that. It makes the product amateurish.

As an example, look at the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook.

The editor was Andy Colins. Who was also one of two developers. Not a writer, but still heavily into the product design. And it's a basic rule of publishing to never ever ever ever ever edit your own work, but that's what they've had to start doing over at WotC.

In Savage Species, it's worse. Jennifer Clarke Wilkes is one of the three writers. She's also the first editor listed in the contents (and it ain't an alphabetical list). That means the writer was also the main editor.

That's such a huge no-no, I can't believe even WotC, in it's current skeleton-crew incarnation is down to that level.

Compare that to the PHB, where none of the writers did any editing whatsoever.

I think the problem is clear: WotC doesn't really have any full-time editors anymore. That is not a good thing, and it leads to the current ameteur look of their products' writing.

 

[Hejdun]

I find the core books to be amazingly error-low.

Reread the combat example at the beginning of the Combat chapter (Ch. 8 I think), and you'll want to retract that

 

[jester47]

Reread the combat example at the beginning of the Combat chapter (Ch. 8 I think), and you'll want to retract that

That combat example while it has its heart in the right place and a purpose of letting someone who says "What is this game all about" is a total waste of space. They could have kept that to 2 pages and given us more clarifications on AOOs and other new wierd things.

But then again, I was not overhauling the grandaddy of RPGs and its always easy to be a critic on the sidelines.

Aaron.