MonkeyBoy
First Post
comedy 
gurgi;
"Grammar is a problem we are correcting it,"
irony, thy name is Gurgi
Having just looked through the second issue (not having much interest in ezines and hence not having looked before), it doesn't seem as bad as I'd have guessed from some of the comments here.
(yes; it's lacking in grammar - so is 90% of the text produced by the english speaking world, its not a hard thing to fix though)
I've not perused it a great deal, but it seems that the content is a bit more interesting to read than maybe Vaxalon is letting on. Its not world shaking, but then how likely was it to be? Its freely available after all
The one thing that did stick out was the section on Empathy; immediate problems I see are; Skills don't have prerequisites, and why introduce an Empathy skill instead of using Sense Motive? (the parrallel should be obvious between the two...) Why introduce this just after working for a low magic setting (reducing prevalence of spells that do similar things?)
Its these kinds of things that tend to put me off reading too much further; there's a good idea in there, its just obscured behind badly written mechanics (by which I mean pecifically mechanics that do not mesh properly with the rest of D20, and duplicate existing things). I had the same problem with the Demonology and Necromancy books from (erm, memory going fluffy here) Mongoose? (can't remember at all, sorry)
Aside;
You could solve the VAST majority of your grammar and spelling (and typo) problems by getting a spell checker onto the text before publication (will eliminate spelling errors, and spot typos like "thekingdoms" [boxout on page 11 of issue 2]) and by reading your text aloud to yourself. When you phrase your text to speak, you will notice that you put in short pauses and changes of inflection to give the meaning you intended. When you notice these you put them into the text using commas and sentence breaks. Use commas for short pauses or changes in inflection, use sentence breaks for longer pauses or changes of subject (as in "The cat sat on the mat. The mat got hairy.").
[edit; misspelt name, how rude!]
gurgi;
"Grammar is a problem we are correcting it,"
irony, thy name is Gurgi
Having just looked through the second issue (not having much interest in ezines and hence not having looked before), it doesn't seem as bad as I'd have guessed from some of the comments here.
(yes; it's lacking in grammar - so is 90% of the text produced by the english speaking world, its not a hard thing to fix though)
I've not perused it a great deal, but it seems that the content is a bit more interesting to read than maybe Vaxalon is letting on. Its not world shaking, but then how likely was it to be? Its freely available after all
The one thing that did stick out was the section on Empathy; immediate problems I see are; Skills don't have prerequisites, and why introduce an Empathy skill instead of using Sense Motive? (the parrallel should be obvious between the two...) Why introduce this just after working for a low magic setting (reducing prevalence of spells that do similar things?)
Its these kinds of things that tend to put me off reading too much further; there's a good idea in there, its just obscured behind badly written mechanics (by which I mean pecifically mechanics that do not mesh properly with the rest of D20, and duplicate existing things). I had the same problem with the Demonology and Necromancy books from (erm, memory going fluffy here) Mongoose? (can't remember at all, sorry)
Aside;
You could solve the VAST majority of your grammar and spelling (and typo) problems by getting a spell checker onto the text before publication (will eliminate spelling errors, and spot typos like "thekingdoms" [boxout on page 11 of issue 2]) and by reading your text aloud to yourself. When you phrase your text to speak, you will notice that you put in short pauses and changes of inflection to give the meaning you intended. When you notice these you put them into the text using commas and sentence breaks. Use commas for short pauses or changes in inflection, use sentence breaks for longer pauses or changes of subject (as in "The cat sat on the mat. The mat got hairy.").
[edit; misspelt name, how rude!]
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