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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 1004108" data-attributes="member: 537">More Monte on 3.5 op-edA slightly less inflammatory piece from rgfd. Scott is a Good Guy. He Knows His Stuff.Subject: Monte on 3.5: Criticism vs. ReviewFrom: "R. Scott Rogers" <scott@madforjam.com>Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dndDate: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 17:47:37 +0200After reading Monte's review, and some reaction here - which also revealedwhat happened to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction: MSB has 'em, and he'sdeploying them here - I have the following reaction. Maybe even an insight,who knows.Anyway, it seems to me that Monte's "review" was actually a critical essaywith a review grafted onto the end. And I don't mean "critical" in thecommon sense of "finding fault with," I mean critical in the higher sense bywhich we differentiate articles about books in the "New York Review ofBooks" as criticism and articles about books in "Entertainment Weekly" asreviews.Monte's criticism is the section where he writes about why he thinks the 3.5project was undertaken and the principles he believes should govern such anundertaking. In his criticism he finds almost nothing but fault, and he pinshis criticism to two theses: 1. There is some arbitrary point at which amajor revision would be appropriate, and this point is more than three yearsafter initial release; and 2. The designers appear not to have approachedthe revision in exactly the same way that the designers of 3.0 did.This is all well and good, and I think it is valuable for the designers of3.0 to offer their critical assessment of the evolution of the game. Butthis criticism is by its very nature almost devoid of practical usefulnessfor game players. So what if Monte finds fault with the production of 3.5?The production of "Casablanca" is a famous tale of woe in which almosteverything went wrong and almost all decisions were made for what we wouldfairly call the wrong reasons. And yet the movie stands as one of theclassics of American cinema. (I wage an endless battle againstmotivation-think in another forum. "I'd be in favor of switching to leagueuniforms for the All-Star Game," baseball "purists" say, "except it'sobvious Major League Baseball only made the change as a cynical marketingploy." What rubbish. Why the thing was done has little bearing on the worthof the thing once it is done, at least for things like changes to the waygames are played.)However, after wading through the useless and questionably motivatedcriticism of the process that led to the publication of 3.5, I think Monteprovides a pretty good review. By "good" I mean useful. I don't mean"completely right-thinking" or "generally positive," although Monte's reviewis the latter. As to the former, well, I have no doubt that some of MSB'scomments on 3.5 now will strike him, in a couple of years, as theunconsidered crap they probably are, just as a similar proportion of Monte's(or any reviewer's) comments are. So, a review that is useful in offeringinsight from an identifiable perspective, one that leads to a conclusionregarding the product's utility that is supported by the premises advancedin the review. I do feel that the review section deserved more of the author's attention,given its utility to the reader. I would like to know which elements of 3.5Monte intends to houserule, whether altering them (and if so how) ordeleting them in favor of 3.0. I would also have liked to see a more overtanalysis of the changes in 3.5 that implement reforms that Monte believeswere necessary. We get a list of changes that are good, changes that are notgood, and changes that were necessary but not made. I would have preferredto see the addition of a list of the changes that were necessary and thatwere made.So that said, I would give Monte's critical analysis low marks and hisproduct review high marks. If only the two had been different essays.Cheers,Scott-- R. Scott Rogersscott at madforjam.com"Orc Liver - the Paladin's foi gras"<a href="http://www.madforjam.com/dnd/main.html" target="_blank">http://www.madforjam.com/dnd/main.html</a></blockquote>

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