Quote:
Originally Posted by Destriarch
Heh, the McLennan / Sartin reviews are pure rant from one end to the other, that doesn't make them any less enjoyable or useful because they quantify and qualify their displeasure in no uncertain terms, but sometimes I do want to scream at them 'Ok, we get the idea you don't like the games, but stop insulting them already and get on with telling us why! I know you will eventually, but the venom is flowing too freely and is slowing me down!' (I still love them, though.) I didn't get that feeling in particular from this review. Sure, it could have been a little more illuminating and useful, but you have to take into account the nature of the product that is being reviewed here. It's a preview book, and is bound by its nature to have large gaps and unquantifiable areas making it very difficult to be useful about. What would be worse for sure is a totally orgasmic response with no real substance behind it. At least there was balance here, though some more substance would have been welcome.
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Hey all. I wrote the review. It will be my first of hopefully many.
It's been mentioned before that many of the reviews on rpg.net are just detailed lists of a book's contents, with no real commentary or insight. I find most of those boring. My reviews are always going to be a bit different stylistically. For this one, I didn't feel the need to get into the nitty-gritty details of what the book contains - we can all go read gigantic threads on ENWorld about that. I thought it would be more interesting, as a piece of criticism, to offer my take on the book's "main idea," which is the drastic change about to be applied to a lot of D&D canon.
As to whether or not this was a good review, look at the debate it triggered. I think my main point was to get people talking and thinking about the changes to come.