The Human Target
Adventurer
Arashi Ravenblade said:
I expect professionalism and competence from a business.
The excuse of "but it was like hard and stuff" is pretty thin.
The don't wanna put in the effort or expense, find a new line of work.
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[Rant] Do editing/proofreading errors drive you mad, too?
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I expect professionalism and competence from a business.
The excuse of "but it was like hard and stuff" is pretty thin.
The don't wanna put in the effort or expense, find a new line of work.
My annoyance at an editing/proofreading error depends upon the nature of the error. While its an industrywide problem, I notice it most in TSR/WotC products- they're the ones I use the most.
Over my years of playing, I've seen TSR/WotC products that mention: multiclass combos that don't exist; races that are primarily one class in one paragraph, only to have that negated 2 paragraphs later; Spells without vital game mechanical stats listed; NPCs that don't qualify for their classes, or have rulesbreaking tactics, and so forth.
The errors where its pretty clear that someone just relied upon a grammar/spellchecker program, leaving MAJOR things programs wouldn't notice completely untouched drive me absolutely nuts...as does the complete lack of using even a spellchecker. If I see a sentence that has a phrase like "thesw ordm ustbe drawnfro mthestone," I put the product back on the shelf.
When they just leave out a weapon that I can easily figure out the stats to, or slip in an extra "no" or some such- mainly those things that don't cause rules/flavor paradoxes- I can live with it.
Over my years of playing, I've seen TSR/WotC products that mention: multiclass combos that don't exist; races that are primarily one class in one paragraph, only to have that negated 2 paragraphs later; Spells without vital game mechanical stats listed; NPCs that don't qualify for their classes, or have rulesbreaking tactics, and so forth.
The errors where its pretty clear that someone just relied upon a grammar/spellchecker program, leaving MAJOR things programs wouldn't notice completely untouched drive me absolutely nuts...as does the complete lack of using even a spellchecker. If I see a sentence that has a phrase like "thesw ordm ustbe drawnfro mthestone," I put the product back on the shelf.
When they just leave out a weapon that I can easily figure out the stats to, or slip in an extra "no" or some such- mainly those things that don't cause rules/flavor paradoxes- I can live with it.
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
I bet it's the lack of power to do anything about it that grates the most. *grin*James Jacobs said:
-blarg
ps - Savage Tide rocks. Thank you.
Hussar
Legend
I remember one AEG book in early 3e that switched "Orc" with "ore". Now that was bad.
Yeah, editing mistakes bug me to no end. Honestly, miscalculation like being off by a skill or two or that sort of thing, doesn't bug me all that often, but, amateur hour typos and the like just really annoy me.
Yeah, editing mistakes bug me to no end. Honestly, miscalculation like being off by a skill or two or that sort of thing, doesn't bug me all that often, but, amateur hour typos and the like just really annoy me.
w_earle_wheeler
First Post
My annoyance with typos increases with the cost of the product.
A typo on a forum... so what? The person wasn't paid to write it. There's a different standard for casual communication.
In a free or cheap .pdf? As long as it's just an obvious typo, it doesn't bother me. I understand the problems that arise when you have to proof your own work when self-publishing.
In a standard priced book? It does bother me, but the occasional missing word can be overlooked. Below average editing is the standard in the RPG industry. The first printing of All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a good example of the (worst) of this. A great game made by great people, but the end product was terribly unprofessional. Later editions improved dramatically.
In a deluxe book... one priced over $40? Typos and poor editing disgust me. The first printing of the Conan RPG is one of the most fearsome examples of this, as well as several other notorious Mongoose products. This is really too bad, because I liked the core rules and ideas behind Conan, but there was no way in the nine hells I was going to reward a company for putting out such a shabby product.
I eventually ended up with a used copy of the "pocket" edition of CONAN, bought from someone who bought it used on Amazon. Since I bought it at a discount on a discount on a discount, I let the problems slide.
A typo on a forum... so what? The person wasn't paid to write it. There's a different standard for casual communication.
In a free or cheap .pdf? As long as it's just an obvious typo, it doesn't bother me. I understand the problems that arise when you have to proof your own work when self-publishing.
In a standard priced book? It does bother me, but the occasional missing word can be overlooked. Below average editing is the standard in the RPG industry. The first printing of All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a good example of the (worst) of this. A great game made by great people, but the end product was terribly unprofessional. Later editions improved dramatically.
In a deluxe book... one priced over $40? Typos and poor editing disgust me. The first printing of the Conan RPG is one of the most fearsome examples of this, as well as several other notorious Mongoose products. This is really too bad, because I liked the core rules and ideas behind Conan, but there was no way in the nine hells I was going to reward a company for putting out such a shabby product.
I eventually ended up with a used copy of the "pocket" edition of CONAN, bought from someone who bought it used on Amazon. Since I bought it at a discount on a discount on a discount, I let the problems slide.
Over-reliance on spell-checkers is part of it, I think. The majority of errors I find are the sort of things that a spell-checker would never have noticed, like where / were or rogue / rouge or wood / would or, my pet peeve, wreck / wreak. *Wreak* havoc! Not wreck havoc! Argh!
I've actually done some proofreading for White Wolf, and edited one (very small) book for them, only to groan when a thread popped up about the ridiculous amount of errors in the book. (The map was backwards or something during the writing, it seems, as just about every reference to direction in the book was wrong. If the text said 'we went east to X' then country X was inevitably to the west. I consoled myself that I hadn't actually ever seen the map during the editing, so I had no way of knowing that, but it still rankled to be reading a thread about how much I suck...)
It was educational to see what sort of 'errors' crept in to the document. A cut-n-paste error had every single sentence ending with the letter 'r' having the word 'river' appended to it. One of the two main narrating NPCs changed names, and race, halfway through the product, but since the chapters had all been jumbled into a new order during a last-minute design change, it seemed like she switched names every other chapter! Good times...
Lots of 'flavor text' in D&D has mechanical meanings. If a population is said to have lots of 'sorcerers,' or a 'gift for sorcery,' but actually consists of *wizards,* that's actually an issue, as a Sorcerer is not the same things as a Wizard. The terms aren't interchangeable, and if you want to refer to both, it's easier to just say something like 'arcanists.' These days, other 'flavorful' descriptors for arcane spell-casters, like Magus or Warlock, might also refer to specific classes or prestige classes, adding to the layers of confusion.
As for stat blocks, John Cooper needs to be given every book with stat blocks before they go to the printer, a wad of cash and a red pen.
About the only time errors *really* piss me off is when I purchase a product and find out that the contents have changed since the cover blurb was written. My copy of the Jungles of Chult promises an 'all new system of magic, based on gems!' on the back, and inside, no such system exists, only exiting new rules for half-naked jungle dwarves.
And don't even get me started on the old Menzoberranzan Boxed Set. I listed 200 errors and mailed the list to TSR. It was a slow afternoon at work...
I've actually done some proofreading for White Wolf, and edited one (very small) book for them, only to groan when a thread popped up about the ridiculous amount of errors in the book. (The map was backwards or something during the writing, it seems, as just about every reference to direction in the book was wrong. If the text said 'we went east to X' then country X was inevitably to the west. I consoled myself that I hadn't actually ever seen the map during the editing, so I had no way of knowing that, but it still rankled to be reading a thread about how much I suck...)
It was educational to see what sort of 'errors' crept in to the document. A cut-n-paste error had every single sentence ending with the letter 'r' having the word 'river' appended to it. One of the two main narrating NPCs changed names, and race, halfway through the product, but since the chapters had all been jumbled into a new order during a last-minute design change, it seemed like she switched names every other chapter! Good times...
Lots of 'flavor text' in D&D has mechanical meanings. If a population is said to have lots of 'sorcerers,' or a 'gift for sorcery,' but actually consists of *wizards,* that's actually an issue, as a Sorcerer is not the same things as a Wizard. The terms aren't interchangeable, and if you want to refer to both, it's easier to just say something like 'arcanists.' These days, other 'flavorful' descriptors for arcane spell-casters, like Magus or Warlock, might also refer to specific classes or prestige classes, adding to the layers of confusion.
As for stat blocks, John Cooper needs to be given every book with stat blocks before they go to the printer, a wad of cash and a red pen.
About the only time errors *really* piss me off is when I purchase a product and find out that the contents have changed since the cover blurb was written. My copy of the Jungles of Chult promises an 'all new system of magic, based on gems!' on the back, and inside, no such system exists, only exiting new rules for half-naked jungle dwarves.
And don't even get me started on the old Menzoberranzan Boxed Set. I listed 200 errors and mailed the list to TSR. It was a slow afternoon at work...
Shades of Green
Explorer
Bad editing and insufficient quality control kills games; this is what happened to two versions of Traveller (Megatraveller and Marc Miller's Traveller AKA Traveller4). Both had massive amounts of errata, especially at their first printings; it simpy turned people away from these games as it got in the way of smooth and enjoyable play. And it is a shame, as Traveller4 was brimming with potential; all it needed was a good editor and some playtesting to iron out its flaws.
I HATE those. They are a classic example of something that would be caught by live eyes on the product as opposed to reliance upon spellcheckers.
Classic one- the old 2Ed Monsterous Compendium entries for "Vampire" and "Vampire, Oriental" are identical.
RichGreen
Adventurer
Hi,
For me, the most annoying errors are conflicts between maps and descriptions and/or contradictory information where you have to try and work out what the designer really meant to say. Typos are just mildly irritating. As for John Cooper's NPC and monster stat errata: I have to confess I've never noticed any of the errors he's found, mostly because I skim rather than read stat blocks when reading a new D&D book. I guess I might notice some of the more obvious errors if I actually ran an encounter using one of these monsters but even then I'm not so sure!
Cheers
Richard
For me, the most annoying errors are conflicts between maps and descriptions and/or contradictory information where you have to try and work out what the designer really meant to say. Typos are just mildly irritating. As for John Cooper's NPC and monster stat errata: I have to confess I've never noticed any of the errors he's found, mostly because I skim rather than read stat blocks when reading a new D&D book. I guess I might notice some of the more obvious errors if I actually ran an encounter using one of these monsters but even then I'm not so sure!
Cheers
Richard
