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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ycore Rixle" data-source="post: 4016569" data-attributes="member: 675">Well, I am sorry about the snarkiness. I think my frustration with bad writing got the best of me. At least I remembered to label it a "rant." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />But those aren't nitpicks. Avoiding redundancy is an accepted rule of writing. Avoiding unnecessary adjectives - and they almost all are - is another accepted rule. Voltaire said, "The adjective is the enemy of the noun." There are tons of other quotes out there along the same lines, like Stephen King saying that the road to hell is paved with adverbs. My comments are far from personal preferences. There are real, accepted rules of style that are being violated in the RPG industry all the time.I shouldn't pick on WOTC exclusively. Let's look at Paizo. Before we do, though, let me be clear: I think there are great designers and writers at Paizo and WOTC. I just think their writing could be even better. Now, my example. Here's the first sentence of Paizo's "Rise of the Runelords" free player's guide: "Scarred by the depravity of ancient wizards and reclaimed by a wilderness of beasts and savages, only in the past few hundred years have the steps of civilized men again trod the wondrous and mysterious lands of Varisia." That's a doosie of a misplaced modifier. It's saying that the "steps of civilized men" are "scarred by the depravity of ancient wizards." It's also saying that those same steps are "reclaimed by a wilderness of beasts and savages." That's not what it means, but it's what it says. It's bad writing.Again, I don't think writing is the most important part of a game product. Game design is. Writing is a part of it, though, and it can be better than what we sometimes see.</blockquote>

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