D&D 5E Escapist article on SCAG is Brutal.

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I don't appreciate you putting words into my mouth, Morrus. Please don't that again.

Now then, if someone decides to air their opinion about a sourcebook or a movie or whatever, and they post it to Facebook, their blog or in a thread on a forum space like this one, then of course they are free to write whatever they want.

If they write something with the intent of publishing it to a website like the Escapist or io9, then a different standard applies. This is because they are no longer sharing their opinion, they are writing a review.

It's no different than writing a critical appraisal for a magazine or newspaper.

My contention is that neither review met that standard. I sure as hell wasn't demanding goddamned soulless robotic non-biased prose.

 

[Parmandur]

They were definitely not professional reviews; click-bait, pure and simple.

 

[Morrus]

I don't appreciate you putting words into my mouth, Morrus. Please don't that again.

I didn't. Not even slightly. I disagreed with you.

If they write something with the intent of publishing it to a website like the Escapist or io9, then a different standard applies. This is because they are no longer sharing their opinion, they are writing a review.

No standard applies. Where does this standard come from?

My contention is that neither review met that standard.

There is no standard. Websites can publish what they want. And opinion pieces are interesting to many. Reviews, particularly, are opinion pieces.

I sure as hell wasn't demanding goddamned soulless robotic non-biased prose.

First, calm the heck down.

Second, your complaint was that it showed bias. I stand by my position: good! It's supposed to! You can accept or dismiss it at will, but there's nothing wrong with their writing it.

 

[JohnLynch]

This isn't a problem with the format - you could just as easily have a brief table under each domain that shows ALL the gods you might worship with that domain (and maybe still write up 1-3).

They did exactly that in the PHB. If that's what you want, that's what you've got. Except now no matter which god you pick you've got the information you need to roleplay a cleric or follower. Look at the table, select the domain you want and read up on one or more gods of that domain.

That's a lot of churn for me as a DM. It's not like Azuth plays a major role in HotDQ or anything. I could make it relevant, but if the player isn't even that invested in being an Azuthite, why would I bother? Neither of us are particularly interested in that narrative, my player just doesn't want his character to be mortar in the afterlife.

Read as much as you want a and incorporate whatever you want. What you can't do is incorporate information that's not in the book.

my player just doesn't want his character to be mortar in the afterlife.

This only happens if you, as the DM, makes it happen.

io9 wanted to explore FR beyond the Sword Coast

Why review a product from the mindset of wanting something the book clearly isn't? It's like me buying the PHB and complaining because I wanted so much more player options.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

My last post on this topic.

No standard applies. Where does this standard come from?

Of course there is. As to where...how about a personal sense of integrity?

If there were no standard, then you wouldn't object to users writing reviews about books for EN World that they haven't actually read.

Websites can publish what they want. And opinion pieces are interesting to many. Reviews, particularly, are opinion pieces.

You keep using terms that apply to published writing, which is strange when coupled with your claim that there is "no standard" because teh internetz.

Reviews and opinion pieces both contain opinion, and both are published in print and online. That's where their similarities end.

It's the job of the reviewer (yes, the reviewer has certain responsibilities) to report, to give the reader the nuts and bolts, and not to render up aesthetic judgements. This falls in the range of opinion, but that opinion has a purpose: in most cases a reviewer is talking to the average person who wants to know "Is this going to work for me?" And that's who the reviewer is answerable to.

Thus, the reviewer should give a damn about the subject being written about. This doesn't mean being required to love everything that crosses his or her desk (or laptop screen), but the writer should be be enthusiastic about the topic at the minimum, and ought to focus on detail instead of generalizing.

"Opinion piece", on the other hand, is a broad term, something that include columns written by regular columnists (or guest columnists), op-eds and editorials. These serve different purposes than reviews. You're not going to find the review for a book in the section of a newspaper devoted to editorials.

Just because a writer is expressing an opinion does not mean the various forms that opinion takes in print (or online) are all the same thing.

The reviewer for the Escapist did a bad job, and the reviewer for io9 didn't do his job at all. Both articles should be avoided.

Morrus, for what it's worth I agree with you that the Realms alone can be a problem for some people. You wrote a pretty good bit on that topic right here on these forums (worth a read, folks).

 

[Corpsetaker]

The reviewer for the Escapist did a bad job, and the reviewer for io9 didn't do his job at all. Both articles should be avoided.

Why?

Because you disagree with them? What would you say if they gave an overwhelming positive review? You can't dismiss their opinion just because you disagree with it.

 

[garnuk]

I found the review unhelpful. It wasn't clear to me that the reviewer read more than the table of contents.

 

[aramis erak]

Why?

Because you disagree with them? What would you say if they gave an overwhelming positive review? You can't dismiss their opinion just because you disagree with it.

the Escapist, as a formal reviewer, disclosed some biases, but expressed others in their negativity. Overall, not badly.

io9's reviewer didn't even actually show any real knowledge of english - complaining that something which is clearly labeled isn't some larger thing... like a guy reviewing a network interface card based upon it failing to be a unix server, or complaining his ink refill isn't a full pen. Review the item to hand for what it is, not what it never claimed to be.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=69051]banana[/MENTION] and [mention=54629]pukunui,[/mention]

I just think that when a player has no desire to put even minimal effort into something that's meant to be a fairly significant part of a setting, that's a red flag that the game and/or the setting isn't going to be a good match for that player. But that's just me, and if you're working around it at your tables, more power to you.

As someone with only a passing familiarity with the Realms, I have absolutely no idea what you guys are talking about. What wall is this? I've never heard of it.

 

[garnuk]

As someone with only a passing familiarity with the Realms, I have absolutely no idea what you guys are talking about. What wall is this? I've never heard of it.

In the section on "The Afterlife" it reads:

Souls that are unclaimed by the servants of the gods are judged by Kelemvor, who decides the fate of each one. Some are charged with serving as guides for other lost souls, while others are transformed into squirming larvae and cast into the dust. The truly false and faithless are mortared into the Wall of the Faithless, the great barrier that bounds the City of the Dead, where their souls slowly dissolve and begin to become part of the stuff of the Wall itself.