Hi board,

I am usually not a nitpicker when it comes to typoes. But when I got my copy of "EotI" yesterday I almost immediately flipped back to the "Credits" section to make sure there was an entry under "Editing and Proofreading".

It's been a while since I've seen so many errors in one paragraph of a professionally produced book.

Page 8:

Line 4

"the war to control the Calyx Expanse would have taken to complete"

--> probably missing: "much longer".

Line 5

"might not have completed" --> this is only a matter of taste, but repeating verbs displeases the sense of aesthetics of every Eldar Lord.

Line 7-8

"Severus's greed his greatest limitation"

--> His greed even swallowed "was" or "proved to be" or whatever verb was omitted.

Line 15

"as the descendants of [...] Severus descended into"

--> this might have been done on purpose, but sounds terribly awkward. IMO.

Line 16-17

"Without their Warrant of Trade or the capacity to claim new domains and titles."

--> The capital letter and the fullstop indicate this is supposed to be a complete sentence, the lack of a verb speaks against it. Or it is a continuation of the preceeding sentence, but then why the fullstop before "Without"?

Five mistakes in an introducing paragraph of 17 lines. Not bad!

Why am I being such an ass? Because it makes for a terrible first impression and makes me look out for more mistakes. So please, at least proofread the first paragraphs! And I am not even a "native reader".

Or am I the only one who is bothered by this?

This I can live with.

It's the mistakes in the actual rules that would almost literally make this game unplayable as written without knowledge of previous 40K RPG stuff that are the big problem.

EDIT: except what you are identifying there in 16-17 is actually a common English rhetorical figure and not a mistake.

I personally hate faulty grammar, spelling errors and so on (although I am by no means a linguist).

I agree with Bogi_khaosa, though; by far the worst offence when it comes to proofreading in FFG products (at least in the WH40kRP line, which is practically the only FFG line I am personally fully familiar with) is rules that are improperly worded, written ambiguously, lack appropriate capitalization(s) or otherwise simply don't work.

Spelling errors and grammatical errors in fluff text is forgiveable. The vast amount of pure errors in the actual rules aren't. And boy is there a lot of them in the WH40kRP line.

The problem being all the worse seeing as how FFG has practically given up on Erratas, nor update the Erratas even when giving out corrections via the Rules Questions system.

Line 16-17, however, is perfectly fine. It just sounds awkward as hell due to the preceding line on "descended into" sounding really, really bad. Why write "descended" instead of "degenerated"? "Descended into" sounds like they were walking into a crypt or something. I had to read it three times to grasp what they meant, my head kept making a full stop and going "wait, what, descended into what?".

FFG really needs to work on their proofreading overall, with people willing to point out not just grammatical flaws, but actually challenging the wordings of fluff text as well as rules.

Of course, in Enemies of the Imperium, there's entire sections I'd ask them if they were high while they were writing them, but that's another issue entirely. Most of the new Talents seem to exists just because they needed more Talents, gameifying standard skill actions and roleplaying narrative, but fair enough.

Typos drive me crazy. My favorite one is in the Deathwatch adventure Ark of Lost Souls . It's set on a space hulk named 'Ultima Thule', and they decided to italicize the name (like they do with ships). Apparently they did a 'search and replace'- but with a couple of letters un-italicized. Hence, on page after page the 'hulk is called the Ul tima Thule ...

We've had endless problems in BC when "mango adhesives" where discovered on the bottom of melta bombs, our heretic minions just keep licking them until theres none left.

"God's be damned! My Minions have again licked the mango adhesive from my Melta-bombs."

-heard just before Khornate Champion was run over by Leman Russ Battle Tank.

We've had endless problems in BC when "mango adhesives" where discovered on the bottom of melta bombs, our heretic minions just keep licking them until theres none left.

Yeah, you'd think they would use an unpleasant flavor...

This really winds me up as well. The odd typo I'm prepared to ignore, but in nearly every sourcebook I've bought I've seen words downright missing, half-finished sentances, malapropisms ... obviously nobody so much as gives material a read-through before publishing

Completely agree. I want my RPG books to be well-written and thoroughly edited. Too many errors make me think it was a rush job and that annoys me.

I remember the Confrontation wargame books: they were so poorly written and translated (from French to English) that many people I know gave up on the game and I daresay in the end this is what offed Rackham.

This being wildly off-topic but still.

Completely agree. I want my RPG books to be well-written and thoroughly edited. Too many errors make me think it was a rush job and that annoys me.

I remember the Confrontation wargame books: they were so poorly written and translated (from French to English) that many people I know gave up on the game and I daresay in the end this is what offed Rackham.

This being wildly off-topic but still.

+1

It's especially annoying to me because you say "rush job", but I remember how long we all waited. The only rush might've been on the diabetes from all the pop I drank to keep an awake eye on the store, so I could order it; miss Preorder button. It DOES read like a rush job, yes, but it took longer than building the first Death Star, it sometimes felt, so proofreading seems like something there should've been time for.

I get worrying about grammar errors and spelling problems, but I'm more concerned about the games engine than I am about general gramattical mistakes or spelling. To be honest, Mango Adhesives amuse me.

I'd chuckle, too, but between blatant typos and blatant copy-pasting that imports its typos (they weren't even noticed then), I feel a bit irritated, like the writers don't care. This is the 5th iteration of some of these things, and they still have some of the same typos that Dark Heresy made me go "oh, well that must've just been a simple little mistake."

On the plus side, it seems that it could easily be a fun system, my own whinings on other threads not withstanding. I'm more of a "phenomenal cosmic power!" player, so RT or DW might be more my speed, but there are numerous things I like, and might like to try, at some point, in Only War. One of my first questions is usually "can I play a decent Psyker?" and OW seems, from my reading, to allow for such a thing.