Will 3.5 first printings be full of errors?

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think the problem is that editor types I think are less gamer types than R&D. They might play the game, but I think most of them aren't quite as die hard gamers. They don't notice small rules glitches the way players do. They look at a sentence and say "looks like problem spelling and grammar" meanwhile not seeing the fact that the it doesn't explain properly how the ability works.

 

[Painfully]

Copy editors do proofreading for grammar. They are usually separate from a peer review, which is usually how it it done in academic journals. I certainly hope that they will have had enough peer review to catch any mistakes before they go to print.

If you ever get a chance to proofread articles submitted by college professors or politicians, you'll know they make stupid mistakes too. And it's SOOOOO satisfying to put red ink on THEIR papers! Hehehehe!

The writers should be a step ahead of any errors in 3.5 simply because a majority of it is from the 3.0 books, the completed errata, and the complete sage advice articles. With all that already done for them, all that is left is whatever NEW material or changes they made.

I'll give 10 to 1 odds that WotC still finds a way to mess it up. Their editors are good at what they don't do.

 

[thalmin]

Considering how quickly the consumers discovered numerous errors right after the release of the 3.0 edition player's handbook, I don't understand why Wizard's doesn't get more fans to proofread their books. Most would be willing to do it for free and would submit to a nondisclosure agreement. Why is something like this not practiced?
<snip>

But how many would it take? You still need to have someone to sell it to. And it still wouldn't be error-proof. I believe that there have been corrections in EVERY printing of the PHB, all editions. The corrections get fewer, but WotC/TSR continued to make any needed changes. Thats how many proofreaders? And would most of us be willing to wait years for the still-not-error-free printing?

 

[Red Baron]

Keep in mind that lots of third-party publishers have had their hands on this stuff for a while, and they've been in constant correspondence with WotC about it.

Smart on WotC's part on many levels, but not the least of which is the fact that, with that many anal-retentive gamer/publisher types looking the rules over, they're bound to track down (and debate) a lot of errors for the man...

 

[FDP Mike]

Yeah. What Scott wrote ....

I'd like to add that I am very impressed with the editing in the 3.5 books. I think folks will be pleasantly surprised at the significant improvement in the PHB, for example (and the DMG and MM are much better than their 3.0 versions).

This time around, WotC seems to have given much more attention not just to a clean text, but to clarity and organization. I gather this from the books and from the responses to (publishers') queries by WotC folks such as Ed Stark.


Take care,
Mike

P.S. Oh, and d20 editors these days are pretty darn concerned about more than just spelling and grammar. Editors are gamers, too. Don't let Majoru Oakheart tell you differently!

 

[Duke Frinn]

A few months ago I asked Andy Collins about this.

ME: A final request: Try as hard as you can to make sure that the books have the least amount of errors possible. I don't mean unbalanced rules, but spelling errors, mistakes in tables, wrong math and the like.

ANDY COLLINS: I know you didn't intend this as an insult to the RPG staffers, but it's hard to take it as anything but that, since it suggests that in other cases, we *don't* try as hard as we can to eliminate errors.

Editing game products is one of the very most difficult editing jobs in the world. It combines all the difficulty of text editing with all the pitfalls of technical editing for an extraordinarily precise system. There's almost no editing job like it, and the skills required to do it well are rare indeed.

On top of that, with all three books coming out simultaneously and last-minute changes and fixes continuing to be made, the very ground of "correctness" upon which an editor stands is ever-shifting.

I have absolutely no doubt that the RPG editors who work in this building--Kim Mohan, Charles Ryan, Michele Carter, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, and Gwendolyn Kestrel--are the very best at their jobs anywhere, and I'd stack their talents and abilities against anyone else's in the world at doing what they do. If anyone thinks that the presence of an error in one of these books is the result of someone not working hard, that simply isn't true.

Will there be errors in these books? Of course there will--find me a publication that had to work with these kinds of issues and I guarantee you'll find errors. Heck, I find errors in every single publication I read, from newspapers to novels to textbooks. It's simply part of life--nothing's ever perfect.

But all that said, these three rulebooks *are* getting the most thorough examination of any product in the last three years. Drafts go home at night and come back covered with red ink. Galleys are pored over by designers, developers, and editors alike, searching for inconsistencies. They won't be perfect, but they'll be pretty damn close.

 

[Urbannen]

But all that said, these three rulebooks *are* getting the most thorough examination of any product in the last three years. Drafts go home at night and come back covered with red ink. Galleys are pored over by designers, developers, and editors alike, searching for inconsistencies. They won't be perfect, but they'll be pretty damn close.

That's all I as a consumer ever wanted. What I don't want is to be able to browse the books in the store and find two to three errors in fifteen minutes (Savage Species ).

One book that is was well edited was Deities & Demigods. I can think of one inconsistency and essentially no technical errors in that book.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Galleys are pored over by designers, developers, and editors alike, searching for inconsistencies.

Emphasis mine.

The fact that he used the proper spelling of the word "pored" for the context in which it was used gives me great hope. I don't know how many times I've seen the word "poured" misused instead. Not quite as ubiquitous or grating as the misuse of the words "lead" and "led," though...

 

[Ranes]

I have absolutely no doubt that the RPG editors who work in this building--Kim Mohan, Charles Ryan, Michele Carter, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, and Gwendolyn Kestrel--are the very best at their jobs anywhere, and I'd stack their talents and abilities against anyone else's in the world at doing what they do. If anyone thinks that the presence of an error in one of these books is the result of someone not working hard, that simply isn't true.

I think he's right. I also think he's right about how particularly difficult game editing on the scale of D&D really is, especially given the shifting ground of correctness to which Andy also referred.

It doesn't matter what edition of a book you own, you simply swap a set of errors in one for a different set in another. Sometimes, the reprint contains more errors than the earlier printing.

 

[Ranger REG]

Again, I ask Wizards: Prove Me Wrong. After all, unlike a computer software, once you commit the inked words to paper it will stays that way. There is no patch where you can "magically" correct the errors. And I've yet to see if more work is being done on the errata for the other Wizards' products that are currently out. Even some of them needed updates if not corrections themselves.

No offense, but this is not a gamer's message but a customer's post that simply wants his money's worth when paying for printed products. So please prove me wrong, that you do have the finest editing staff that will comb through the material like a fine-toothed comb ... not a regular comb, mind you, but the kind you use to find and pick up fleas. I want you to go through as meticulous as you can, even if it means you will have to postpone the release date.

IMHO, I'd rather pay for a high-quality product in December than an error-ridden product in time for GenCon.