Official Errata thread
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So long as the intent is clear, the "Oxford comma" isn't strictly necessary in my opinion, but then, I'm an opponent of some proscriptive grammar (as well as the supposedly "neuter" masculine pronoun; I did my best to squash every single one of Michael's uses of "he" in a neuter sense, with prejudice).
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Totally agree on "he"—it's always better to write around it if you can. Seems like there was one instance in the core book, and I didn't flag it in an attempt to limit the number of notes.
I understand what you mean about excessively proscriptive grammar, but I'm a big fan of consistency, and the Oxford solves far more clarity issues than it introduces. I think it's worth using pretty much all the time, but it's not my book.
And I've hijacked the errata thread to have a discussion on the minutia of copy editing. I'll try to make my next post back on topic.
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At the moment, nobody else is saying anything, so I'm not going to complain. ;) Nothing wrong with having a friendly, informed discussion about the craft of writing, be it fiction, non-fiction or even instruction manuals. (See what I didn't do there?)The following is simply an opinion, stated as clearly as possible.I'm a big fan of a contextual, common-sense approach to the "Oxford comma" issue. That's not to say that people who prefer it have no common sense, but a lot of the supposed confusion that might arise from not using it comes from a somewhat ridiculous and overly literal interpretation of the end result.To illustrate what I mean, consider the following example: "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin." In order for this to be confusing, one has to allow for the ridiculous possibility that John F. Kennedy and Joseph Stalin were strippers. Common sense clearly dictates that this is a list of three entities: a group of strippers, a former American president and a former Soviet dictator. If one truly wished to imply that Kennedy and Stalin were, in fact, strippers, the sentence could easily be written with a colon in place of the comma after the word "strippers". "We invited the strippers: JFK and Stalin." No ambiguity there.Furthermore, a list used as a title leaves even less room for possible confusion unless one actively seeks a confused interpretation. "Warrior, Rogue & Mage" (or, for that matter, "Resolute, Adventurer & Genius") is as difficult to misinterpret as "Emerson, Lake & Palmer". The lack of an Oxford comma in the list does nothing to harm the reader's comprehension. If pressed, I would go so far as to opine that the final "and" (or ampersand) can be understood to include the omitted comma.Obviously, many people who get paid more to have opinions about this sort of thing disagree with me, but I'm fine with that.
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And here's the file with Maelstin's notes:
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I'm a little late to the party, but Maelstin's changes seem a little silly.For example, in Attack Roll, the idea use of "either Melee or" is kind of unneeded, since not all close attacks will be melee (guns, for example, or throwing knives).Plus the general nit-picky feel of "Do it my way because your way is wrong" is a bit to strong for me to be feel comfortable with the changes.
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You're right, they are nit-picky.
What's missing here is the introductory email I sent Stargazer saying exactly that. Every note is optional, but every one is also worth considering. Borders on tables, the Oxford comma, problematic font, intrusive background image—none of these notes are mandatory.
However, years of technical writing and editing, formal education, professional development, and reading the research inform each of these suggestions.
Delivering easily scanable text and quickly parseable information to the reader while simultaneously reducing extraneous cognitive load is the key to truly functional reference material. Decisions that are made contrary to this goal in pursuit of another (often stylistic) should each be made deliberately and intentionally.
So yeah—they're nitpicky. They reach this level of nitpickiness because the source material is already well-written and well-edited.
They're notes for consideration, not corrections.
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One thing that I should mention is that I did everything I could to preserve Michael's original English text as much as possible for WR&M. If you compare the text of WR&M to the text of Resolute, Adventurer & Genius you can see just how much I could have tweaked and/or rewritten things. I wanted to make sure to preserve Michael's "voice", since he was the author, and I felt there was a beautiful simplicity in what he wrote.
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As mentioned in my Fantasy Lite discussion, I may have hit pay-dirt with the escalating defenses issue. Aside from having to use Armor as HP and Precise Hit to balance it out, that is.
Taking starting Defense down to 2+(Rogue+Warrior/2) as well as reducing the Armors to a +5 maximum Defense bonus. I just reduced it down to 5 armor variants and dropped the tower shield, but you could keep other variants and just grant different abilities aside from Defense, if really necessary.
With this method, full averages of equipment and attributes bring Defense and Attack to 10 a-piece. A maximum Defense(with plate, heavy shield and maxed Rogue) would be hit on a 6 by a properly-skilled combatant or by lesser attackers with the luck of exploding attacks.
At least from a numbers stand-point, it balanced out well. I also hope this is the correct place for this..
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