Two last comments on Sean's rant

[S'mon]

No, no...I don't care about his revised rant...I want to see the original one.

And to my mind, the only place the language used should matter is in the stat block. One of the reasons the English language has synonyms is because constantly saying the same word over and over and over and over and over and over again is dull and repetitive. If I write a module, I want the freedom to alternativly refer to a female spell caster as a "sorceress," "mage," "glib glob badober" or what have you in the text without having the WotC Language Police descend on me and beat me to a bloody pulp because I havne't done things the way they, in their all-knowing wisdom, have decreed that Things Should Be Done. (Of course, they'd have to wait until the Rules Police finished beating me for including a NG pegasus when the rules clearly state that pegasi are *always* CG, damnit! ) I'll say she's actually of the wizard (sorry, Wizard...have to have that capital letter, don't we?) class in her stat block, all right? Now, what's wrong with that? So long as I get the mechanics right, who cares what words I pick to describe something outside of the actual crunchy bits?

But then, I've always thought that the "Game Mechanics For Every Adjective in the English Language" rules design of 3e has been one of its biggest weaknesses.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

I agree entirely. The rules should be an aid, not a ball and chain. And Politically Correct terminology may keep WoTC out of trouble with certain people but it's entirely inappropriate for evoking a world based on Classical or medieval archetypes. If I want to have a Circe-type Sorceress in my game (or published scenario) I bloody well will, it's for the GM to know (in the stat block) if her character class is PHB Sorceror, Wizard, DMG Adept, Witch or whatever. The rules description is really the least important part.

 

[green slime]

Goodness gracious me!...

Mildred!

MILDRED!!!

COME QUICKLY!!! Where are you woman?

Ahh, there you are...

What kind of tea are you serving our guests? There's a storm in my teacup...

 

[S'mon]

Re: Semantics!?!

As far as non-gaming language is concerned, I'm aslo for a genderless lexicon. Gender, to me, is an oppressive institution. Gender based terminology reinforces that oppression.

Even if you believe gender is an 'oppressive insitution' (I thought it was a fact of life, but ok), most denizens of fantasy gameworlds based on real-world history are going to believe in that insitution. Calling Circe a 'Sorceror' in a mythic-Greek setting just doesn't sit well with me. Likewise my gameworld has Druidesses, Magesses, etc although they're Druid, Wizard etc in the stat block.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Scones are scones.

What my Irish, British and Scot friends are telling me are biscuits, though, I call a cookie.

 

[S'mon]

Scones are scones.

What my Irish, British and Scot friends are telling me are biscuits, though, I call a cookie.

Scones look like American biscuits, but taste quite different - don't eat one with sausage!

British biscuits are American cookies.

Oh, and talking about annoyance, I get annoyed by the non-gender-differentiating class names in the PHB (female Wizards, female Monks rather than Nuns, etc) but I guess that makes me an evil sexist pig. Female wizards still get called sorceresses or witches or maybe magesses in my game, and female Monks get called nuns, etcetera.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Darkness - My experience is that the majority of English professors are rather unqualified to make that distinction. It is difficult to determine, in many cases, whether a word is the "American" spelling, an older British spelling, or even an incorrect spelling that appears correct.

Take "specialized" for example. MS Word says this is the US spelling and tries to correct it. The OED says it is the older British spelling and used in the US, and if anything, more correct. Yet I've been told off by English teachers for using it...

Other professors are just idiots on the matter, despite flashy diplomas and qualifications. My brother was told by an told smugly by an highly-qualified American professor that "soluble" does not mean "solvable". In fact, it does, when one checks the OED (or even Merriam-Webster), and can be used in the same sense.

Teachers and professors generally think that know more about English than they actually do.

I agree on one point. It would not be acceptable to use armor and armour in the same document, or specialized and specialised, but to use specialized and armour would be.

So this "can't use both" is, at best, an unproductive attitude...

SKR's rant here is, frankly, petty, and his anger unwarranted. Stat blocks and technical descriptions are one thing, and should be as correct as possible, but the rest of the text and the game is something else.

Plus "Mithral" is a stupid spelling, Mr Poopyhead!

 

[Aaron L]

Go RE!

 

[Darkness]

Slightly different alloy? Mithril (however you spell it) is a completely fictional concept. It's a precious, lightweight, silvery supermetal. That's what it is in Tolkien, that's what it is in D&D.

Your point being...?


edit: The boards ate the first half of the post I quoted. Here is it, as well as my comment:

Magic, Magik, Magick. (Hate the last two, but I see them all the time.)

Fey, Fay, Fae.

Ok, now - these are examples that I can accept (and I agree about the "hate" part; oh am I ever glad that Mage: the Ascension 3e got rid of "Magick").

(For readers' convenience, here's the original point for which these examples were given

The spelling is different, the definition is the same. ... The fact that some nebulous "we" decided to favor one existing spelling ... over another doesn't mandate the same choice for everyone else.

Heh. But it does - WotC are the authority on this. If you want to publish, say, a chemistry journal, you'd better use the definitions - as well as spellings - that the accepted authority uses. If you want to be compliant with the accepted standard, at least.

Now, D&D being much less technical than chemistry (doing something not perfectly has less severe consequences, at least ), there's admittedly room for some flexibility. That is, if you publish your own world, you can rename things and also create new things with similar names as existing ones. Now, you still have to point this fact out, though. Take the Forgotten Realms, for example: Darkwood doesn't exist in the Realms - but there's a similar (and, in game terms, identical) material called Blackwood (amongst other things). This is pointed out in Magic of Faerun. Thus, if you want to use something called "mithril" rather than the DMG-compliant mithral but still use mithral's stats for some reason (e.g., convenience), you have to point this out to your readers. Otherwise, it is rightly viewed as an error and also is a possible reason for confusion.

 

[ninthcouncil]

"ise" vs "ize" - the former is still more common in British English, but the latter is getting stronger. I'd regard them as alternatives in BE, not as right and wrong.

Query - how come in American English you have "defense" for "defence" but not "fense" for "fence"?

Don't get onto scones, please. We'll be getting on how to pronounce them, and then things will get nasty.

 

[Darkness]

Ruin,

You have experience with Austrian English professors? (Just joking, my friend. )

Anyway, while it might be difficult at times to discern the origin of a given spelling, there is, by and large, a certain standard that the US is adhering to - and a different one for Great Britain. Thus, anyone publishing a book for the market of one of those countries should best adhere to that. And if there is doubt, they should use the precedent set by WotC (although WotC aren't perfect, either, of course: I remember Monte Cook pointing out that there was some issue with the plural of "staff" or something like that). Now, I'd say that regional standard is more important the WotC standard. That is, a British d20 publishing company has all rights to use their country's spelling if that's what they want to do. Also, an American company might do the same (i.e., use British spelling) if they wanted. What I'd like to see, though, is internal consistency: Either use US spelling, or British spelling - but not both - for everything.

So much for spelling in general. Now on to rules terms vs. flavor text:

Yeah, well, IC, anything can happen. E.g., if a half-orc bartender is talking about a spellcaster who happens to be a sorcerer, but "sorcerer" isn't the general - or the only possible - term for such people in the region in question, or else he has incorrect information, he might call him a "wizard" or "necromancer" or "gawddamn magic-worker" or whatever. Dammit, in OA, there is even a table for the culturally different names for the base classes! So IC, anything goes. (Anything that's consistent with the world in question that is.)
Now, if the DM - or the writer of an adventure module - is giving the players an objective description, the language he uses should not be misleading (unless appropriate, IC), but rather consistent with the campaign world in question. Example: In a "generic" D&D world (say, Greyhawk) it's wrong for the DM to say to the PCs "you see a sorcerer" if he means "arcane magic-user of an uncertain type."