Spellb.ooks????
- Thread starter Conan
- Start date
Jason Durall
Mongoose
Conan said:
My guess is that a find/replace to put a . at the end of lb. (say, for the equipment section), changed "spellbook" as well.
Conan
Mongoose
I love the game mechanics and can see a lot of work was done on them as well as the artistic layout of the book but it is inexcusable for a professional publisher to allow something so obvious to slip by. I can sort of understand table numbers being changed and the corresponding references in the text missed or proper noun being spelled inconsistently but when a major heading is mispelled so obviously it makes one wonder if anyone actually bothered to read the book before they started mass production.
Lion of Aquilonia
Mongoose
Actually this kind of error turns up most often with the use of O.C.R. (optical character recognition) software.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Mongoose
Yeah but seeing how they had access to a workable copy of the manuscript, I doubt OCR had anything to do with it.
Somethimes it's hard to convince people Moongoose publishes decent stuff when crud like that gets by.
Any time I try to say something good, all anybody has the say is "War Machones." How the heck does that get on the spine of your book anyway?!?
Jason Durall
Mongoose
Lion of Aquilonia said:
I'm in the playtest, and can attest to the fact that they do use electronic copies of the documents.
I think I can release that info without violating my NDA.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Mongoose
Jason Durall said:
If you can't it's too late now heh.
rabindranath72
Mongoose
Hello all,
I also am in the playtest, and the only REALLY BAD thing we had the chance to see were the OCR'd sections of Howard's essay "the hyborian age". The other things we corrected all over (and we REALLY paid attention to what we read!)
It seems most of the errors have crept when "cutting and pasting" from the sections of the d20 Standard Reference Document (in many points you read reference to spell levels, when the concept of spell level does not even exist!), and in the assembly of the whole text (for example, the paragraph on the Apheki and the Tlazitlans are completely missing).
The fault then is in editing and proofreading (I think the woman reported in the credits perhaps not even read at the covers, since there is a punctuation error also in the backcover!)
All in all, it is a pity, since we playtesters put a lot of effort in correcting and proofreading all...but with all this, it shows that the book is a work of love, and I am quite proud to be in the playtest group, and having the chance to contribute with some text and some rules.
cheers,
Antonio
I also am in the playtest, and the only REALLY BAD thing we had the chance to see were the OCR'd sections of Howard's essay "the hyborian age". The other things we corrected all over (and we REALLY paid attention to what we read!)
It seems most of the errors have crept when "cutting and pasting" from the sections of the d20 Standard Reference Document (in many points you read reference to spell levels, when the concept of spell level does not even exist!), and in the assembly of the whole text (for example, the paragraph on the Apheki and the Tlazitlans are completely missing).
The fault then is in editing and proofreading (I think the woman reported in the credits perhaps not even read at the covers, since there is a punctuation error also in the backcover!)
All in all, it is a pity, since we playtesters put a lot of effort in correcting and proofreading all...but with all this, it shows that the book is a work of love, and I am quite proud to be in the playtest group, and having the chance to contribute with some text and some rules.
cheers,
Antonio
Conan said:
Errors seem to happen. I remember the Glorantha game, Hero Wars, which had some really bad editing. Lucky enough the new game HeroQuest fixed all problems, and got the perfect shine that the first version lacked. So if Mongoose ever prints a 2:nd edition, how great will that game be if the current one already is very good? =)
Jason Durall
Mongoose
Geezer said:
I know some of the guys at Chaosium, and that was a funky case of the printers getting font substitution wrong, and thus messing up their entire typographical symbol system.
Judge Walker
Mongoose
RPG books as a whole have all (since I started gaming) been dreadfully edited. Let's face it RPG publishing is, and ever will be, the poor cousin of the industry.
Jason Durall said:
That seems reasonable. But it wasn't just the special characters error, the whole book had an unfinished feel about it. Now, HeroQuest, that one is much more the real deal!
Even though the Hero Wars book was problematic, I managed to GM a big campaign which the players liked. And I got them to accept the abstract concepts of the system to. Now with the HeroQuest and great sourcebooks as Dragon Pass, I might consider taking up the campaign again.
It must be deadlines... if you think about it, they must have proofread. But somehow, at the end, they must have done a lot of layout work, or moving of sections, or something and then simply not proofread a second time. Why not? Deadlines.
Frankly, I could have waited an extra month.
OTOH, how many pages are there to the official D&D errata for each book? How many pages to the Spycraft errata? It's true that modern publishing (and not just RPGs) simply does not spend much money on editing.
Frankly, I could have waited an extra month.
OTOH, how many pages are there to the official D&D errata for each book? How many pages to the Spycraft errata? It's true that modern publishing (and not just RPGs) simply does not spend much money on editing.
spydacarnage
Mongoose
In all fairness to the proofreader in question, we don't see the front and back cover...rabindranath72 said:
Samvail1
Mongoose
rabindranath72 said:
I am also a playtester and can agree with absolutely everything that Antonio has said. We tried very hard to iron out any problems. I suspect the errors have occured in the layout process.
As a Graphic Designer and layout artist myself, I was disappointed with some of the decisions made by Mongoose at the layout stage which I think detracts from the overall look of the book. For example, double spacing at the ends of sentences which is both unnecessary and ugly. Variable hanging indents on bullet (dagger) text. Whole line spacing between paragraphs. Text too close to the bottom and top of the page.
All of these are minor gripes and I only mention them because design and layout is what I do for a living. They are just personal 'pet-peeves'. When taken as a whole, the Conan book is a stunning piece of work. I just think that it might have been even better with another proof stage to clear up some of the more obvious mistakes (Spellb.ooks).
Sam
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Mongoose
I don't do layouts for a living or anything, but I happen to like this. Not only is it proper typing, but it make sentences stand out my clearly.
Samvail1
Mongoose
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi said:
Of course, I can't change your preferences and wouldn't attempt to.
This is the reasoning behind my opinion.
In professional printing, there exist what are generally well-designed typefaces with professionally tweaked kerning that should not need the extra space after a period, since the period itself is given a comfortable amount of space for the characters following it to fall in their place.
For the old-fashioned typewriter, however, the text was in a fixed-width typeface (much like Courier on most Windows and Macintosh systems) that did not aid the user in his or her reading of the text. This drove the need to insert that extra space as a clue that the end of a sentence was coming (since people often see ahead of where they are reading, such cues are important).
I have worked on literally thousands of books in my 20 years of experience, and during that time, I have never use double spacing and will never use double spacing on future projects.
Of course, its just my opinion.
Cheers
Sam
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