Option 6 of the haunted one's bonds are "I have a child to protect. I must make the world a safer place for him (or her)."

This feels a little awkward to me, like the kind of thing people would use before "they" singular became more prevalent. the sentence "I have a child to protect. I must make the world a safer place for them." feels more natural.

This is like asking a bookstore to change wording in a book they sell. They cannot.

You may want to consider telling the author (Wizards of the Coast) this.

The downloaded manual I have on my app gets updated all the time. If that's something only WoTC can do I'd be happy to send them an email. Until then I can obviously change the text myself, I just thought I'd bring it up in the forums.

Cyb3rM1nd is correct.  DDB will not change WotC text on its own.  It will require WotC to make the changes.  The updates you get "all the time" as far as compendium content are the results of DDB reflecting the most current version of text.  This comes up every time a DDB user suggests a language or mechanics change.

When you reach out to WotC you may want to specify you're talking about Curse of Strahd.  I thought you were talking about the related background in VRGtR where no such. table exists and were confused what you were talking about since it's a popular background in one of my games and I've yet. to really play. or read closely Strahd.

Languages evolve and I haven’t had to study English in a very long time. With that in mind, things may in fact be different today than when I was in school as it’s been a couple of decades and a half. However, when last I had to take a test that included an essentially identical example, the answer was that the beginning of the sentence specifically referred to a single “child,” and “them” is plural, not singular. Since they would both refer to the the same individual, both must be in “agreement.” So as of the rules of the English language, “them” is not in agreement with “a child,” and is therefore a grammatically incorrect pronoun.

As I said, languages evolve and it is now common for many an individual to prefer “they/them” as preferred pronouns. However, colloquial language always evolves much faster than the formal version of a language. It may be years before English formally accepts they/them as grammatically correct singular pronouns, or it may never adopt that particular colloquial usage.

However, by formal American English,, “him (or her)” is grammatically correct, while “them” is not.

Many things feel more natural because they are more natural. But that is the exact distinction between formal and colloquial language. In fact, starting a sentence with either “and” or “but” (like I just did) is very natural and it is done colloquially all the time. However, it is grammatically incorrect, whereas starting a sentence with “however” is grammatically correct.

Of course, WotC breaks other rules of formal English all the time too. It is grammatically incorrect to end a printed or written sentences with a number presented as a numeral instead of spelled out as a word. How many sentences have you read in these rules that break that rule? I lost count years ago. It is also against the rules of formal English to end a sentence with a preposition, and don’t even get me started on dangling participles.

Have you noticed that WotC does actually follow the correct rules regarding punctuation for things like crossbow, hand as that is absolutely correct. Then they break the other part that of that rule which dictates that whenever any single entries in a list include commas as part of their name, then to correctly separate those entries in that list from one another, they should not be separated by commas, but rather semicolons. WotC drives me nuts with this one because what should be presented as “crossbow, hand; crossbow, heavy; crossbow, light” to keep the entries distinct, they present as “crossbow, hand, crossbow, heavy, crossbow, light” which legitimately confuses people for the exact reason the rules stating it should be done with semicolons exists in the first gorram place. 🙄

Since WotC is publishing neither educational nor legal texts, its writers  are not required to follow the rules, and are free to adopt colloquial language as they wish. One of the things proven to encourage formal language to more rapidly shift to adopt colloquial language is the use of those colloquial innovations in print.

Hello IamSposta,

You raise an interesting point. Language is ever evolving. Words are created, used in various ways, and discarded or replaced. The use of they/them as singular for example, was considered normal and has literary use as far back as the 13th century. By the 18th century, intellectuals considered they/them as singular to be an inappropriate use of the words, and by the late 1990s, they were formally recognized as appropriate in The New Oxford Dictionary. The New Oxford Dictionary reaffirmed this in the third edition (2010) as widely used but not widely accepted by all formal literary guides.

Whether they/them is accepted as singular use in formal English currently depends on what literary guide you are using. The answer on whether it is correct is both yes and no.

Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster

Thanks. As it turns out, the last time I had to actually study and be tested on grammar specifically was in the mid ‘90s, and they were very much not acceptable as singular use pronouns by Ms [🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫], or I might never have made through 6th—8th grades. I can’t spell,*1 so I made it up on the other half of my grade, grammar and punctuation. The others could get away with dangling their participles, I had to compensate for an F with an A to average out to a C*2 so I could move forward. So I know that was not formally correct English at that point. In high school they only cared about grammar if it was atrocious, they were looking more at content. However, they may have been trying to split the difference since “him (or her)” is considered correct English by all literary guides.

1. *(Thank goodness for the little red line and the “Look Up” function!)
2. *(That would have been a B- in any other school. 🙄 That place took the standard A,B,C,D,F; scrunched the bottom of D up to where the bottom of C usually was. They found the spare room by throwing away  all those pesky “minuses” and “pluses” from the scale.)