A Milestone & Bad Reviews

A Milestone Is Reached
Well, I've made it to 33 posts :-)

I've had 4000 page views, which I know is less than the number of posts Eric Tenkar has made!

I've got followers, endorsements, and comments (complimentary ones, encouraging ones, questioning ones, and ones that feel more like a drive-by-shooting!).

Thanks for everything, and for making it seem less like I'm posting into the void...

With or without the blog, I'd still be playing, and I'd still be obsessing about the game on my drive to work, on my drive home from work, and on my runs; but putting it all down here gives at least some of my ideas a chance to fly away and have lives of their own.

I've got more ideas for games (whether you like them or not I hope they make you think!), and some more Best & Worst (though worst is far easier to find!) and I've got a little bit more to complete presenting the rules for Explore (I'm nearly at the end if you ignore spell and monster descriptions) - I've still got to decide what to do with it after that.

In addition I'm planning on branching out into sharing some of the adventures I've written for my group, and modifications/extensions I made to some classic D&D and Star Frontiers modules.

So now's a good moment to offer advice or steer my direction or advise on how to promote the blog better if you feel so inclined.

To finish with, I'll give one thought that doesn't seem to merit an entire blog entry all on it's own (and to pretend this isn't all a lot of navel gazing*).

Bad Reviews
In the Strategic Review #3, Gary Gygax vented his spleen about a bad review. He even went as far as accusing the reviewer of having ulterior motives, wanting to do down D&D so that he could begin "peddling a line of his own creations". The actual review, is notable for two things - firstly (hilariously!) that the reviewer mistakenly played the entire game with miniatures on a tabletop dungeon so could see the entire dungeon, so suggested that the game would be best played over the phone!!!! Secondly, and far more importantly, he had played the game he was reviewing.

Now what's so unusual about that?

Well, I've recently noticed that in the world of RPGs, reviews seem mostly to be written by people who have not played the game (or module) that they are reviewing. Some of these are negative - indeed it's not necessary to play a game to complain about awful typos, bad writing, or awful organisation - but some are overwhelmingly positive reviews without ever having played the game!!!

Would you ever consider purchasing a board game where the reviewer had just read the instruction booklet? A book reviewed from the back cover? A film from the trailer?

Does this state of affairs seem really odd to anyone else?

So wasn't that "bad review" Gygax was complaining about a better review than most modern ones?

*not to be confused with naval gazing, which is something entirely different.