@Nekros

I simply fail to see how having a small market is an excuse for providing a low quality product.

In exactly the way I explained: Small market -> less units sold -> lower overall profit -> lesser possibility to indulge in one-time costs.

There are RPG's available for free that have fewer typos than BC.

And I take it those for-free RPGs aim to keep a company in business? Or are they produced in someone's free time, meaning he can be as un-economical as he wants with them?

Cifer said:

First of all, a small market does not equate to less overall profit. The market for luxury yachts is small too but you don't see dingy tugboats or catamarans at private marinas. RPG's, although a small market, are not exactly cheap. 60 dollars is a lot of money to ask for a book, especially one that is riddled with typos. When you look at the overall cost of core books, adventure books, and supplements for each of FFG's role playing lines, the prices quickly add up.

Second of all, quality control is not a one time cost nor is it an indulgence. Ensuring that your product is fit to sell does not occur at a single point in production.

 First of all, a small market does not equate to less overall profit. The market for luxury yachts is small too but you don't see dingy tugboats or catamarans at private marinas. RPG's, although a small market, are not exactly cheap. 60 dollars is a lot of money to ask for a book, especially one that is riddled with typos. When you look at the overall cost of core books, adventure books, and supplements for each of FFG's role playing lines, the prices quickly add up.

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.

Second of all, quality control is not a one time cost nor is it an indulgence. Ensuring that your product is fit to sell does not occur at a single point in production.

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.

The enormous quantity of typos and non-existent proof-reading is precisely why I will never buy another collector's edition of any of these books. I made the mistake of buying the Rogue Trader book and in massive letters on practically the first real page of the book I was greeted with "It is the 41st Millenium" - gah! A massively expensive, beautifully bound book on manuscript-quality paper, spoiled by ridiculous errors in ridiculous quantity. It's inexcusable, and the people who make excuses for it are the whole reason FFG can continue to get away with it.

 @andyboy

So... where's the mistake on that page?

/facepalm

Millennium has two "n"s...

Thinking about it, it really seems to me that the writers have turned off their spellcheckers - probably because there are so many names that would be flagged as spelling mistakes. The correct way to deal with this, of course, would be to add the names to one's word processing dictionary, but I really think the writers have just turned spellcheck off - otherwise how can you explain the same character's name being spelled differently in the same paragraph?

And then, in some cases, the proofreaders seem to have their spell checkers on - hence "mango" instead of "magna".

Magna is in my Word dictionary.

I agree with Nekros22: quality should be assured at each stage of production, which means that all the playtesters, readers, "proofreaders" and so on have a responsibility to catch errors as they're going through the text. I think cifer misunderstood that.

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

 [i]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.[/i]

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.

 [i]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.[/i]

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.