I have noticed a tendency to have games be published and then start almost issuing endless streams of errata for errors and things that do not work. My attitude is this is wrong on so many levels. Issue the book after proper playtesting, research, proof reading, and corrections. Make it solid, and if there are corrections to be made, later issue a Supplement to the book sort of like Books 1-3 then 4-8 added, and corrected.
But I wonder if the endless errata is not a result of our computer age where we have the extremely buggy "1.0" release, which is quickly superseded by the "1.1", etc releases. It almost seems that the computer attitude of "We will fix it in the next update, let's get it out the door" has infected games and books. I will not name systems or games, but I think that there is that software tendency to look at things as a continuous on-going system that is never really finished. Also the desire to simulate...everything which computers do well with the right software, but humans do not since we still think 1.2.3.many in some ways. It seems that many game designers in the past 10-15 years have attempted to model every possible situation or contingency with increasingly complex and less playable systems. The increased complexity can be taken into account on computers, but pen and paper games, not so much I think.
Could it be due to the increasing number of games released on PDF? Fix it later? What do you think?
But I wonder if the endless errata is not a result of our computer age where we have the extremely buggy "1.0" release, which is quickly superseded by the "1.1", etc releases. It almost seems that the computer attitude of "We will fix it in the next update, let's get it out the door" has infected games and books. I will not name systems or games, but I think that there is that software tendency to look at things as a continuous on-going system that is never really finished. Also the desire to simulate...everything which computers do well with the right software, but humans do not since we still think 1.2.3.many in some ways. It seems that many game designers in the past 10-15 years have attempted to model every possible situation or contingency with increasingly complex and less playable systems. The increased complexity can be taken into account on computers, but pen and paper games, not so much I think.
Could it be due to the increasing number of games released on PDF? Fix it later? What do you think?