Two last comments on Sean's rant

[seankreynolds]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: STOP!

A move in the right direction, but unfortunately the point is easily lost because all of your examples feel like descriptive-text, not rules-text. The quote about seeing an orc on a battlement, the gem bearing an enchantment, and the advice against referring to "sorcery" (which has no place in rules-text whatsoever) all feel like what you call "flavor text".

Even with the revision to one sentence, the overall tone of the essay and its examples does not feel like it is meant to be restricted to rules-text.

Well, too bad.

 

[S'mon]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: STOP!

Well, too bad.

You stand by your inane and stupid rant - fair enough.
I guess people would cut you more slack if you weren't in a position of relative authority, but it feels like being dictated to from 'on high' in how to use language - and a lot of people don't like the Orwellian tone. You do seem to be incapable of distinguishing between the need to use language correctly in rules-text for sake of clarity (eg don't call a 3e Wizard a Mage in their stat-block) and module descriptive text of the world encountered by the PCs, where use of Sorceress is probably _more_ correct than 'female Sorcerer'.

 

[Winterthorn]

Quite off-putting actually...

After having read the rant and its revision, I remain unimpressed. While I agree that there may be a need for standardization of terminology in an industry, a rant is hardly an appropriate means to get the point across.

Posting copy of a professionally written open letter sent to other publishers would have been more effective. And *that*, I think, would have been more interesting to the rest of us.

Ranting in a I-know-better-than-you egotistical tone reduces the value of an issue down to person feelings and opinions--people are only going to say, "yeah, right."

One thumb up for the potentially important issue; two thumbs down for the issue squandered in "attitude".