Are reviews of older books useful?

[Flyspeck23]

As long as you're not only doing old reviews, Crothian, it'd be splendid to see some reviews of old stuff (as Turanil pointed out, this is best for PDFs - but older books can often be found for a discount, so even reviews of old printed books wouldn't be entirely useless).

Whatever suits your fancy, really.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'd say they are useful indeed. Not everyone has the old books and all of them still have their own usefulness.

For example, after having played 3.5 for more than a year, I'm getting more nostalgic towards 3.0 (which I haven't stopped playing anyway). I'm really thinking about spending some euros on 3.0 older books rather than the 3.5 books of the last season, and I have been in fact reading several reviews of old non-WotC books recently.

 

[diaglo]

certainly. some of us prefer the older material.

 

[JoeBlank]

I think so, yes. In the past, I've needed something like an adventure to use, and I've sorted through my collection and pulled out a small pile of possibilities. I then went to the reviews pages to quickly figure out which ones were generally regarded well and which weren't. Made my selection process that much quicker without my having to read through all of them and evaluate them.

Similarly, there have been times when a player has asked "Is it OK if I use this book?". Not being familiar with the book, I'll look it up and see what people think of it. If it is regarded well, I'll usually be receptive to its use; if not, I'll be less receptive.

What he said, plus I like to look for deals on older stuff I might have missed, either in the marketplace here or on ebay. My buying habits have evolved from grabbing up new releases bases on pre-release publicity and anticipation to waiting to see what everyone actually thinks of a book before I take the plunge. I find that I buy less, but am much more happy with what I do buy.

 

[TerraDave]

YES. a couple more reasons: a lot of older stuff is now available by PDF, and in some cases newly available--so it would be good to have (more) reviews for it; second, time counts when ascessing a product, both in terms of playtesting and building up your perspective: sometimes things seem less "kewl", and sometimes certain elements may be appreciated more with the passage of time.

 

[Voadam]

The last three in print books I bought were cheap sales of Mongoose's demonology, SSS' Divine and Defeated (both 3.0), and the Star Wars Ultimate Adversaries.

The last batch of pdfs I bought included Heroes of High Favor Dwarves (3.0) and an ESD of a previous edition book.

I run and play in 3.5 games exclusively right now. These older books can still be relevant and fun.

I prefer getting cheap older books, preferably in pdf format. I have great patience in these matters. If I am thinking about getting something I often read reviews of it if I can.

 

[Seeten]

I can use reviews of older stuff to gauge which reviewers I trust to like stuff that I like, and which have different taste, also, so they are always useful, even if the specific content of the review isnt. In other words, even if I already own the book, seeing what the reviewers think of it makes me more or less able to take their word on new stuff. For that, to me, they are very useful. Plus, sometimes its material I dont have and might want.

 

[Faraer]

What a shame this needs to be asked. As if the frontlist-driven aspect of the RPG industry and culture was anything but regrettable, or as if books ceased to exist three months after they're published.

For the industry's purpose of selling new books, reviews of new books do most good. For the purpose of discussing RPG books and helping people choose which to buy, their date of publication isn't relevant.

Why does time move so much faster for some people with RPGs than with other mediums? Nothing published for d20 is older than 'recent'.

 

[Eremite]

This may sound strange to many, but I like reading reviews of books I have bought as well as those that I plan on buying.

My reason is simple: a lot of times a good reviewer (eg: Psion) will identify areas where he has found the book useful and that can inspire further use in my own games. Anyway, that's a long way of saying that I find any well-written review useful even if some time has passed since the book was published.

 

[KB9JMQ]

Yes I like reviews of older books if for no other reason than it helps me decide whether or not I want to purchase an old product.
But they also help me decide if I should look at a product/book that I had not been interested in before.