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Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs
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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 8929770" data-attributes="member: 22424"><p>There's a lot of truth in this. People can't bear to give the other side an inch, which means that when their favoured producer puts out a sucky product they still feel the need to laud it to the high heavens - often with some form of "if you don't like it, you clearly don't understand it argument".</p><p></p><p>Or, less often, the opposite - when the other side has a hit, they need to find some spurious grounds to tear it down. (That one is less common simply due to exposure - once you've checked out of 5e/PF/whatever you're unlikely to see the 'hit'.)</p><p></p><p>Another fundamental issue is the competing demands of relevance vs depth - most RPG materials can only really be properly judged based on actual use, but actual use takes time. Meanwhile, for a review to be of any great interest, it needs to come out close to the release of the product. Which means, unless you happen to get <em>very</em> early access, the best the reviewer can afford to do is a review based on a read-through. (And many reviews don't even seem to manage that.)</p><p></p><p>And, of course, there's the biggest fundamental issue of all: there's no consensus on what constitutes a good RPG adventure/setting/system anyway. What I'm looking for is almost certainly not what you're looking for. So the best we can probably hope for is to find a reviewer that we mostly agree with, and trust them for recommendations.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="delericho, post: 8929770, member: 22424"] There's a lot of truth in this. People can't bear to give the other side an inch, which means that when their favoured producer puts out a sucky product they still feel the need to laud it to the high heavens - often with some form of "if you don't like it, you clearly don't understand it argument". Or, less often, the opposite - when the other side has a hit, they need to find some spurious grounds to tear it down. (That one is less common simply due to exposure - once you've checked out of 5e/PF/whatever you're unlikely to see the 'hit'.) Another fundamental issue is the competing demands of relevance vs depth - most RPG materials can only really be properly judged based on actual use, but actual use takes time. Meanwhile, for a review to be of any great interest, it needs to come out close to the release of the product. Which means, unless you happen to get [I]very[/I] early access, the best the reviewer can afford to do is a review based on a read-through. (And many reviews don't even seem to manage that.) And, of course, there's the biggest fundamental issue of all: there's no consensus on what constitutes a good RPG adventure/setting/system anyway. What I'm looking for is almost certainly not what you're looking for. So the best we can probably hope for is to find a reviewer that we mostly agree with, and trust them for recommendations. [/QUOTE]
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