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| A fraction of my RPG books |
I have hundreds, if not a thousand RPG books. I've played numerous systems and games. So, when a new game or system is published, I like to read reviews about the game or try the game out before buying it. So, reviews are a great resource. I've been burned a few times where I bought a Kickstarter and found out the game was a clunker or that the game was rushed into production and not enough thought was put into streamlining the book or a through enough editing was done.
Yes, I'm used to errata. Before the internet, game publishers were more careful about making mistakes and corrected them in newer printings. I fear, the trend these days is to push things quick to market and correct the PDF afterwards. But if you got the first print edition, you get screwed. For example Alien RPG, the first printing, Pilots don't have the Piloting skill.
My pet peeves for RPG books:
1. Not using a professional editor/proof reader. Using MSWord autocorrect and Google Translate doesn't cut it. One KS delivered a badly translated RPG. The game was supposed to be decades old and very popular in Sweden. They had an early release PDF to allow us feedback. I'm a native US English speaker and have a college degree. I sent feedback and a number of my suggestions were rejected. The response from the company? We have a friend who's a Swedish expat in the US who speaks English, we rely on that person's judgement for the final decisions. OMG. I sold my copy of Trudvang. Great art, lousy system.
And if you don't use a professional proof reader, then pre-release the PDF, so your fans can give you feedback. Arc Dream at first didn't do this for their The Conspiracy KS. I mentioned this and they happily sent out pre-release PDFs to backers. I noticed that one of the fonts that mimicked an old typewriter was too hard to read. It was atmospheric, but led to sometimes hard to read names. I sent back examples for them to look over such as J-2 vs U-2. When I got the final release PDF, I noticed that they fixed it. Can you imagine if they didn't? As an aside, Arc Dream does a great job proofreading. Minimal typos if any in their products.
2. Important Rules in the Sidebar. Sidebars are for examples and flavor text. When GMs read the core book, we read the main text and look at the sidebars later. Sidebars do not Highlight Rules, sidebars say, "Ignore me until later when you have time to read me."
3. Inconsistent phrasing. Not having a System/World Bible, so you use different names for the same thing throughout your core book. Then indexing the wrong words, so you can't even find the rule you're looking for. I'm looking at you Alien RPG. You can't find Air Supply in the index. You need to look up Consumables. And good luck on finding how Stun weapons work. It's under the detailed description of the G2 Electroshock Grenade p.125.
4. Rules in the wrong place or missing rules. See #2 & #3 above. I'm looking at you The One Ring 2e. If you buy the Starter Set, you can't play the game. Good luck on figuring out what Attribute Level is for monsters. It's not in the rules provided with the Starter Set. You need the core book p.143. The rules in the Starter Set are all Player facing rules, so all the GM rules are missing and there's no GM rule booklet in the Starter Set.
5. Renaming standard RPG terms to be cute. I prefer GM (Game Master). But there's DM (Dungeon Master), Master of Ceremonies, Keeper of Arcane Lore, Storyteller, Narrator, Director, Facilitator, etc. These are all cute and I can figure this out. But then they start renaming NPC to GMPC, etc. Hit Points to Conditions, Health, Stamina, etc. I bought Invisible Sun and I still haven't been able to read past the first book because you need to translate from Invisible Sun speak to RPG speak. It's a giant barrier to understanding the game and playing it. The excuse for renaming common terms is to be "immersive." It's so immersive, I couldn't get into it like trying to climb into a bathtub full of mercury.
6. Bad rule book organization. Making it hard to find rules when running the game. The core books are written to be easily read, but then information is spread out to various sections. The publishers don't want to duplicate info, to save page count, but when info is spread out everywhere, it's impossible to use the core book as a reference book. Mödiphius 2d20 games such as Dune and Achtung! Cthulhu were painful to use at the table. GM pauses the game in what seems like an eternity, trying to look up a rule because misapplication could probably kill a PC. And this happens multiple times during a gaming session.
RPG Game Reviews
One of my friends did a podcast. They decided to talk about Vampire RPG. During the podcast they admitted they've never played the game. WTF? How can you be opinionated about something you've never even tried? Let alone talk a whole hour about it? I've played and run Vampire before and found their comments uninformed.
Book reviewers review a book after they've read it. That is the experience of the book. But RPG books are a different animal. You need to read it and either run the game or play it to experience it. So, I have problems with RPG reviewers who just read the book and don't play it. It's like a movie reviewer who just reads the movie script. Or a book reviewer who only reads the blurb.
I understand some people make a living reviewing RPG books, so they don't have the time to run/play every publication and the output volume of their reviews is their focus. And reading massive amounts of RPG books does increase your ability to make an informed decision. But that doesn't replace cracking open the book and trying to use it in a game.
I've read mediocre reviews of a game I've played in that was very, very fun. I've also read a glowing review of a RPG, but when I looked at Reddit posts about people who tried to play the game, they found it was horrible. It read well, but played terrible. So, I now read reviews with a grain of salt and also consult other online sources, especially comments from people who actually played the game.
I also don't want spoilers for scenarios, but I want to have enough information to decide if that scenario or campaign is right for my gaming group.
So, when I do review a game or scenario, I don't do it until I've been able to play or run it myself. When I've only played it*, I would still want to read the scenario, to differentiate what is in the scenario vs any GM invented material. What's worse than saying, "Hey, that's a great scenario, I'd like to run it," and then finding out your GM invented half of the material or merged multiple scenarios to make the game that you played, so the scenario you're recommending has nothing to do with what's published.
*I want to differentiate my review of a published scenario vs my convention reports about the games I've played in. My reviews are informed opinions about a published scenario I've run, or played in and have read afterwards. A convention report is more about the experience I had. I generally do not go and read the convention scenario I've played in, unless I enjoyed it so much that I plan on running it myself.
My blog post on various CoC campaigns and scenario books: https://morganhua.blogspot.com/2021/11/cthulhu-campaigns-run-times-and-thoughts.html
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