Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Treebore" data-source="post: 4649258" data-attributes="member: 10177">I play a game to find out if I like it. Once upon a time I thought I could make a good judgement just by reading through the rules. If I was right I would hate Shadowrun, L5R, Aces and Eights, and others I can't think of right now. However I played them, despite thinking the rules sucked, and I have loved the games ever since.I read a lot about 4E, was very sure I would not like it, but I had to play it to make sure I did not make a mistake like I would have with the other games. It just so happens this time I was right. I don't like 4E, but now I can say so for sure, because I played it weekly for over two months, 3 to 4 hours at a shot.Now I am not saying 4E sucks. The rules seem very solid, and role playing is definitely as doable as any other iteration, it just did not excite me. It fell flat. So I stayed with what I like.So I say that to truly judge a game accurately you do need to play it, but playing it does not mean you will change your mind, it just means you gave the game every chance to excite you. If it changes your mind, and excites you, then your glad you did play it to see how all the rules work together, what kind of synergy the rules create.If it still fails to excite you, hopefully you played with a good group and shared a lot of laughs, like I did, so the time spent still wasn't a waste.So based on my experience, I do not believe you can give a game an honest shake without playing it. Reading the rules does not tell you how it will play any more than looking at a car will tell you how well it drives.This is also why I quit writing reviews. Reading a module does not tell you how much fun you can have actually running it. There are modules that read as if they would play very boring, but my group had a blast. There are modules that read like they would be fun, engrossing, and be awesome, but fell flat and were frustrating.Plus tastes just vary. There were 3E WOTC books that people slammed, and I ignored them for a long time. Then I finally looked at them myself, and liked or even loved them. So not only do I no longer write reviews, I don't read them anymore either. I check things out for myself.</blockquote>

Verification