Post originally by Sergio Mascarenhas at 2004-09-28 20:04:25
Converted from Phorums BB System

<< As a playtester for C&C, I assumed people would take any evaluation/judgment/benchmarking of the system as unreliable >>

Why should it be? If anything it would be more reliable because you had extensive experience with the system.

Once more, it all goes down to what you say. If you present opinions on how good the system is, how better it is to anything else around, then you will be judgemental for no reason, true.
But you may just present the basis of the system, its workings. Say, if you were writing a review of CoC you can say that it has attributes, it has skills, it is a percentile-based game, etc. You are presenting facts and if you do it accurately you are reliable.

Or look at it this way, why should we think that you are unreliable on what concerns system content and don't consider that you are unreliable about the looks of the game? Either you are unreliable, and then you are unreliable for everything and going by your thinking you should write no review at all; or you are reliable and you should review the product in its entirety.

<< My goal in the review was (a) to describe what someone gets for $30 and (b) to comment on the set's usefulness for beginners and pick-up gamers >>

And you failed on both accounts because you didn't describe the system and your comments are of no use for beginners and pick-up gamers. You see, this people want to play the game. They don't want to look at it. To play the game they need to get a glimpse of its core and its core is the system. All that you reviewed is secondary for that purpose.

<< I'll do the best I can to account for it in the future >>

I just hope you do this, not because of readers pressure, but because you realized how essencial it is in a review to present the system and rules.

Sergio