A Bit of Expansion on My Last Post...

Just yesterday I said that exaggerated criticisms about work sometimes hit a bit hard.

Let me clarify why that is.

Y'see, writing an rpg book often is a pretty big process. Writers write, developers oversee, editors look it over, and usually other writers take a look at your stuff for their chapters as well. In truth, usually only the developers and occasionally the editors are full staff for the various companies with all those other folks being freelancers. Deadlines are less fluid than with many novels and the like, since publishing schedules and legal ownership of the properties involved means that if a writer or artist doesn't make the schedules the company in charge might just get someone else. Contrast this with a novel, where for example no matter how long George R.R. Martin takes to write his next Song of Ice and Fire novel they're still going to let him write it.

So there's a lot of places for things to go wrong, and a lot of places for them to go right. Pressure is often high and as I said before, money is not great. And a lot of people involved. Thus when I say a book is up for an award it's more common and honestly proper to say "a book I worked on/wrote on/edited on/whatever is up for an award" instead of "I have a book up for an award!" which is what a novelist might say.

Why does this matter? Usually it doesn't. People do their jobs, work on the books because they enjoy their work, and all is fine.

Except for two things. Mistakes and the internet. Or maybe the nature of fandom.

Because when a mistake happens on a book it's not just that the writer made it. Or the artist goofed. Or the developer didn't notice it. Or that the editor missed it. Or even that the other artists and writers who looked it over didn't catch it. It's all of that.

Now we can argue that mistakes should happen less often with that system than another book because of all the eyes which pass over it. I don't want to comment on that especially since before going to press at larger (that is to say non-rpg) companies many other books are honestly read by far more people than that.

The problem , or maybe annoyance if you will, comes when the mistake is noticed by someone reading the book.

And hey, I get it. Never fun to see those mistakes. And in a perfect world, rpg books, which share a fair amount in common with technical manuals with prose or entertainingly written textbooks would not have those. They'd also cost what technical manuals and textbooks cost because everyone would get paid to product that level of work. My books in law school were five hundred dollars or more a semester. And that was over half a decade ago. Undergrad wasn't much better.

But the rpg market can't sustain those costs. Many games which try to charge over sixty bucks at for the main book are passed up by many people. And supplements and the like usually can't be more than thirty five at most.

Again, nature of the beast. And not an excuse for mistakes, more an explanation of how cost benefit analysis and the realities of the system means that mistakes happen and with a bit more frequency than in some other fields.

So where was I? Ah yes, the internet and blame placing. The problem with all of this really comes when something gives or the rather delecate process creates a error or two. Then anyone who can be identified as the source of the error gets a disproportional amount of crap for it from customers or just people who didn't buy the book, but picked it up in the store, or by some other writer who is also a fan and just has to say something about it (presumably because on some level the idea that "I would never make that mistake!" Which is true, you'd make some other one. Nobody's perfect).

Now why is that so frustrating? I mean the writer, artist, or whatever made the error, right?

And yes, that's definitely part of it. Arguably the biggest part. However, editing missed it. Development missed it. Those are the other places you can probably argue is the biggest part in many cases. Other writers who looked it over missed it (this is bigger deal when the writers say something looked good and/or publically make statements about how they've worked to increase product quality). And so on.

And yet, in my experience that's not how the blame and reactions are placed. As soon as you, artist or writer or whoever make a mistake you're on the hook for all of it. It's like you personally took you first draft or initial drawing, snuck it past the editor's desk, kidnapped the developer's kids to blackmail them into not touching a word of your masterpiece, and never actually showed it to anyone else before press. Keep in mind that you also had all the time in the world, would have been paid the same no matter how much you blew the deadlines, and where given your draft back twenty times to fix after it was poured over by a team of expert ninja editors. You also got a pony and a party.

This assumes that someone wants to blame you as the writer/artist, of course. I've seen people do the same with the developer, editor, etc... But it's a lot of teeth gnashing, snide comments, and the like. A lot of crap for a few cents a word or a few bucks for a illo, huh? To paraphrase Raul Julia in his last movie: "The day you saw that ten word error in that rpg book was such an important day for you. You questioned my sanity, accused me of being stupid, and wouldn't shut up about it. For me it was about two bits and thirty seconds the day before a deadline."

So why is this annoying? Simple. Because if you do good work more often than not a few really nice folks are happy about it and say so. A lot of other people buy the books and are happy about it. Even the mistakes usually cause many of these people to just sigh quietly and then enjoy the thousands of other words or many other pictures in the product. But the people who are upset have no sense of scale. They are, on some level, working out their issues with the game line, company, and other things by giving you an immense level of shit when you consider the whole situation.

Why is that so annoying? Because this leads to things like someone accusing you of basically plagarism and being stupid, mouthing off about it, and then maybe apologizing to you about out of the public eye with something like "Well, sorry I said that stuff...but I was really angry at these other people tangentially involved and man I was mad! So yeah...what was I doing? Oh yeah, apologizing that you were offended by the stuff I'm totally not actually retracting and certainly won't admit publically was out of line! Sorry. Did I mention how mad and hurt I was?"

Anyone want to think I just made that example up? Ah, I like to dream too, Hank.

Seriously, this leads to encounters with people that if I ever run into them in real life will go like this:

Them: "Hey, nice to meet you." (totally avoiding all the shit they said before)
Me: "Oh hey, I remember you. You're a cock. Anyway, love to chat but...I don't want to."

Note it's not just writing. The anonymity of the internet leads to this too. Which never helps.

And so all that, combined with a desire to just own up to the error, say "oops", maybe have other people involved chime in with "yeah he messed that up, but we didn't catch it which we should have, and the other work is top notch" and cash the fat paycheck (yes Virginia, that's sarcasm) factors in. Because rarely is the work worth the crap. Especially since more often than not that crap comes with other baggage you didn't help load onto the plane in the first place.

None of this is helped by the fact that unless you're in a very small group of writers and artists the general reaction to good product is much more diffused across everyone involved. If anything, it weighs in more heavily on the companies as a whole. So if it's good, usually you're one part of the team who did a great job. If there's an error or mistake, you suck. And by then the team usually has evaporated.

And if you say any of this you're a whiner or whatever. But who gives a crap about that really? You're already the crazy sucky guy. At that point seems sensible to just say "To hell with it! My fault, but not just my fault. You want to blame me that much? Pay me more or give me more credit when it goes right. If not, then make your complaints and then shut up about it, will ya?"

So yeah, Ennie award nomination...that's my mantra. Because if not I'm gonna bust a blood vessel laughing the next time someone says "Wow, you're writing in the industry? That must be really fun!"

And don't get me wrong. It is. Except for all the times it's not.