[smascrns]

Originally Posted by Bochi

I won't get into a pissing contest about how your law degree beats my ten years as a professional critic. Obviously we both feel our historical perspectives are relevant to a proper assessment of our writings on the subject...

I didn't write it as a competition to show my credentials and I'm sorry if it sounded like that. I was just pointing to from where I come and why I look at things the way I do.
[QUOTE]I'm not sure that you need to look at classic games as independent products because they form closed systems (no new product being produced in the line) and you can therefore have the full range before you.[QUOTE]
Well, as an infrequent reviewer I understand your perspective but I don't have a definite answer to this issue for myself. For instance, when I reviewed RQ3 despite the fact that my edition (de Luxe) did include the monster manual I didn't review this particular book. I was focuzing on the rules system, so the creatures were not core to my review. If one wants to review ADD, one should - as you say - have the full range in mind but it still makes sense to review its parts in separate, otherwise a single review may be too much.

But in any case Lev doesn't seem to want to look at them as "part of a whole" at all, and I think that is a serious fault when we all know perfectly well that AD&D 1e has a vast back catalogue which does address some of the criticisms and which refined itself as it developed.

On what concerns ADD1 core books He started with the PHB but I would have prefered if he had reviewed the DMB before MM, yes.

Actually a reviewer has a duty to explain that something is a part of a larger thing or requires other material to make it work - and whether that material is available.

Agreed, even if sometimes one may consider that most people are aware of that, specially in the case of such a major game like ADD. But then, a lot of players may know DD without knowing ADD1.

Lev doesn't. He doesn't tell us for example in this review that the monster stats are repeated in the DMG and usually in the modules, and that ecology material is in the settings books and modules, and therefore the MM is not, in fact, very necessary to playing modules, but is more useful for constructing your own campaign. That would be the result of treating the book as part of the historical product line and also acknowledging there are other products connected to it.

Yet this does not contradict his basic statement: That the MM is of very low interest in its own. Let me give you an example, I consider Mongoose's RQ core rulebook to be very incomplete and lacking as a stand alone gamebook. One can point to me that it is an excellent ressource when taken in conjunction with its Companion book and the setting books. I can only say, so what? If I'm looking at the usability of a book on its own, I don't care about other books, specially if that book is sold as something that can be used on its own. (In the case of MRQ saying that are other books that complement it is actually part of the negative criticism since it is marketed as a book that works on itself.)

Then a reader would be in a better position to make up his or her mind about the effect of its deficiencies on the sort of game they want to play today. It does not have to mean the rating changes or the recommendation, but it would make it a more useful description of the book. Does this make sense?

It makes.

You may of course argue that any game that spreads itself across three or more books is bloated and undesirable

I don't! I actually like the DD model of Players book, GM book, other stuff books (even if I might distribute content among these in a different way).