D&D 5E [Merged] Candlekeep Mysteries Author Speaks Out On WotC's Cuts To Adventure

In an event which is being referred to as #PanzerCut, one of the Candlekeep Mysteries authors has gone public with complaints about how their adventure was edited.

Book of Cylinders is one of the adventures in the book. It was written by Graeme Barber (who goes by the usernames PanzerLion and PoCGamer on social media).

Barber was caught by surprise when he found out what the final adventure looked like. The adventure was reduced by about a third, and his playable race -- the Grippli -- was cut. Additionally, WotC inserted some terminology that he considered to be colonialist, which is one of the things they were ostensibly trying to avoid by recruiting a diverse team of authors for the book.

His complaints also reference the lack of communication during the editing process, and how he did public interviews unknowingly talking about elements of an adventure which no longer existed.

"I wrote for [Candlekeep Mysteries], the recent [D&D] release. Things went sideways. The key issues were that the bulk of the lore and a lot of the cultural information that made my adventure "mine" were stripped out. And this was done without any interaction with me, leaving me holding the bag as I misled the public on the contents and aspects of my adventure. Yes, it was work-for-hire freelance writing, but the whole purpose was to bring in fresh voices and new perspectives.

So, when I read my adventure, this happened. This was effectively the shock phase of it all.

Then I moved onto processing what had happened. ~1300 words cut, and without the cut lore, the gravity of the adventure, and its connections to things are gravely watered down. Also "primitive" was inserted.

Then the aftermath of it all. The adventure that came out was a watered down version of what went in, that didn't reflect me anymore as a writer or creator. Which flew in the face of the spirit of the project as had been explained to me.

So then I wrote. Things don't change unless people know what's up and can engage with things in a prepared way. So I broke down the process of writing for Wizards I'd experienced, and developed some rules that can be used to avoid what happened to me."

He recounts his experiences in two blog posts:

• What happened? Writing for Wizards Part 1
• What Happened? Writing for Wizards Part 2

The author later added "Wizards owns all the material sent in, and does not publish unedited adventures on the DM Guild, so there will be no "PanzerCut". I have respectfully requested that my name be removed from future printings. "

 

[Charlaquin]

I do think the guy probably would have had an easier time if he'd focused more on the good yuan-ti faction against the evil yuan-ti faction as opposed to also trying to introduce the grippli into 5e, recontextualize them from their prior presentation, bring in a bunch of obscure Realms-specific lore about the Batrachi, and make them a PC race.

Again, folks, he removed the Grippli PC race stats himself, in the round of editing he was actually involved in.

 

[Mort]

WoTC should have known who they hired to do the work for them. Especially if a big selling point was to be more inclusive and work with diverse members of the community. There really isn't any excuse to have inserted the word "primitive' into Graeme's work. I'm doing a project right now as a matter of fact that has a goal of reaching out to and using many members of our diverse freelancer community. So while traditionally the editor doesn't always reach out to submitters when making changes, if your goal is to be more inclusive and I'm CISHET white male and my freelancer is not, before making any changes final, darn right I'm gonna pass it by them first. Because that's the whole point. Graeme has every right to complain about this part.

This, exactly.

The author got onto WoTCs radar by loudly complaining about one of their supplements.

It would seem to be good practice to for WoTC to be a bit more careful in his own submission! Particularly when WoTC knew that he was not an "experienced" writer and may not know what to expect.

So, standard practice or not, what happened was utterly, even (sadly) comically, predictable.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Christ, Mohan has been with TSR and then WotC since 1979.

With no disrespect to their undoubted competence to retain that sort of role for as long as I've been alive (!!!) I think that might suggest this is part of the issue WotC are experiencing.

Also yeah pretty unsurprising that someone who has to seriously pushing retirement age didn't see a problem with "primitive" nor saw the value of the material being cut.

I think you're making an assumption about Kim based on age. Agism is just as bad as racism and sexism.

For example, way back in 1980 Kim wrote an article that included such passages as:

"Many women are understandably appalled by the appearance of
female miniatures. They range from half-naked (possibly more than
half) slave girls in chains or placed across horses or dragons, to
women fighters dressed in no more than a bit of chainmail to protect
their modesty and perhaps a backpack and a sword. Or, there are
female Magic-Users wearing nothing but a smile and a bit of cloth
draped over one arm.
The attire of the figures does not reflect the reality of the game.
Female fighters wear just as much body protection as their male
counterparts. Female Magic-Users wear robes, carry backpacks and
have lots of pockets for material components, just like males do. But
such figures are few and far between on the shelves of stores."

And while he does state that scientifically men are stronger than men, he finishes the article with:

"As with any other variant incorporated into a campaign, the only
constantly important consideration is game balance. The D&D and
AD&D game systems were designed with playability in mind, and
the designers must necessarily sacrifice “realism” at times to achieve
the playability and overall balance that the game needs to have, to
be of maximum benefit to the greatest number of players."

So back in 1980 (man do I remember the rampant sexism of the time), Kim wrote an article that not only could be considered progressive by today's standards, was extremely progressive by 1980 standards. I would hesitate using his age/tenure as a reason why he didn't pick up on the primitive thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

One of the things that strikes me as a bit odd:

The author (in his tweets) says a lot of the early communication was great with lots of feedback going back and forth. It's not until later where the feedback stopped and he learned (after the publication) just how much had been cut (and of the problematic additions).

It just seems odd that some of the early communication (since we know there was communication happening) from WoTC wouldn't have been something like "Look, you seem to really like the Grippli, the stuff you wrote was great; but this is a short adventure for an adventure anthology - it just can't fit all of that! maybe we can use it in a later supplement?"

Exactly!! This is why the “he should have known this wasn’t the place to expand Forgotten Realms lore” arguments fall flat for me. If it wasn’t the place for that, why didn’t they say so in the first round of editing, that Panzer was involved in (and where he removed the Grippli PC race stats!)?

Just seems weird that he thought the back and forth was great (to the point where he was promoting the adventure right up to publication) only to learn after the fact that that whole section was cut. But I don't know the writing/publishing business - seems from some of the posts in this thread, this kind of thing is not that uncommon.

In my understanding and my own (very limited) experience writing for RPGs, it is normal to get a lot of feedback on your first draft, and to have your final draft edited without much communication. So, like, if it was just the changes to the structure of the adventure - simplifying the beginning mystery portion, adding the NPC with directions, removing the branching path, etc. that would have been more understandable to me. I also get the impression that’s all stuff he would have been willing to re-work, had they asked for his input. But, removing the lore and motivations from the factions involved in the adventure because it isn’t the job of a short adventure to introduce such lore changes? That really seems like something that should have been communicated in the first round of editing.

 

[Scribe]

Does it? Sounds like there was a ton of that and they cut it, so that doesn't make any sense to me

That's what I mean. They cut the setting specific and deeper lore. Otherwise his adventure could have been better, with more depth to the story.

 

[DM Magic]

I think you're making an assumption about Kim based on age. Agism is just as bad as racism and sexism.

I'm making an assumption about him based on the era he grew up in, one that normalized and incentivised the sort of institutionalized racism that resulted in that very thing we are discussing now.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm making an assumption about him based on era he grew up in, one that normalized and incentivised the sort of institutionalized racism that resulted in that very thing we are discussing now.

You shouldn't do that either. Did you not read what I posted right below what you quoted?

 

[Scribe]

I'm making an assumption about him based on the era he grew up in, one that normalized and incentivised the sort of institutionalized racism that resulted in that very thing we are discussing now.

The era one grows up in, determines their age.

It absolutely is an assessment based on their age alone.

 

[BigZebra]

I'm making an assumption about him based on the era he grew up in, one that normalized and incentivised the sort of institutionalized racism that resulted in that very thing we are discussing now.

Yikes. That’s judgmental.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you're making an assumption about Kim based on age. Agism is just as bad as racism and sexism.

For example, way back in 1980 Kim wrote an article that included such passages as:

"Many women are understandably appalled by the appearance of
female miniatures. They range from half-naked (possibly more than
half) slave girls in chains or placed across horses or dragons, to
women fighters dressed in no more than a bit of chainmail to protect
their modesty and perhaps a backpack and a sword. Or, there are
female Magic-Users wearing nothing but a smile and a bit of cloth
draped over one arm.
The attire of the figures does not reflect the reality of the game.
Female fighters wear just as much body protection as their male
counterparts. Female Magic-Users wear robes, carry backpacks and
have lots of pockets for material components, just like males do. But
such figures are few and far between on the shelves of stores."

And while he does state that scientifically men are stronger than men, he finishes the article with:

"As with any other variant incorporated into a campaign, the only
constantly important consideration is game balance. The D&D and
AD&D game systems were designed with playability in mind, and
the designers must necessarily sacrifice “realism” at times to achieve
the playability and overall balance that the game needs to have, to
be of maximum benefit to the greatest number of players."

So back in 1980 (man do I remember the rampant sexism of the time), Kim wrote an article that not only could be considered progressive by today's standards, was extremely progressive by 1980 standards. I would hesitate using his age/tenure as a reason why he didn't pick up on the primitive thing.

I don't find this persuasive.

In British society it's extremely obvious that a lot of people in their 50s and 60s who were extremely progressive for the 1970s and 1980s, hold a mixture of still-progressive and bizarrely retrograde views, views that oddly enough, are not necessarily held by Americans of a similar age and background. Likewise I've seen Americans in their 50s and 60s who hold broadly progressive views, and who were seen as extremely progressive in the 1970s and 1980s, to hold views on specific matters (often race) that are somewhat retrograde.

So what I'm saying is, I don't buy that someone not being a sexist in 1980 means they understand that "primitive" or similar language is a bad idea. In fact we have hard proof that they do not understand that.

Trying to spin this as "ageism" is pretty funny, but that's all it is. I'm extremely familiar with real ageism, and how it manifests, and how harmful it can be (and I'm also aware, in the UK, of it being used by certain individuals, to attempt to defend unacceptable behaviour/language), but failure to accept that someone who is in their 60s is likely to hold different ideas on problematic language to a younger person is just silly shenanigans and strikes me as superficially similar to a bad faith argument bordering on concern-trolling. I'm not saying it IS that latter, but it sure looks similar to how such a thing would appear.

I mean, in the UK, transphobia is undoubtedly most common in the 50-65 age group, really centering around 55-56. You can find older and younger transphobes, but there's a bizarrely intense correlation with that age range. In the US, this simply is not the case. There's no cultural correlation with transphobia in that age range, at all. I've seen this being pointed out called "ageism" before, but again I find that unpersuasive and a distraction from a reality. Hence I am skeptical of glib claims of ageism. Sorry if that's a bit of a tangent, trying to make my perspective a bit clearer here.