So I picked this up from Zak of D&D with Pornstars over here.

And I figured I'd answer it when I should be doing edits.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

So you like RPG products, and you figure RPG designers like to have their products reviewed, and if you start doing enough reviews, you figure you can start getting some free products to review and so you'll never have a drought of free material to use and read.

And that's cool. I'm all for it. But I have a little caveat.

Stop writing reviews that suck.

Seriously.

Stop now.

Likely, you will not, because you do not realize your review sucks. Let us discuss some ways your review will suck.

1. You will give me the pagecount breakdown.
    I shit you not, and I know that once upon a time, I was guilty of this crime myself. But let's face it-- I can usually see the table of contents from the preview or the product summary. Do you really think I need to know the exact number of pages allocated to feats or monsters or the OG-freaking-L? the TL;DR version? No, no I do not.

Would you like to know why? Because I don't want a book report. I don't need to know exactly how the author divided the book or focused on particular topics or chose to break down the subject matter. These things are unimportant, unless you are writing your review for Mrs. Cleveland's 2nd grade English Composition assignment.

1.A- What to do instead:
    Tell me what you liked about the book, how it inspired you, what you drew from the content. Sure, if you wanted more of X and less of Y, that's an acceptable thing to mention. If something seemed particularly off, or unintentional, or even inappropriate, that bears commenting. Telling me how the material got you thinking about your next game or an old game or a game you've been planning but haven't yet run is much better than showing me your reading comprehension is roughly higher than that of a dretch. This is the most important point of this post. I will repeat it, to be pedantic and annoying and hopefully make it stick. Tell me what works in the book, why it works, and what it makes you think about doing with the book--yes, that sounds dirty, and it's absolutely intentional.

2. You will use words like "meh."
    "Meh" is not a useful word for a review. You may think it is a convenient shorthand for "ambivalent," or another way to say "unimpressive."

It is not.

    "Meh" is the quickest way to look like a reviewing jackass. "Meh" shows no forethought or consideration and leaves me wondering what about the (artwork/writing/design/editing/layout) was "meh." If I want "meh," I'll swing by the FLGS and ask the bored register-monkey who only plays CCGs what he thought about the treeware version. I'll poll a bored table of gamers about the midnight madness adventure they stomped in an hour-fifteen. "Meh" tells me absolutely nothing and irritates me while you are at it.

2.A- What to do instead:
    Tell me what was uninspiring and why. For the love of the tiny baby savior of your choice, we play games of make-believe and imagination. Use your big-kid words and tell me in whole, complete thoughts why something in the book failed to impress you. Anything less, and I will expect you next to grunt and point while slapping the ground with a stick. If you're half-assing your review, why should I expect you did anything other than half-ass skim the text, and if that's the case, then wtf are you doing wasting my valuable time with a review which should have died in a text window you forgot to refresh before posting? Have some goddamned pride and actually explain your point of view complete with why you felt something was good or bad or in between.

3. You decide to talk about all the things you would have put in the product.
    It is very kind of you to tell the author and publisher how you clearly see the features they should have contributed, if only they had your wisdom. Keep your charity to yourself and stick to the material provided. I'm sure you're a fantastically talented GM, but I don't want to know about some other product you imagine. I want to know about this product.

That said...

    If there are missed opportunities, I want to know about it-- Should the author have logically covered something and didn't? Note the absence and talk about how this particular gap in content could have improved the existing material-- because then I have an idea of what I might need to do if I want to put this product to my own nefarious uses. But don't just say, "Oh, it needed X and would have been so much better for it," without explaining why. (See that again? We want to know "why." The author wants to know why. The prospective buyer wants to know why. Your justifications matter.) If the missing material is something you'd simply like on a personal preference, then note that, as well. Reviews are usually a matter of YMMV (your mileage may vary) and what you see as absolutely essential I may find to be a complete waste of wordcount and page real estate.

Finally. Have some pride and put your review through a spell check. Tuck in your shirt, comb your hair, let someone read over what you're posting if it's more than two paragraphs. Or at least plug it into a word processor to confirm you've made an attempt at complete sentences. As much fun as it is to trudge through three quarters of a page of your semi-literate ramblings, half-formed texting abbreviations, and emoticons, I prefer it so much more when it's free of blatant misspellings and gross abuses of grammar.

Now, having said this, I realize writing reviews is like any other form of writing-- you will improve over time, given you actually have a desire to do so. And I know my early attempts at reviews were often atrocious examples of how to bore the hell out of your elementary school teacher. I leave them unedited because either I cannot change them, or (as I prefer to think of it) they serve as monumental reminders of what I once belched forth on the Internet and called "a review." Once someone pointed out how I could improve my review style and do better, I endeavored to do so, and I think that change is evident.

So consider this our come-to-Jesus post, held over virtual beers and fried calamari, wherein I have laid the terrible truth bare to you. Your reviews suck. They still suck, and they will continue to suck until you give a rat's ass and start doing more than vomiting up a poor excuse for insight. Please stop sucking.

thanks bunches,

hugs and kisses.

-Ben.

Ok, so here's how I know that Hershel had to know Sophia was in the barn in the midseason conclusion of the Walking Dead.

Season 2, Day 0: Herd event, Sophia is lost in the woods. During the search, Otis shoots Carl.

This is important.

Rick takes Carl to Hershel, who then begins the process of saving Carl. Otis and Shane go for the supplies at the high school. 

Back at the road, Daryl and Andrea go out looking for Sophia.

This timeline is crucial, because it's in this span where Sophia is bitten, escapes and dies, and then makes her way to the farm to be captured. This means Herschel and Otis or Jimmy, possibly someone else must have helped put her in the barn-- as that's a two, probably three person operation. One person on the leash, one person on the entry door to the barn, and one person on the far side of the barn, drawing the attention of the walkers.

She can't have arrived later, because the Atlanta survivors had set a watch, and would have seen Sophia being put in the barn. It can't have happened while Carl was being tended but before Daryl, Andrea, and Dale arrived, because Otis was with Shane, Hershel and Patricia were with Carl, Maggie was going to get Lori, which only leaves Beth and Jimmy to put Sophia in the barn-- which could have happened, but then Jimmy would have to be either the most mentally challenged 17 year old male left alive or the most psychopathically capable liar, because he then later joins the search for Sophia, working hand in hand with Rick to find her.

Which means Hershel and likely one other surviving member of the Greene family not only knew Sophia was in the barn, but allowed the Atlanta survivors to continue searching for her-- after Daryl's injuries and the loss of the horse, after seeing them deal with the possibility she was alive when finding her doll.

The only way they might not have known she was in there was if Sophia got bit fairly shortly after Rick left her, stumbled towards the farm before dying and reanimating and Otis put her in the barn, by himself, before going hunting. This seems impractical for the simple fact that putting a walker into the barn required more than one person to do properly, and the Greene farm survivors, whatever their faults, at least seem to have figured out how to safely put a zombie in the barn without having the whole farm get overwhelmed.

Soooo.

The most likely conclusion leads us to the fact that Hershel knew Sophia was in the barn, and purposefully kept that information from the Atlanta survivors-- possibly to keep them preoccupied while Carl recovered well enough for them to depart to Fort Benning, at which time he might have (presumably?) told them the truth and offered to keep her there in the barn until a "cure" was found. Given his view on the walkers, I don't think he would have staged a "discovery" of the girl, knowing the Atlanta survivors (tearfully) just kill her. Which, overall, makes him just about the biggest monster we've seen so far; a deranged, manipulating, lying old man who can't accept the truth of the walkers, doesn't have the charity to recognize a good survival situation when it pulls up on his front lawn, and is too cowardly to come clean once the ruse is up.

If the Atlanta survivors had known Sophia was dead right away, they could have focused efforts on cleaning out the surrounding area of supplies-- using the horses with Maggie and Jimmy, and then splitting the take with the Greene survivors while not placing as much of a burden on the existing goods. Daryl wouldn't have suffered his injury, and they wouldn't be "going through the antibiotics so quickly." The scrambled poop sandwich of Season 2.5 is going to fall squarely on Hershel's plate. His choices were reprehensible, and the consequences could be pretty bad, too, depending on how things continue.

At long last, undisclosed Ars Magica project #2 (UAMP#2) has come to its first milestone with the completion of my final edits on the third portion of the manuscript!

Yes, it was as painfully convoluted as the previous sentence implies.

And so now I'm prepping for another Gencon, finishing some edits for Sub Rosa-- side bonus, I believe I'll be interviewing Lisa Stevens at Gencon!-- and doing a little Pathfinder design for Rite and Open Design, which is a big relief after the crushing weight of the UAMP#2. I do, however, know a ridiculous amount about 13C REDACTED, so ask away if you have a burning desire to learn more about 13C REDACTED.

With what's left of the year, I'd like to do some posts reviewing the various kickstarter projects I've been supporting, reading up on ZFS, and perhaps catching up as a patron in Midgard and Dark Roads. I'm looking forward to autumn and catching up on a lot of things. :) 

Here's to a productive season!

EDIT: I'm closing comments because I keep getting spambots with garbage comments.

 So, with a bit of time on vacation, I thought I'd post a quick note.

Streets of Zobeck is pretty much done-- I'm wrangling cartography and preparing for the web supplement.

Corrections for the Atlas Project #1 are just about done and sent back out.

Wordcount progresses for Atlas Project #2, where I have 2 weeks to finish up. That should be a busy 2 weeks.

The plan going forward is to post 4 times a month until deadlines demand otherwise, so I'll be starting down a few posts, and I'll try to make them up as we progress. I don't have any big projects in the queue right now, but there are a couple cooking. I'll keep you appraised.

I'm also planning on going to the Iron GM competition at TotalCon in about 3-4 weeks, so if you're going to be there, let me know and we can say hello! :)

So far I've been starting each new year here with a quote to drive the coming year...for this year, I saw it here in the park:

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." -- Walt Disney.

I hadn't thought of it before, but I think I might need to pick up his biography. I have a feeling there's a lot to be learned in there.

Here's to a productive 2011!

-Ben.

Tomorrow, at O-dark-thirty, I'll be off to the airport and on my way to Gencon, where I intend to be covered in the gory bits of Cthulhutech and Pathfinder for a full five days. :)

However.

I wanted to take a moment to bring up a project. Not my project, Streets of Zobeck-- though I'd love to have all three of you who read this blog sign up... but this one:

Aruneus, Zombies rise. Heroes die. A High Fantasy, Post-apocalyptic RPG project.

Why am I telling you to sign up for this here? Why not pimp my project? Because I've been pimping Streets quite a bit over teh intarwebs, here and here. And I'm going to Gencon, where I will be ninja stealth flyer distributing all week. Maybe. Could be. You can't prove it. And I know these guys won't exactly be doing the same. Who are they?

It's being run by Ben Gerber, who's a great reviewer on RPGnet and a designer with quite a few PDF products over on RPG Drivethru.

I've already picked up a couple of his PDFs and the world has a great vibe to it and does a good job of working in the horror aspects of a zombie apocalypse into a fantasy world. This may just scratch my zombie survival game itch without forcing me to run d20 modern. :D

But he needs about $480 to make it go. I'm looking at kicking in a little more, and maybe seeing if he won't consider the patronage model, because I like me the patronage model, but regardless, I think this has a great way of setting a campaign world-- why are your heroes together? Because they're the last survivors of their town, they saved each other on the road, they ask no questions about their past. It's Walking Dead meets Pathfinder and it gets me all kinds of crazy excited. :)

Do me a favor. Sign up for this. Then sign up for Streets of Zobeck... but sign up! :D

-Ben.

Wow...three months, it feels longer.

It's been a busy three months. I've finally seen closure of the Living Forgotten Realms debacle (Moral of the story, kids? Never, ever, never work without a contract. Ever. Seriously. Never.), written Grandmother's Fire for Tales of the Old Margreve, written a piece for an upcoming Ars Magica project which is in the hopper for first edits, sent Breaking of Forstor Nagar off to the editor, done a couple of reviews, and gotten tapped to lead an Open Design Pathfinder anthology of urban crime and steampunk adventures in Zobeck. Somewhere in there, I did a bunch of stuff for Coliseum Morpheuon, did a bunch of editing for Open Game Table, Vol2, and wrote a couple of short articles and reviews for Koboldquarterly.com. And so that leaves me working up a proposal for Atlas, outlining Streets of Zobeck in anticipation of greenlight, and desperately wishing it was time for Gencon, if only so I can chill out for a couple of days trying to shoot Cthulhu in the face. :)

So this is earning your spurs. :D I have a whole new respect for the guys who do this day in and day out, every day to buy the mac and cheese, keep the wolf from the door. The load is nothing like I thought it would be, not hard, just steady. The best quote I've seen in a while was a note I found on my brother's tumblr page: (distilled to the salient phrases for your reading pleasure.)

***Begin Transmission***


***End Transmission***

So. That's part of why I've been running so hard. Put it on the page, give it up and give it away, stay hungry and lean and searching, so I can pick stuff up like Solomon's Thieves or Virtuoso, or talk theory at "How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less" or rummage through Colonial Gothic, or Amethyst or Mouse Guard for ideas, devouring movies as fast as blockbuster can mail them, or dive into the rich vein of Eureka. Look for that throbbing pulse of emotional investment, figure out how to plug into it and juice the story up with a jolt of hard excitement and make it ache all the way to the base of your spine. Take the dross of the day and spin it into glamoured coin...I don't figure this ride's stopping anytime soon, thanks for coming along.

Let's get back to rocking it out,

-Ben.

(Reposted from Paizo.com)

I loved the first year of the Ultimates... Ok, I read through Kick-Ass, despite the storyline. I'm all for helping someone experiment with a story concept, and it had a "what if a normal kid tried this" vibe.

And today I picked up Nemesis.

Wow.

I'm nearly at a loss for words to properly describe this steaming scrambled poop sandwich.

Imagine someone decided Batman needed to be not only evil but violently psychopathic. Now, because it's "opposite and therefore cool," evil-Batman is clothed in *white*. He then proceeds on a senseless, gore-filled rampage that culminates in the comic-book-President of the US kneeling, cut and mangled, during a pirated television broadcast.

Why?

BECAUSE! F$&% YEAH! *fistpump*fistpump*

This feels like the aborted initial attempt of a junior high roleplaying group saying, "Less do uh eeeeeevil game, guysh."  And then their characters kill each other in a dispute over who gets to ride the black horse.

Seriously. I do not need to spend $2.99 to be reminded we're 9 meals from anarchy and the world's a terrible place. Thanks, but no. Just in case you were considering it, I'd vote to pass on this one. It doesn't even get the redeeming value of clever dialogue or an intriguing initial premise that'd I get from Warren Ellis (whose _No Hero_ was graphic, violent, and yet considered the price one was willing to pay for power or whose _Supergod_ explores the dangers in man seeking apotheosis.). Millar just seems to freebase a slurry of wanton destruction and profanity, then gratuitously splatter-vomit it back on the page while Du Hast* plays in the background with the volume cranked to 11.

-Ben.
--
*With apologies to Rammstein.

I've got a pitch running for Tales of the Margreve, and it's neck and neck-- which drives me nuts. Voting closes at 11:59 tonight, so I've got the day to see if the support rolls in.

*sigh* Who knows, if it's beat out for something more smashtastic, well, maybe I'll do it on my own.

I've got a fire in my belly for this one.

-Ben.

EDIT: 7 hours to go and I'm down a vote. >_<  C'mon voters!  

(I will say, not being able to alter one's vote puts a big negative on the forums for me. *sigh* )