Idea for reviews

[malladin]

I don't know if anyone's ever done this sort of thing, but an idea occurred to me recently, and I thought I'd share it with you lot.

All RPG reviews are for an individual product. In other spheres of commerce products are often reviewed together in order tocompare the relative merits of similar products, such as cars or washing machines.

Whereas I can see that there is an argument that each product is very different and it may be hard to compare, say, Hunt: Rise of Evil with the Rookies guide to Psi-talent, there are a number of products that are noticably similar and consumers may appreciate a considered opinion as to which is best. If I want to play an Assassin, should I buy teh Power Class book, crimson contracts, the assassin's handbook or another of the many that are out there? The same can be said for class and race books.

I'm by no means suggesting replacing the existing single-item revies, but there might be a case for a number of comparison reviews as well.

what d'ya think?

Ben, Malladin's Gate

 

[Crothian]

I like comparrison reviews and it would be great to have a place for them. However, it is hard to get access to all the books in one category except for the very few house reviewers who get the review copies of products.

 

[Ghostwind]

The last couple of issues of d20Zine! has had comparison reviews in them. The newest issue (due out in mere days) will have a very extensive comparison of nearly all of the d20 superhero games.

 

[Morrus]

Easy to do here at EN World - just post the review twice (once under each product), scoring each accordingly.

 

[jmucchiello]

Easy to do here at EN World - just post the review twice (once under each product), scoring each accordingly.

Well, that would be functional but not optimal. There should at least be a way to link between the reviews.

Usually a comparison review with have the overview of the review process and how the products stacked up. Then there's the individual discussions of each product. Not to mention the "factsheet".

 

[Morrus]

Well, that would be functional but not optimal. There should at least be a way to link between the reviews.

Remarkably easy to do. Just put the link to the other review in the text of the review.

[/b]Usually a comparison review with have the overview of the review process and how the products stacked up. Then there's the individual discussions of each product. Not to mention the "factsheet". [/B]

Well, the contents of the review are not defined by the system. If that's what you would want to put in the review(s), then you can easily do so.

 

[Voadam]

I don't know if anyone's ever done this sort of thing, but an idea occurred to me recently, and I thought I'd share it with you lot.

All RPG reviews are for an individual product. In other spheres of commerce products are often reviewed together in order tocompare the relative merits of similar products, such as cars or washing machines.

Whereas I can see that there is an argument that each product is very different and it may be hard to compare, say, Hunt: Rise of Evil with the Rookies guide to Psi-talent, there are a number of products that are noticably similar and consumers may appreciate a considered opinion as to which is best. If I want to play an Assassin, should I buy teh Power Class book, crimson contracts, the assassin's handbook or another of the many that are out there? The same can be said for class and race books.

I'm by no means suggesting replacing the existing single-item revies, but there might be a case for a number of comparison reviews as well.

what d'ya think?

Ben, Malladin's Gate

It is a fine idea, however a reviewer needs to have all of the comparison products before he could do that.

For instance, taking something like Norse mythology, you'd have Deities and Demigods, Norse Gods, Ragnorak, Doom of Odin, and the Atlas Coriolis Rune d20 adventure Last hero in Scandinavia.

For Egyptian deities you'd have Deities and Demigods, Egyptian Gods, War in Heliopolis and I think Necropolis.

Even the specialty school of enchantment you'd have Joe's book of enchantment, arcane encyclopedia enchantment and the EN publishing one.

Most people including reviewers don't have all the many companies' sourcebooks.

 

[trancejeremy]

I sort of did this in my review of Green Ronin's Witch book, I compared it to the Quintessential Witch, and had a table summarizing the crunchy bits of the two books (though not here, since the reviews don't support HTML tables). I would have done it for the other main witch book, but I don't have it.

I thought about doing something similar for the Mongoose power class Assassin and the Green Ronin Assassin, but I really didn't like either version, and my advice would be to avoid both of them, so my thought didn't go very far.

I've seen some comparison reviews at RPG Net, but the format here doesn't really fit them.

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

The last two or three issues of Campaign Magazine have included such a type of review, where they take a theme and look at three different books on the subject, and review them in relation to the other: which offers the best options, which has the best crunchy bits, etc. While I like reviews, this type of thematic review is actually quite helpful when buying time comes around.

 

[jmucchiello]

Re: Re: Idea for reviews

Even the specialty school of enchantment you'd have Joe's book of enchantment, arcane encyclopedia enchantment and the EN publishing one.

Not that this helps, but I'd like to say I'd love to see such a review.