Just a little Saturday morning mini-rant here.

We all know how strain (and wounds) work; you don't want 'em. When you get 'em, it's bad. When you get rid of 'em, it's good.

So, why do many of the authors of the books not know that?

Case in point: page 73 of Far Horizons. It reads like a roller coaster of conflicting understandings of how strain operates.

"because [the PC] finds the loss of a few points of strain to be a minimal hindrance." (No!)

"Some talents cause the target or user to suffer strain." (Yes!)

"Some PCs have talents that restore strain to themselves or others" (No!)

It's a small thing, because we all (presumably) know how it works. But I do find it a bit jarring, and it must be confusing for new players when the books themselves are flip-flopping on the mechanic.

Anyway, mini-rant off!

Eh? Not sure where you are going with this. Strain comes and goes. Either through talents or the roll of the dice. It is a resource that must be managed like wounds. Too much and you are out of the fight. I'm not seeing anything that leads me to believe otherwise in that section or that the authors do not understand. I just found it to be expanding on the ebbs and flows of Strain and how to interpret in other situations or in alternative ways.

It's the (erroneous) idea that strain (and wounds) are like 'hit points' that get chipped away.

I had no idea there were anti-semantics on here...

Ohhhhh... you mean they confuse "strain" with "strain threshold"?

Yeah, that "subtract from total" versus "add them up" can throw one for a loop.

It's the (erroneous) idea that strain (and wounds) are like 'hit points' that get chipped away.

Ah I see where you are going with this. Didn't even register with me.

Just a little Saturday morning mini-rant here.

SHOUT IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOPS!

Yep, I usually have at least one player who wants to try to "count strain down from the threshold", and I have to insist that they do it the way the game was designed, counting up from zero.

It's too bad the editing process didn't catch those mentions which use the wrong semantics for it!

The D&D hit point mechanic is so ingrained in the gamer mindset that a lot of experienced players still do it in this system, even after it's been explained that you count up from zero.

Writers have deadlines and personal lives, and depending on what other systems they are working on as freelancers, it's possible for them to get confused. I follow a far number of freelance game designers on Twitter and Facebook, and I've seen comments by some of them that were working on multiple projects for different systems that they mistakenly wrote stuff for one system using mechanics that only fit with the other system they were writing for. Sometimes it gets caught, sometimes it doesn't.

At the end of the day, as long as the GM and players are intelligent enough to know that it "counts up" in this system, is it really that big of a deal that an occasional writer (quite possibly one that's new to the system in general) goes with the industry standard of "counts down"?

If anything, it seems the bigger the company, the less-than-perfect the editing work is. WotC and Paizo books are plagued with editing errors, and FFG is right up there in terms of being a "big game company," which means only so many resources for the editing duties all of their products, which is far broader than the Star Wars RPGs. It's simply a nature of the business, and not something that's deliberate on the part of those companies. Could also be that the person doing the editing is the one making the changes in some instances, as what happened with some of the material I wrote for WotC's Galaxy at War supplement and to other author's material in that product line, with long-time freelance veteran Sterling Hershey once remarking "I can't help you understand that, because that's not what I wrote at all" in regards to some of the WotC material he'd written for them (don't recall what the exact item was, but it was different enough that Sterling didn't recognize it as his work). And since nobody edits the editors, if they change something, then that's what tends to go to print.

long-time freelance veteran Sterling Hershey once remarking "I can't help you understand that, because that's not what I wrote at all"

Whoah, that's crazy!

But as I said, it was just a little mini-rant. And if an editor or two happens to catch this thread and has a little 'oops' moment, well, then, that's one more box ticked.

It's the (erroneous) idea that strain (and wounds) are like 'hit points' that get chipped away.

This concept plagued my first campaign until we finally got things straight. Good thing to go over for first time players.