I shall be downloading this. I have many friends with a napoleonic bent...

Oh, and you cna embed fonts in Word docs by switching a certain option on, BTW.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Apostrophe missing from 'Let's' (truncative) and an apostrophe where it's not needed in 'its' (possessive) in the Nosey Comments box on page 14. I've not had chance to read the whole thing yet, but those two minor slip-ups jumped out at me as I had a scan through. I'll let you know if I spot any more.

Ash

Ah yes. I remember that.

Thanks for the heads-up Ash. I suspect there may be one or two more hidden in the text. ('suspect' ... as in damned well know there will be). Rather than clog this board up with every comma and semi-colon that I have missed can you mail them to vodkashok@gmail.com?

And thanks again. My eye simply does not pick this stuff up!

Neil

Great stuff.

I've started going through the revised version.If I spot any errors on the way through, I'll just mark them up on the document and email the final thing to you. I should also have a playtest session on the go within the next couple of weeks.

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

It's a well-known phenomenon. Writers are notoriously blind to their own mistakes. Everyone gets it. One trick that sometimes helps, if you don't have time to get someone else to proofread, is to start at the end of the document and read it backwards. This stops your brain from predicting what words should be in the sentence and seeing them there automatically, so you can concentrate on what is really there.

Ash

Or put it in a drawer for a few months and then come back to it fresh.

But by and large, self-editing is rarely a good idea. Instead hire someone who does it for a living ... like me or Gregor :-D

...get some goodwill editing from people on here. I strongly feel that people should be paid for their efforts, but that can be "payment in kind" though. If someone like Malcolm or Ash proofreads your book then it's good to do something of value back.

Another benefit to the mutualism of the site.

Matt's pretty sharp with technical editing too.

My rant about editing != proofreading can wait for another day.

What I would say is that focusing too much on typos for a playtest document can be dangerous. Focus on whether the game is explained well, the concepts introduced in a logical order, and how it works with playing the game.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I agree with Matt entirely. When you go to this kind of public playtesting stage you are basically looking for whether or not the game you produced can be understood by other people in the way you have laid things out. Proper editing can be left till much later, you want to know whether it is playable by a group who has never met you.

I will give it a read through from this point of view and give comments back.

I will attempt to give this a playtest at some stage if my group would be up for it.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

The links above are now defunct but after my previous attempt at thread editing I thought discretion would be the better part of valour and I would simply repost!

http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

is my fledgling (and I mean fledgling) site for D&H and you can download the unedited playtest document at

http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/docs/dhplaytest1.doc
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/docs/dhcharacter.doc

Cheers
Neil

Oh, will you be at DragonMeet, Neil?

I am thinking long and hard about it. I could be - it would mean probably catching a silly early train down from Newcastle or the overnight coach (which is being brought up in the court of human rights as torture) or launching myself upon some friends. Getting back is less of an issue.

I feel its somewhere I would like to be at - I just need to get my shit together to get there. Hence why I have never mentioned it before.

UPDATE: oof! Nearly £100 on the train, regardless of time or class. An overnight coach journey down and an overnight coach journey back as well with National Express but for only £14 return. Hmmmm...

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

So you've looked at the document for about four months now and you think you know it all. And then something comes along and slaps you in the face. Prizes for those that spotted the very silly mistake?

The game works around the small army groups that you see in the literature. One officer, one sergeant, many privates. There's even a nice little table in the GMing advice section that tells you how many of what rank you should have for any given number of players. Lovely.

Which makes the random PROMOTION during Char Gen a little bit pointless doesn't it? Quite probably you can have a group with two Sergeants and no Privates! Or all Corporals! Or a group commanded by a solitary ensign who has somehow managed to stay at that rank for ten years!

Silly.

So there will be a change where an Ace pull will get you something else equally juicy but not a promotion and you can just agree what rank people have when they start the game from the given pool as dictated by the table.

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/