The official 5e Spellbook Cards by Gale Force 9 did not include errata rules updates in their original printings, and I'm told they contained some errors as well. Has the most recent printing of these cards solved these problems? To what extent? Is there a corrected version of these cards?
[RPG] What corrections (e.g. errata updates) have been made to the official 5e Spellbook Cards, and what errors have not yet been fixed
dnd-5eerrataspellstools
Related Solutions
A Tool to Enable Consensus Decision Making
- Problem: your group fails to make timely decisions due to a consistent failure to reach a consensus
- Desired Remedy: A tool that helps alleviate this detriment to fun gaming.
- Proposed Tool: Options Identification Process and Voting Tool (see below)
- Requirements: Buy-in from GM and players on the particular voting tool that will be used.
A voting tool can resolve all four problems if your group and your DM agree to use a voting tool. We don't know the interpersonal dynamics in this group. (It matters). I will assume that you are all friends or at least on friendly terms.
Note about reality: Who the "alpha dog" in your group is may color your success in agreeing on a decision aid.
What you seek is an in-game usable form of Consensus Decision making
A generic process is illustrated by this flow chart and the previous link is a concise summary of the process that is subject neutral. (Not TTRPG centric, but process/tool set used in many walks of life).
Per your comment that the group is all adults, you could just stop here and look at the summary in the first link, and tailor your own tool. But we'll proceed ...
Apply the voting tool when you find yourselves in the dilemmas you described in the question.
First:
- Identify how many different actions or choices are being proposed.
- If you don't identify what your options are, you can't make a decision.
- You can die roll to see who states his case first, with the DM as facilitator.
- (Or, and better, IMO)
- Take turns as pointed to by the DM, as that disrupts play less.
Second:
- each player proposing an option states it, along with a brief "why" for that choice.
Third:
- With DM facilitating, you all vote on each option.
- Each player has 2 votes available. You cannot apply two votes to a single option.
- Use a d6 to indicate your vote, in front of you at the table:
- 1 pip is no, 6 pips is yes.
- A brief "why not" for a no vote is an option here
- Rinse and repeat for each option.
DM keeps track of votes received. (as neutral facilitator).
If there were more than two choices to start with, drop option with lowest score, vote on remaining choices per above.
Fourth: Vote To Determine the Group Decision
Voting Criteria For Success:
Unanimous agreement
Unanimity minus one vote
Unanimity minus two votes
Person-in-charge decides
Pick from one of the above criteria. Your group has to agree on the level of consensus that is acceptable to all(See Social Contract comment further down).
For the final vote, I suggest Unanimity Minus One or Unanimity Minus Two.
If you end up with a hung jury due to which protocol was chosen (like Unanimous) you have two last resort options to get a decision.
"Person in Charge decides." You can roll for, or each night designate, someone as "person in charge" and accept their decision for hung juries.
Roll the dice (high wins) or flip a coin to decide between the last two choices.
Your problem statement indicates that you want the group to make decisions. The above is a time tested method, adapted for your described table, that will get you decisions.
Summary of Benefits: (to address your stated problems)
- Vote on choices to keep play moving by making decisions.
- Don't split the party.
- You'll have less wasted time.
- Each player participates in making decisions for the group when the group needs a decision.
- The GM doesn't pull his hair out.
Caveat to this answer:
- If you are the only person at the table concerned about this, the above as a decision aid is probably doomed.
- If the other players care, then you have something to discuss within your group and get buy-in.
- Getting buy-in on collaborative processes like this is part of your Social Contract, which from your problem statement is not robust in your group -- at least in this area.
Experience:
Small group dynamics and decision making have been in my professional life for a few decades. I'll use an informal group example of a decision process following the same steps tailored to a different situation:
- RL example: seven men, one van, Friday night, which bar to go to? Thumbs up and thumbs down rather than dice. Same basic process, different objective, small social group dynamics.
There are good things and bad things about having the players take up control of the narrative like this. I will challenge the frame slightly to suggest that "taking back control," might be less appropriate than "maintaining control of what you feel strongly about."
For instance, you might want to GM a relatively low fantasy saga (say) but the descriptions from your players veer more and more toward the high fantasy, or the four-color comic books, or some other genre. In such a case, what is important is not controlling every detail of the descriptions or the NPC actions, but enforcing the overall genre conventions.
Or you might not care too much about genre (or just might not be having that problem) but might be in a situation where you need to detail NPC actions-- even in death-- to provide some key details of the setting. If they describe a beheading and a fountain of blood for something that is actually a construct or a bloodless undead, well, that's a problem!
But the solution is not necessarily to shut the players down entirely and take back all control. An equally good method is to sit them down and make it clear that you have veto power over their descriptions, that sometimes you'll explain yourself and sometimes you won't. In the case of genre enforcement, explanations are probably warranted. Other cases are play-it-by-ear.
(And neither the initial talk nor the veto instances need to be aggressive or confrontational unless the players make it so.)
The short version of this advice is: Figure out what you really care about, and protect that. For the rest, be grateful you have engaged players.
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Best Answer
The cards are probably not edited with errata changes.
The original 2014 printing was redone in 2015, mostly to address rounding the corners on sharp cornered v1 cards and also to add an indication of whether a spell was concentration or not (that had apparently been omitted from the info on the cards in v1). Even by then, errata were being compiled and corrected for the core books, but I find no official word on those updates ever being considered by GF9 when updating the cards. If it were me in charge of it, that certainly would have happened.
If you want to use spellbook cards and you must be absolutely certain the cards incorporate all the necessary and most up to date text, you may need to create your own, or use some resources online to help you do so.
What follows is information gathered online, decide for yourself how reliable any of it really is.
GF9 has an official online store page for those cards. Most of the currently available sets are designated "2018 edition" in the online store, though there's no statement about how often they create new editions, exactly what is updated in each edition, or how to distinguish one edition from another (note on the bottom next to the UPC code, also cover art is different) when ordering from other sources.
The Arcane cards claim to now include spells from the SCAG, so the deck was updated since the first PHB printing, but not necessarily in ways indicated by the PHB errata.
There's no mention of errata or which PHB printing the card text is based on, so Gale Force 9 doesn't make a clear assertion that the 2018 edition incorporates errata. They are adding spells to some decks as well as adding blank DIY cards, and that seems to be what constitutes the update.
The cards for Xanathar’s Guide to Everything contain spells previously released in the Elemental Evil deck. There are some differences in some spells that could be considered errata corrections.
Several Amazon reviews for the Arcane deck assert the errata document wasn't considered in the 2018 update to the cards, but the reliability of the reviews are open to question. No photos of known errors either present or corrected in the cards are offered as proof.
Ted at Nerd Immersion on Youtube has a review/unboxing of the "version 3" cards released in 2018. There are a lot of updates, but Ted's review doesn't ask or answer the question of whether errata were considered in the version updates.
In this unboxing video the Acid Splash card is clearly shown. It does not have the change in wording from the 2018 2.0 version of the errata. It looks like a version 3 deck, because the box art image is in portrait orientation, v1 and v2 had landscape orientation covers. It's possible the version 3 deck includes corrections from the 1.22 version of the errata from 2017 (which would not have a change for Acid Splash ) but I am not very hopeful.