So many errors and contradictions

[Grimmshade]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Sorry they lost you. Rather than force you to go through any kind of refund process, I'll buy it off you eBay style, shipping included. What's a good price?

I really appreciate the offer!

I've already been contacted by Chaosium about the refund however. If it doesn't work out I'll definitely sell it to you.

[Grimmshade]

2 hours ago, goldenwheeldancer said:

You mean their stance of immediately setting up a thread where clarification questions can be asked in order to create an official errata/clarification document? That sounds pretty good to me. There don't seem to be all that many people THAT bothered by the bugs - especially with Chaosium being willing to sort them out.

Nope, I mean their stance of saying nothing is wrong because they have sold a lot of copies and basically calling me and the others grumbling whiners. 

I appreciate that an official answers thread was opened. It's too bad that disrespect to us consumers had to come first. Answers were really all I was looking for in this thread.

[goldenwheeldancer]

1 hour ago, Grimmshade said:

Nope, I mean their stance of saying nothing is wrong because they have sold a lot of copies and basically calling me and the others grumbling whiners. 

I appreciate that an official answers thread was opened. It's too bad that disrespect to us consumers had to come first. Answers were really all I was looking for in this thread.

I hear you. The writer himself was responding to some of your questions so that's probably why there was defensiveness! Once the non-writer Chaosium'ites got into the thread a solution was set up pretty quickly! Anyway, I Enjoyed some of your threads here and it sounded like you were setting up some wild rides so sorry to see you go!

Edited October 10, 2018 by goldenwheeldancer

[Grimmshade]

55 minutes ago, goldenwheeldancer said:

I hear you. The writer himself was responding to some of your questions so that's probably why there was defensiveness! Once the non-writer Chaosium'ites got into the thread a solution was set up pretty quickly! Anyway, I Enjoyed some of your threads here and it sounded like you were setting up some wild rides so sorry to see you go!

Thanks man. It's actually a great community here. Many happy adventures!

[M Helsdon]

8 hours ago, creativehum said:

As for as I can tell the people posting here that are saying there is confusion in the rules are not talking about typos. We are talking about the text as a technical manual to clearly explain concepts and procedures.

And some of the reviewers were commenting on mechanics (my last RQ game was back in 1986 so I didn't feel competent to do this), though my comments were about nine pages long....

[Mechashef]

For such a small book, my copy of RQ2 had a surprising amount of corrections.

 

RQG is much larger. I wonder which will end up having more corrections per 1000 words.

[BWP]

14 hours ago, jongjom said:

As one of those who received a 'Special thanks' for trying to error spot typos and inconsistencies I would be happy to step aside from the numerous hours of volunteer work (dropping everything else at the time) and allow someone better to take over. Seriously. It takes some fun out of it when you have to read a brand spanking-new OMG RQ document set in Glorantha thinking 'what's wrong here', rather than 'this is fun' (which it is) and making the 'obvious' correction when needed (but jeesh, how could have they missed *that* error!). 

And?  If you volunteer for the job, you do the job.  I have also spent many, many hours of proof-reading for games (mostly Advanced Squad Leader, a rules document not known for its light and breezy style).  You don't do it because you want praise or rewards, but because you want the product to be as good as it can be.  Please know that I'm not one of those individuals who idly speculate about a task that I have no familiarity with and that I'm too lazy to ever do myself.

14 hours ago, jongjom said:

However, whoever does the editing I suspect the same number of glitches will get through.

No, that is simply not true.  Perfection (in proofing) is difficult to attain, but (a) it's not absolutely unattainable, and (b) it is certainly possible to do much better than the RQG products have so far demonstrated.  Much better.  The truth is in the evidence: the proofing of the RQG products has (so far) been crap; other similarly complex documents in the gaming environment are (usually) done much better; therefore the RQG products can be done better.  It requires some skill in reading, some understanding of how the game actually works, and plenty of dedication, plus of course the desire to do it.  Lots of people have some of these qualifications, relatively few have all of them; you make up for it by making sure you attract as many people as you can manage.  I haven't participated in the RQG proofing process, so I can't identify specifically where the problem is, but there very clearly is a problem, and Chaosium needs to fix it.

[BWP]

16 hours ago, Jeff said:

Here is the current Rune Fix:

https://www.chaosium.com/blogrune-fixes-1-clarifications-and-play-examples/

That's lovely, thank you.  Why is this not in a downloadable format, and why isn't there a link to it from the RQG product page?  (I understand that this isn't necessarily Jeff's job, but someone at Chaosium needs to make sure it's done.)

[Aprewett]

Oh boy, 4 pages. As I am in a similar position to the thread starter and had hopes to start soon, maybe it will have to wait. I am time poor and really dont want to go through the process of writting all through my book when some errata doc comes out - again. Heroquest was the same. Dont mean to whine, just cant seem to find that open door to get into Glorantha, and the gaming cue is backing up. I wonder how refunds work, do I pay the freight? I know its hopefully going to be fixed, just really not sure I could be bothered. I think the suggestion of putting the game in the hands of new players is great. Anyway coming in at the end of a dead thread.

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, Aprewett said:

As I am in a similar position to the thread starter and had hopes to start soon, maybe it will have to wait.

I really do think that the problems, in terms of actually running a game are easily over-stated. Yes, there are a few confusing and contradicting places in the rules, and yes that is disappointing, but to be honest they don't come up very often, and if you just make a call like "the chart on page 199 is always correct", that will probably do. Or wait for the next PDF iteration and see if that helps.

[Rick Meints]

1 hour ago, Aprewett said:

Oh boy, 4 pages. As I am in a similar position to the thread starter and had hopes to start soon, maybe it will have to wait. I am time poor and really dont want to go through the process of writting all through my book when some errata doc comes out - again. Heroquest was the same. Dont mean to whine, just cant seem to find that open door to get into Glorantha, and the gaming cue is backing up. I wonder how refunds work, do I pay the freight? I know its hopefully going to be fixed, just really not sure I could be bothered. I think the suggestion of putting the game in the hands of new players is great. Anyway coming in at the end of a dead thread.

Most of these 4 pages are more about how "significant" the changes are, or other comments. This 4 page thread is not 4 pages of reported errors, errata, or typos.

[MOB]

 

1 hour ago, Aprewett said:

Oh boy, 4 pages. 

As Rick has said, this thread is not four pages of errors and contradictions. It is mostly people debating the magnitude of the issue. Many have pointed out that the areas needing additional clarification don't really affect the running of the game. 

Jason's RuneQuest Core Rules Questions thread can address these concerns, and there is also an updated PDF on the way.

4 minutes ago, Anunnaki said:

The game as published is fine (more than fine), IMO. The number of problems are few ... certainly WAY fewer than many other games I've had the pleasure of owning. Once books are firmly settled in people's hands and threads like the one Jason D opened up start to fill up with questions, and when those questions are answered, things will follow the natural course of new RPG releases: we play the game, we have questions, we ask, we discuss, they get resolved, errata and typos are found and squashed, PDFs are updated, and in time, we will probably see a new edition (at least updated print books).

The key issues will be compiled into Rune Fixes. Maybe one day that "Clarifications" document will be over 20K words like DnD 5e's is. Or the 29K words of clarifications and errata for Advanced Squad Leader, for that😉. But I doubt it.

[creativehum]

23 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

Most of these 4 pages are more about how "significant" the changes are, or other comments. This 4 page thread is not 4 pages of reported errors, errata, or typos.

Rick, I can't claim I know exactly what you meant by your statement, but given your phrasing I feel truly compelled to reply in case the word "changes" is really the word you meant to use. If I am mistunderstsnding your point I apologize ahead of time.

Most  of the comments here are not about the changes are (I'm assuming you mean changes from previous editions?) 

Some of the people commenting (including myself) are encountering RQ for the first time. We have no reference to earlier editions so anything that is changed is not what is at stake.

What we are talking about (even the people who have played RQ before) is how the rule book, as it stands on its own, works or does not work as a clear manual for explaining the rules of play.

I have spent time flipping back and forth through the PDF trying to find a consistent reading on various rules on:

a) how you hit things 

b) how you parry things

c) how you damage things you've hit

that has nothing to do with changes. That is me trying to figure out this particular text.

Further, again, this has nothing to do with typos, errors, or errata. All three of those things depend on a baseline of assumed, correct play the the text contradicts. What these comment are about is ambiguity or lack of clarity. For a lot of us we can't say "Oh, here is an error in the rules." Because we don't know what the rule is supposed to be. We're looking at text that sometimes (not all the time, sometimes) is contradictory, ambiguous or unclear. I've started and participated in several threads over the last few months looking for clarification not because I know something is "wrong" but because I can't make out what is supposed to be right.

This distinction is vital. 

Edited October 11, 2018 by creativehum

[Rick Meints]

Let me rephrase:

Most of these 4 pages are not about what actually needs to be changed in the book so people are not confused, be it from contradictions, ambiguity, or unclear words/phrases.

Most of the discussion here has been on the magnitude of that ambiguity, the impact of the contradictions, and similar. These 4 pages are not "here's the list of ten sentences you might want to change, or five paragraphs to reword, or can somebody change X or Y so they do not contradict." 

We are not asking people for the "correct" answer(s). As "creativehum" said, if you don't know what the rule is supposed to be, you can't know how to fix it. That said, you can say "I don't know whether X on page A or Y on page B is correct". You can say "the rule for X is ambiguous to me".

Those are things we can change, as they are identified. I see all such requests as valid, genuine, and worthy of consideration for changing. That is why there's the "ask Jason" thread. That's some of the purpose behind the tribal edit thread we are looking at reopening. We had little or no expectation (said with all respect to everyone's intelligence and experience) that for many or most things that need to be changed you would/could/should tell us how to change it.  Please just tell us as specifically as you are able what is contradictory, ambiguous, or unclear so we can potentially change it. That is far more important than debating the magnitude of the issue of how much we need to change in the rules to make them as awesome as we realistically can.

[creativehum]

Which is why I'm very happy Jason opened that thread. Many of those points in that thread had been scattered across many other threads for weeks now. 

I know this thread has been frustrating for some people. But for now I consider it a good thing, because it got the new thread started.

[MOB]

Moderator Hat: As the original poster has demanded his money back, and Jason has set up a dedicated thread to deal directly with any rules clarifications, this thread is being closed to further comment. The title is misleading people into thinking this is a lengthy multi-page thread listing errors and contradictions in the RuneQuest rules, which it is not.