Justice Inc eratta

[John Desmarais]

(Not sure if this was really the best place to post this, but no other forum seemed any better).

 

Do any of you fine Heroes know if there was ever a errata document produced for the old Justice Inc game?

 

 

[Brian Stanfield]

1 hour ago, John Desmarais said:

(Not sure if this was really the best place to post this, but no other forum seemed any better).

 

Do any of you fine Heroes know if there was ever a errata document produced for the old Justice Inc game?

 

 

 

It was written by Aaron Allston, so there were no mistakes, only nuances you couldn’t possibly understand . . . .  

[John Desmarais]

2 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

It was written by Aaron Allston, so there were no mistakes, only nuances you couldn’t possibly understand . . . .  

 

While my appreciation for Allston's work - particularly his Hero work - knows no bounds; I have found a few definite errors, including an entire line of text missing from the middle of a paragraph.  (I'd love to know what it was actually intended to say.)

[Chris Goodwin]

21 hours ago, John Desmarais said:

 

While my appreciation for Allston's work - particularly his Hero work - knows no bounds; I have found a few definite errors, including an entire line of text missing from the middle of a paragraph.  (I'd love to know what it was actually intended to say.)

 

I thought he'd written up a big list of his gaming and fiction related stuff with errata... I think maybe I'm thinking of Mythic Greece, though, and web searches aren't turning up anything, nor is his archived page at the Wayback Machine.  What paragraph is it?  

[John Desmarais]

15 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

I thought he'd written up a big list of his gaming and fiction related stuff with errata... I think maybe I'm thinking of Mythic Greece, though, and web searches aren't turning up anything, nor is his archived page at the Wayback Machine.  What paragraph is it?  

 

Ive got his errata for Lands of Mystery, and Mythic Greece (the Mythic Greece document actually being an update to 4th edition, which made it even cooler).

 

The biggest error I’ve found in Justice Inc is the transition from page 20 to 21.  It appear that what should have been the last line in column 2 may have gotten obliterate when the Skill Modifier Chart was added.  The text ends in the middle of a hyphanated word and the beginning of the next page doesn’t continue it.

 

The page and column ends with:  “Skills are very general in order to cover many situa-“

 

The next page starts with: “clever and creative, and that's when they're having”

 

The basic gist of the paragraph is still pretty plain, but this really eats away at my own personal psych lims.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

23 minutes ago, John Desmarais said:

The biggest error I’ve found in Justice Inc is the transition from page 20 to 21.  It appear that what should have been the last line in column 2 may have gotten obliterate when the Skill Modifier Chart was added.  The text ends in the middle of a hyphanated word and the beginning of the next page doesn’t continue it.

 

The page and column ends with:  “Skills are very general in order to cover many situa-“

 

The next page starts with: “clever and creative, and that's when they're having”

 

The basic gist of the paragraph is still pretty plain, but this really eats away at my own personal psych lims.

 

Ah.  I went to the first edition Fantasy Hero and found the equivalent paragraph; a lot of verbiage was taken straight from one book to another.  The paragraph in FH reads: 

 

Quote

The GM should provide modifiers to deal with each situation that comes up in the course of the game. The Skills are very general in order to cover many situations; individual circumstances can modify the chance to perform a Skill tremendously. Providing modifiers will act as an incentive for the players to be clever and creative, and that's when they're having the most fun. Modifiers help describe the situation to the players in a very concrete fashion, which makes the game more visual and exciting.

 

Missing text bolded by me.

 

Edit to add:  The text is the same in Danger International... I'm confident that that's what it was intended to read in Justice Inc.

[Brian Stanfield]

23 hours ago, John Desmarais said:

 

While my appreciation for Allston's work - particularly his Hero work - knows no bounds; I have found a few definite errors, including an entire line of text missing from the middle of a paragraph.  (I'd love to know what it was actually intended to say.)

 

How dare you question God!

 

I'm just kidding, of course. I love Alston, but the layout of all of the HERO books back in the day was flawed. I'm surprised there aren't more obvious errors. I'm helping Duke Bushido edit Western HERO, which actually has entire pages placed out of order!

[John Desmarais]

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Ah.  I went to the first edition Fantasy Hero and found the equivalent paragraph; a lot of verbiage was taken straight from one book to another.  The paragraph in FH reads: 

 

 

Missing text bolded by me.

 

Edit to add:  The text is the same in Danger International... I'm confident that that's what it was intended to read in Justice Inc.

 

Thanks.  I didn't even think to go look in one of the games from that era.

[John Desmarais]

41 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

How dare you question God!

 

I'm just kidding, of course. I love Alston, but the layout of all of the HERO books back in the day was flawed. I'm surprised there aren't more obvious errors. I'm helping Duke Bushido edit Western HERO, which actually has entire pages placed out of order!

 

An edited Western Hero?  Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, John Desmarais said:

 

Thanks.  I didn't even think to go look in one of the games from that era.

 

There are occasional bits like that in some of the other games; I think it's an artifact of when cutting and pasting was literal, with scissors and glue.  I'd bet that's how the text in Justice Inc. got lost; the chart below it looks like it would extend up to cover it, and if that chart were, say, two lines longer than they'd thought at the beginning, it would have gotten pasted on top of it.

[Brian Stanfield]

6 hours ago, John Desmarais said:

 

An edited Western Hero?  Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

Not a full rewrite or anything, just a reliable PDF that hasn’t been available yet. We’re almost done with the second read-through. 

[rravenwood]

Although Chris has already provided the answer here, I wanted to share further evidence that this was an old-school literal cut-and-paste layout error: if you look on page 76, the last three lines of text at the bottom of the second column (under "General Movement") are the missing fragment of text ("tions; individual circumstances can modify the chance to perform a Skill tremendously. Providing modifiers will act as an incentive for the players to be").  The actual General Movement text continues from where it left off on page 77 (so the uninterrupted text should read, "All movement costs END at the rate of 1 END per 5 inches of base movement distance used. Noncombat movement at multiple distances increases the END cost of a movement action; [...]").

[Duke Bushido]

On 3/13/2019 at 3:19 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

the layout of all of the HERO books back in the day was flawed

 

Not just back in the day. There is a 5e book- I think it's The UNTIL Super Powers Database (though it might be one of the Ultimate books) where the table of contents reads "Fantasy Hero Table of Contents". 

 

Though the most irritating screw up in typography was for the 3e revamp of Enemies, which gives it a copyright date of 1982 and lists itself as a first edition second printing or some such thing as that. 

 

It's irritating because book vendors are not HERO gamers (generally) and when you're hunting a first edition enemies book, you're going to buy a crap ton of that third edition book before you get there..... 

[Duke Bushido]

Just got in a few minutes ago-- was looking to see which book had the table of contents listed as Fantasy Hero.  If it was a 5e book (and I swear it was, but hey-- I turned 59 Wednesday, so who knows?), it was one I had borrowed, as it's not one of the four I actually own.  Hmmm....   Now I'm wondering....

 

Though my favorite mismatch is from 4e: the adventure supplement Invaders from Below features the copyright blurb from Day of the Destroyer.  

 

 

[John Desmarais]

4 hours ago, rravenwood said:

Although Chris has already provided the answer here, I wanted to share further evidence that this was an old-school literal cut-and-paste layout error: if you look on page 76, the last three lines of text at the bottom of the second column (under "General Movement") are the missing fragment of text ("tions; individual circumstances can modify the chance to perform a Skill tremendously. Providing modifiers will act as an incentive for the players to be").  The actual General Movement text continues from where it left off on page 77 (so the uninterrupted text should read, "All movement costs END at the rate of 1 END per 5 inches of base movement distance used. Noncombat movement at multiple distances increases the END cost of a movement action; [...]").

 

Ha.  That s the missing text from page 20 that got,me chasing down this rabbit hole in the first place.

[Duke Bushido]

On March 13, 2019 at 4:04 PM, John Desmarais said:

 

An edited Western Hero?  Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

 

Here you go, Sir:

 

 

 

 

Subscriptions are free as the articles are long and dry.  

 

 

Welcome aboard.  

 

 

Duke

 

[borbetomagnus]

On 3/13/2019 at 10:16 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

 

Not a full rewrite or anything, just a reliable PDF that hasn’t been available yet. We’re almost done with the second read-through. 

 

I'm looking forward to Western HERO in PDF. I used Western HERO in the 90s for a short Western campaign that was a great success with the players. 

 

Unfortunately, I'm not able to find any local gamers that are interested in Westerns, regardless of the system used for the game.

[RDU Neil]

On 3/15/2019 at 7:31 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Though my favorite mismatch is from 4e: the adventure supplement Invaders from Below features the copyright blurb from Day of the Destroyer.  

 

The fact that you even noticed this indicates we are from two VERY different planets.

[Duke Bushido]

Some clarification of motive:

 

A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to read the 4e stuff I never saw new.  After buying a couple duplicates, I decided to keep a list so I didn't throw any money away. 

 

Then I discovered the cock-up with Enemies 3e, so I decided a database was in order with publication dates, edition, etc. 

 

That's how I found it.