Some thoughts on the place of criticism in the world of #ttrpg and why I have decided to stop reviewing other people's games.

On Criticism and TTRPGs

After some amount of reflection, I have decided to stop reviewing RPGs. At least for the foreseeable future. There are a number of motivators behind this decision but the first and foremost is that I am burned out to the point where the sense of fatigue has begun to filter over into other areas. Having…

Taskerland (tasker.land)

@Taskerland The crux of reviewing games *properly* will always be that you have to drag your group along with you, or it's just reading and imaging how it might all play out. One of the reasons people gravitate towards write ups with stat blocks and balancing is they can scan a scenario and mathematically deduce "this will be unthreatening to GM"

If there was a big group of people sharing reviews it would be much more doable. Broader shoulders. One group can't fairly be a testbed - not fun.

@Printdevil It's interesting that, of the people who do review across more than one silo, a lot of them are board-gamers so they have a circle of friends who are happy to jump on some weird game and give it a try for a couple of sessions and then never return to it.

@Taskerland That's easy to do with board games though, and most people are looking at the onboarding ... tee hee or learning stage of a game, to see whether it's worth buying rather than the longevity of a game. We look at RPGs in a much more structural "would I invest a two year long campaign in this"

@Taskerland That's easy to do with board games though, and most people are looking at the onboarding ... tee hee or learning stage of a game, to see whether it's worth buying rather than the longevity of a game. We look at RPGs in a much more structural "would I invest a two year long campaign in this"

@Printdevil @Taskerland Some research from a few years ago suggests that the typical hobbyist boardgame gets played something like six times. (This was used to excuse the monstrous waste of "legacy" games.) I think it's also worth considering the number of systems that show up with quickstarts these days: yeah yeah you can generate a character later, here's something you get you right into the actual play experience and see if you like it.

@Printdevil That's an interesting question though... Indie games are not built for long-term campaigns and I'm not sure that PbtA games are either. D&D games still are but I'm not sure how many people get there and OSR people make a lot of noise about long-term play but then most of their stuff is geared towards low-level and short-term campaigns of no more than 5-10 sessions.

I think gamers of our generation still believe that 2 year campaigns are the gold standard but I'm not sure of others.

@RogerBW That's funny... for all that boardgamers piss and moan about monopoly, I bet the family monopoly set gets more than 6 outings. @Printdevil

@Taskerland @Printdevil The PbtA I've looked at most closely is Monsterhearts, and that has an explicit endpoint. You can port one or more characters from there to a new campaign, but it's definitely a separate thing.
I find I actually prefer shorter campaigns but that may be because I enjoy inventing a world more than running in it.

@RogerBW That's funny... for all that boardgamers piss and moan about monopoly, I bet the family monopoly set gets more than 6 outings. @Printdevil