Opinion about Industry people

[mattcolville]

I've only really posted one review of anything, specifically because I work in the industry. I was powerfully displeased with a Wizards product that shall remain nameless. And as I expressed my displeasure, and realized that the author was probably reading my posts, I shut up. Simply because I don't want any conversation I have with this guy in the future to be tained by his memory of my gripes with his product.

I know professionals who, privately, are very critical of the bulk of d20 stuff out there. But in many instances they're criticizing things that only a professional would notice. I, on the other hand, GM and play D&D weekly, sometimes twice a week and usually find fault with things as an end user.

I'll tell you this, after being pretty unhappy with most of the Wizards adventures, and having a *very* difficult time sorting through the morass of unorganized adventures at both my FNGS, I finally found an adventure I liked and I'm running it this Friday. It's from Fiery Dragon, it's the second of the two Nature's Fury adventures (which, oddly, is the lower-level adventure). It's short, has everything I need in the right order, and has one neat idea and one cool complication. Done. I think it's by Mike Mearls (who did my favorite tavern in eden's new taverns book). The first adventure might be cool too, dunno.

I'm seriously considering offering my services to my local game stores and developing a system (say, by LEVEL, the obvious way, as opposed to just throwing all the d20 books in a huge pile as they do) for organizing their adventures. Probably not worth my while, but it might be a noble effort.

 

[trancejeremy]

Except for one person who playtests for a certain company giving their products glowing reviews here, I have never seen a person affiliated with a company reviewing their own products.


I do agree, it can be a bit annoying having people push their own products on message boards. Like that timeline guy.

 

[mattcolville]

Except for one person who playtests for a certain company giving their products glowing reviews here, I have never seen a person affiliated with a company reviewing their own products.

I have no problem with a playtester praising a game in public, as long as he doesn't violate his NDA. It's no different that someone going to see a preview screening of a movie and saying "I saw it! It's awesome!"

Besides, playtesting is thankless work, I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Besides, playtesting is thankless work, I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I recommend thanking them, then.

 

[mearls]

I'll tell you this, after being pretty unhappy with most of the Wizards adventures, and having a *very* difficult time sorting through the morass of unorganized adventures at both my FNGS, I finally found an adventure I liked and I'm running it this Friday. It's from Fiery Dragon, it's the second of the two Nature's Fury adventures (which, oddly, is the lower-level adventure). It's short, has everything I need in the right order, and has one neat idea and one cool complication. Done. I think it's by Mike Mearls (who did my favorite tavern in eden's new taverns book). The first adventure might be cool too, dunno.

Actually, if it's the second adventure (the one that takes place in the iceberg) it was written by James Bell, one of the most underrated writers in the d20 biz. One of FDP's many strengths is their ability to organize an adventure in a logical, coherent manner for DMs. Putting a module together in a readable format is, IMHO, one of the more overlooked aspects of adventure design and something I keep an eye on when desiging a module. It can be rather tricky. I'm currently writing a Warhammer FRP adventure with a lot of different locations, NPCs who are linked to one place but are normally found in another, and so on. Part of the challenge in RPG design lies not only in building rules or setting ideas, but formatting the information in a manner that is easy to use and reference during play.

Both adventures in Nature's Fury follow the same general format, so hopefully the other adventure should be just as readable.

 

[Fiery James]

I finally found an adventure I liked and I'm running it this Friday. It's from Fiery Dragon, it's the second of the two Nature's Fury adventures (which, oddly, is the lower-level adventure). It's short, has everything I need in the right order, and has one neat idea and one cool complication. Done. I think it's by Mike Mearls (who did my favorite tavern in eden's new taverns book).

Wow, Matt, thanks. I was having a really crummy day today, but this comment brightened it considerably.

I'm seriously considering offering my services to my local game stores and developing a system (say, by LEVEL, the obvious way, as opposed to just throwing all the d20 books in a huge pile as they do) for organizing their adventures. Probably not worth my while, but it might be a noble effort.

Fiery_Todd and I have a bet when we go into our local game store: who can stay calm the longest... usually we're both too frustrated with the place within 5 minutes. For one thing, they put there bestsellers on the bottom shelf - right at the floor. Product they've had since the release of the first d20 stuff sits at eye level - forever. It hasn't moved yet.

And, I'm not asking for any special favours from them, but we've certainly offered our "local boys" status to help them out by providing free copies, posters and autographs. No interest from them - they'll order one of each, same as everyone else.... and put it on the bottom shelf. It's not like I think we're celebrities or anything, but we'd do whatever we could to help out his sales....

Anyway, that's an obvious sore point. I've put my time in with the retail world, and the total lack of ability the employees show just astounds me. <shudder>


Anyway, back on topic: All of the FDP gang use a "Fiery" prefix; I shamelessly self-promote, but I would never review another d20 product - I've got far too many biases to ever even attempt a fair review.

- James

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

I don't know about being able to make people add the company that they work for to their sig, or making them state it. I sure couldn't do this; in the past year I've done freelancing for a number of companies and it would take a good deal of my sig saying which publishers and in what capacity. My second reason being that there are indeed instances where an industry person may want to illicit opinion without revealing his own bias on the subject. Reviewing your own products, sure, I agree that this is a ludicrous practice - who'd believe you're being honest - but this happens so rarely that making a macro adjustment for it just doesn't make sense.

Messageboard communities such as this must make full use of the honor code system otherwise they rapidly die as its users get tired of the slippery-sloap of the facist policies that tend to follow that first step. If you learn that someone from the industry is unfairly representing themselves and/or their product, there is a simple solution without changing ENWorlds rules: A) Don't pay attention to any further reviews from that person and B) don't buy their products. The best way to make your discontent known to an underhanded publisher/writer/whatever is to hit them in the wallet.

 

[tensen]

I recommend thanking them, then.

*chuckle*
I really got a kick out of that responce.

 

[tsadkiel]

Except for one person who playtests for a certain company giving their products glowing reviews here, I have never seen a person affiliated with a company reviewing their own products.

Ulp. Hope that's not me - I did review a pair of Eden products and forgot to add in a disclaimer stating that A) I playtest for Eden (though I didn't work on either book in question) and B) I had recieved both copies in exchange for said reviews.

I still feel stupid about forgetting the disclaimer, and was hoping no one had noticed.

 

[Noah Kolman]

KenzerCo Staff

Hey,

I am pretty sure that all of the Kenzer and Company staff recognize themselves as such on these boards, but if you ever have any questions, you can always email me at noah@kenzerco.com to double check. The three people who consistently post from our company are myself, Mark Plemmons and David Kenzer, all of whom sign their posts with their names.