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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jmucchiello" data-source="post: 399848" data-attributes="member: 813">I'm writing this as a consumer of RPG products. This has no bearing on my publishing of them.I hate wide margins and fat fonts in books I buy. I want as much relavent information is as tight a space as is readable so I don't have to flip through multiple pages to refer to something. If a process takes 3 pages to describe, there should be a half page summary somewhere that will lessen the page turning.This one I almost agree with you. I would prefer both. Give me raw facts and then tell me what you thought of those facts. Crothian's reviews tend to highlight the good and the bad spells, feats or prestige classes, it is a decent compromise. Especially since you cannot go over every spell in a review. I would go so far as to say a pure raw facts review is just as useless as a pure opinion review. You need a mix of both so that, as a reader, I can rate the reviewer. When I see a good (well-written) review of a book I've been thinking about buying, I usually "rate" the review by going to the FLGS and reading a prestige class that was glowingly received and another that was disliked so I can see if I have the same opinion about the material. If we disagree, I no longer use that review to sway my purchase.I've bought mimeographed supplements without a thought to their lack of style. We sort of disagree here. I cannot remember ever being on the brink of buying a book and being swayed to buy it because the artwork was good. I don't pick up my RPG books and flip through them looking at the art. I read comic books but I only buy the ones made by writers I trust.The opposite is not true. A book with bad artwork I will not get to the point where I'm considering buying it. If there are obvious typoes, especially in a printed product, I put the book down because I've yet to buy a book filled with typoes that was not also full of bad rules interpretations. There are even books that I've not purchased because of the layout. I'm going to spend months with these books, I don't want my eyes watering because the pages are too busy.As Crothian replied above, RPGs are functional books. Most literary or film criticism assumes you are going to read or watch the film once, perhaps have 1-2 conversations about it with other viewers and then have it slowly fade out of your consciousness. RPG books are read, disected and rule-lawyered over for years and years. I'm not going to see that typo once and shake my head as I continue past it. I'm going to see a dozen times and when someone asks about the spell it's in I'll even say, it does X, Y, and Z, not to mention they spelled "bundeld" wrong in it. Notice that Autos and consumer electronics are also things that are used over and over again.Are you crazy? No, you just aren't annoyed when you see the same typo for the dozenth time apparently.Joe</blockquote>

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