Help me improve my reviews...

[The Sigil]

Just what the title says. I've done 21 reviews here on ENWorld as of this posting, and I want to get some "reviews of my reviews."

I am thinking of trying to cut down the amount of time I spend in "Content Breakdown" - maybe to a "Hits, Critical Hits, Misses, and Critical Misses" where I try to highlight the REALLY good stuff and the REALLY bad stuff (as I see it) rather than giving a semi-detailed summary of the books.

Note that my PHB, DMG, and MM reviews shouldn't be used as a "template" for how I like to do my reviews - check out some of the other reviews I have done.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/reviews/index.php?sub=yes&where=reviewerlist&which=The+Sigil

I will ask that you do at least two things when replying to this thread - point out at least one thing that you like about my reviews (e.g., "what do I do well?" or "I like that you try to pick up on and explain your own biases") and one thing that you dislike about the reviews (e.g., "you don't do this well" or "I don't like that you obviously can't see your own biases").

As one final favor, please try to evaluate my reviews as a whole, and not single out any particular review (though citing examples of the "good" and "bad" from particular reviews is encouraged).

If I find that people like the detailed content breakdown, I'll keep doing it. If I find that people don't need quite so much information, I'll cut back and do more reviews more often (less to write).

Thanks!

--The sigil

 

[Xeriar]

I looked at your reviews for the books I had purchased (which includes practically everything by WotC, as far as d20 is concerned).

So, what do I look for in a review? What can I use in a campaign, or recommend for a friend's campaign? Ie, most items end up being taken piecemeil.

For me, this means adventures, and usually artifacts, are out, however, in the case of Book of Eldrich Might, Monte had some pretty good, vivid ideas there. You did point this out, but it was a one-liner, kind of hidden like you said the rules of Vile damage in the BoVD was (I didn't have so much trouble finding that )

I'm also tired of people complaining about a book being politically correct or not, and you managed to do both. WotC is not one person, and different books by them may have different standards, but you are one person, so I would expect them to be more similar. It might be that you have a kind of 'prim and proper' bias that clashes pretty furiously with mine, which is probably the case, there.

 

[Gizzard]

As I read your reviews I noticed that you really dont have a lot of compunction about giving out 1's and 2's to books that disappoint you. (As I re-read some of these reviews, I noticed that the appearance of the word "disappointed" somewhere in the first two paragraphs meant that the book was going to get a 1. ;-)

Anyway, to me, a 1 is not just a book I am disappointed in. A 1 is a book that has such badly written, unclear or poorly balanced material that it is unusable. A 3 is a pretty average book, a book that can be used for its intended purpose as-is by a lazy DM (or with a bit of re-writing by a motivated DM). A 5 is a book that breaks new ground, a brilliant treatment of an issue that is bound to set the standard going into the future.

So, Dislike:
I have a hard time getting use out of your lowest reviews; its like you are rating the books you dont like on a very personal scale which doesnt translate well to other people. Its more like you were very very disappointed in the 1's and 2's, rather than they were useless to other people.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this well. Heres one other angle: If a book gets a 1, it shouldn't be possible for another reviewer to give it a 5. To me, a 1 is so clearly dismal that it goes beyond a matter of opinion. The book is not useful in any way, shape or form. So, if the bulk of the people give a book a 4 and you give it a 1, I'm left stuck for what exactly 1 means in this case. It obviously cant mean useless, because everyone else seems to find it useful.

(On the "Like" side, I like pretty much everything else about your reviews. I favor long reviews like yours, I feel like there is more info there for me to mine while trying to make my own decisions. But its easier to complain, so I have devoted more text here to what I dont like. Sorry. ;-)