Black Crusade was my lesson never to buy the first print of anything... quite sad really.

angryboy2k said:

Incorrect - it's not the playtesters responsibility to check spelling errors, it's our job to try to assist the devs and writers in making rules that make sense and aren't broken.

So no, it is yourself that misunderstand the actual duties and responsibilities of each person/position in the production process. If I had to try to spot errors and stuff (in a version of the book that's a long way from being published), I would have no time to actually test the rules in the book.

@Cifer

And yet they're still something a dedicated lower-middle-class guy can afford. Unlike, say, a yacht. I was referring to the rather more similar book market. Take any bestseller - it may cost a third of the price, but it's going to be bought by a hundred times as many people. And those 33 times more profit, they're the ones that hire you a proofreader.

The bestselling books in the "similar" book market are very rarely written by an entire team of people. You are correct that the cost of writing, say, a novel is far less expensive than writing an RPG sourcebook. There are simply fewer people on the payroll, but that's besides the point. I intended to point out that the writing team behind Black Crusade should have, at some point before the book went to print, noticed the glaringly obvious errors in the book. These were not errors that an experienced proofreader needed to be hired to pick out; us "dedicated lower-middle class guys" spotted them pretty easily.

Of course it's a one-time cost: It has to be paid once for the entire product run, it does not scale per unit sold - unless you pay someone to take a bottle of tipp-ex to each single copy.

You misunderstand me. Of course editing the book after its gone to print is futile, that's not my point. My point is that Black Crusade was not ready to print no matter how you look at it. I concede that editing is a one time cost, though.

Are you involved in any PbP games? My local group quit on me.

Nekros22 said:

It would be more correct to say that some people out of the thousands that bought the game have spotted it, where one of the perhaps half-dozen proofreaders didn't.

It has nothing to do with the amount of skill a person reading it has, and everything to do with the larger pool of people available to notice it.

That isn't to say that errors shouldn't be spotted before going to print, or that the proofreaders for FFG products seem to be a bit naff, but there are several magnitudes more people to spot the errors in the consumer community, compared to the actual proofreaders.

To those defending the typos and mistakes found in FFG RPG products…

How many typos/grammar mistakes were found in 1st or 2nd Edition AD&D products? Look through 400+ pages of them if needs be.

I can see glaring mistakes in DH adventure supplements, even with a casual first time reading, that indicate a spell checking program was used, particularly when the word Test is only the beginning part of an entire word in the middle of a sentence but begins with a T, not a t. But nothing can compare to good old fashioned real people checking spelling and grammar. No mistakes like that in my 1st Ed DMG, or my 1st Ed Harnmaster rules. How many errata were released for 2nd Edition AD&D? None? In fact, I have nearly every supplement produced for Harnmaster (a widely criticized game, mainly for its realism banality) and I can't even find a spot on any of their seven highly-detailed and realistically-rendered maps where the same name for a city/village was used twice, yet the Calixis Sector map (one map, done in comparitively simple graphics) in the DH Core Rules has such mistakes?

I have offered my editing/proofreading services to FFG, free of charge, but they never responded. Won't stop me buying everything they produce for 40k RPGs.

I've worked professionally as an editor. So let me preface this with that.

It looks to me like each author is responsible for his own work, and then its typeset, not edited from there. I'd hazard a guess that some authors use spellcheck, some don't, some go over their sections with a fine tooth comb, and some copy paste their stuff as fast as humanly possible from their other copy in Rogue Trader.

Human nature, basically. The books need an overall editor, who is qualified and familiar with the material, so they can check stuff against both context (mangos/magna) and Rogue Trader/Deathwatch rules being copy pasted into Black Crusade. You can get freelance editors in the same way you can get freelance authors, and pay by the word or page for a project only.

It would make the line more professional, thats for sure.

Back in 3rd Edition, WoTC did not have editors doing their books. A reviewer on ENworld used to go through every book and post in all the errors in both stat blocks and spelling/grammar/structure as a postscript to his reviews. WoTC hired an editor after the 7th or 8th review. (I am fairly sure that reviewer himself edited several of the books in 3.5, but I'm old and my memory sucks these days)

So yeah. My $0.02.

I don't see the problem in asking for fewer typo's, I don't think that FFG give away forum points to people who stick up for them. Though maybe they do and that's what I'm doing wrong. I don't know why anyone would leap to the defence of the kind of mistakes that have riddled these books otherwise. I enjoy reading them and using them but nothing breaks immersion and that feeling of satisfaction on buying one when reading that my melta bombs use mango glue and that it's the 41st Millenium…

DW

…that said, in the Warp Mango-glue Melta Bombs could well exist. But in that case there should be rules for them not being able to survive outside of the Empyrean. Hmm, I wouldn't put it past the foul forces of Chaos to use fresh fruit and veg actually, seems particularly diabolical now I think about it.

DW

MILLANDSON said:

THis is the most extraordinary thing I've ever read.

It is in no way anyone else's responsibility but FFG's, through their editors, writers, proofreaders and/or playtesters as appropriate, to spot and fix mistakes prior to publish.

We are not paying them to do their job for them (though certainly that's what they seem to think now). I find your comments utterly unbelievable. There seems to be a genuine notion that it's up to us to fix their mistakes after buying the books.

That could not be more wrong.

signoftheserpent said:

For reference, you're not paying the playtesters at all. All the playtesters are volunteers, doing the playtesting in their free time.

The people playtesting Only War have had to pay FFG to do the job for them, which is why I consider that unacceptable.

Frankly I don't care how it gets done: what i care about is that FFG publishes books that are not full of mistakes. It has nothing to do with low print runs or that gaming books don't sell like bestsellers. That's irrelevant. Either you can afford to put out quality product or you can't. If it's the latter then don't bother publishing. Anything else is just exploiting the customer.

DarkWinds said:

My feeling exactly. I find it so jarring that I stop reading for a couple of seconds as my brain attempts to process the nonsense. I've played many different RPGs over the years & refuse to buy into the notion that I have to accept these errors as a part of the RPG industry. There have been plenty of lines from various companies where errors are rare to non-existent. I write a good amount of material for my job, although I'm not a writer. When I'm done, I don't just trust spell check. I READ it. Every line, sometimes twice. Occationally I will ask a co-worker to read something over just to be sure. Anything I write is a reflection on me & submitting a document infested with typos or other errors is simply not an option. It boggles my mind that a professional writer, someone who is paid to write, would hold themselves to any less of a standard. That being said, the writers put out some great stuff & I don't really see them as the ones who are really responsible for the problem. Enter the paid proofreaders. Their job is to find & correct these mistakes. I don't see how they are fulfilling their job duties if we still have all of these problems. I find it frustrating that FFG doesn't seem to care about this issue, when they put so much obvious effort into the design aspects of their books.

Maybe the problem is not in the software they're using, or amount of spellcheck.

Throughout school I was (and probably you too) were taught that you grow "blind" to your own written text, and best way to check it is to have someone else read it. Maybe FFG did not bother to switch the person to proofread?

Even as I wrote this I am blind to it's grammatical and spelling mistakes, of which someone else might notice instantly. I usually edit my posts multiple times as I look at them in the boards.

signoftheserpent said:

I agree that typos, etc., can be quite jarring to the reader but… are you serious? You would rather have no 40k RPG products at all than put up with a few typos? For full-color hardbacks, the FFG books are very reasonably priced. While I would love it if they were free of error, I still find the books to be a quality product; I certainly don't feel "exploited."

When you notice a continuity error in a film that you paid to see and otherwise enjoyed, do you feel that you have been exploited?

PnPgamer said:

That's very true. If you look at the credits on the first page of one of the books, you will see proffreaders credited in addition to the writing staff. With the volume of errors that get past them, I would be taking a serious look at their performance if I were their boss.

or an additude check. It might be also one of those "I am doing this crappy job just to get a few bucks" -cases.

Yeah play-testers aren't asked to (or meant to) find spelling and gramatical errors (unless those errors would impact the rules they're testing, of course). If they notice something while they're testing then they can point it out (I always do - but then again I'm obsessive about these sorts of things!). Proof-reading is a completely different job to play-testing though. Play testing is fun. You get to play games and try out new rules. Proof-reading on the other hand is time consuming and gruelling, and you always always find something you missed after the book has come out. And that’s really annoying!

And Alpha Chaos is 100% correct. "Can't see the woods for the trees" syndrome happens to everyone. You always read what you think you've written, not what's actually there. 99 times out of 100 what you're reading is what you've written, but you'll always miss something. It's impossible not to. You can do things to mitigate it - changing the format is the simplest way (stop looking at a raw word document, change the font and the spacing, and turn it into a PDF - suddenly it looks different and you'll spot things you didn't see before), but you'll never catch every mistake you make.

Still, best type to date remains the critical chart result with the Toughness Test that doesn't do anything (pass or fail). I love that result. Glad it was amended in the errata.

BYE

Lecram said:

Did any of you know that the human brain fixes typos as you're raeding them? It's why (most people) dont just suddenly find their trian of thought grinds to a hlat when they come accross a mis-typed word, the brain actually makes you think you read it correctly, and it is not uncommon for you to not even notice the mistake at all. The trcik works best when it's not the first or last letter of the word that's been flubbed. Basically your brain extrapolates what the word should be, based on the sentence you've presiously read.

Hope that mistake-filled little praragraph helped illustrate my point. (it being about typos, the ones I put in might have been more noticable as well)

Besides, I've been gaming for 13 years, I remember the spelling in some of WW's books.

I've been gaming for 34 years, and started on Gary Gygax's tomes. Mistakes in those were few, and far far between. The prose was odd, and stilted, but it was mistake free, for the most part.

Gaming companies today just skimp on proofreaders and editors, and use unqualified interns, wives, girlfriends and in some cases, a pray for the best approach. Its unprofessional, but the gaming public largely gives them a pass (except for WoTC who got destroyed for their error riddled books in the 3rd edition days, and mostly cleaned up their act) so they choose to spend resources elsewhere. (or pocket extra profits, not sure)

H.B.M.C. said:

That's a neat trick that I'll have to try. Thank you sir!