So some brave guy has guts and knowledge to write a review of Sorcerer and Sword by Ron Edwards on rpg.net. And it is critical one. See for yourself.
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13811.phtml (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13811.phtml)
Now the Forge (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26384.0) has discuss the issue in sooo... typical manner.
1. Denial (I won't read it! I don't care)
2. It's not worth reading.
3. He is unfair. It's not review, but a statement. War on swines etc.
4. At least he was so stupid to buy it.
5. Blashemy, some one stand up for the reviewer. Lock the thread!!!
I started reading it because I was genuinely curious about what the game was about.
I stopped reading part way through and think #2 and #3 might be right...
:shrug:
They gave the review the standard fanboy response, but the one the Forgers are most prone to,
Quote from: greyormI had the distinct feeling the reviewer was suffering from "Clearly Does Not Get It" syndrome in regards to Sorcerer's game play
"It's not that it's no good, you just don't
understand it."
Edit: Sergio is a terrible writer, though. His review was barely readable. A while back he did a series of columns for rpg.net on game design, they were pretty dreadful.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;220182Edit: Sergio is a terrible writer, though. His review was barely readable.
Funny thing is, I have no problem to read him... :-)
I love the ending of that thread!
Quote from: Ron EdwardsAll discussion of that review can stay at RPG.net, where there's software dedicated exactly to that purpose.
This thread didn't have much purpose in the first place, and now that it's attracting some kind of spillover from the discussion at RPG.net, it has no purpose. So, no more posting to it, from anyone.
The preceding post is striving to be flamebait and deserves no attention here.
Ron
It's lovely, isn't it?
Not only won't he read the review - you can't judge an rpg without playing it, but can judge a review without reading it, apparently - but he won't even have any discussion of it in his forum.
It's plain Uncle Ronny enjoys a free exchange of ideas.
The problem with Sergio is that, while partly spot on, he is also nuts.
Quote from: Alnag;220187Funny thing is, I have no problem to read him... :-)
Kyle may shoot himself in the head for this, but I agree with him. Sergio isn't a good writer. Dense and rather difficult to dig through although it can be done with effort. A good writer would make even complex matters nearly effortless.
I'm rather surpised that Sergio came down so hard on Ron. They're not that different in some ways (both like to over complicate things). I'm also surpised that he reviewed the game at all. It's like so yesterday.
RPGNet at least used to have better reviewers. I wish one of them had done this.
That's a horrible review. I own the book, and I GMed the game a couple of times (yes, throw your rotten fruits already), but what this bozo has done and ad-hoc houseruled had in the only shallow resemblance to the Sorcerer rules.
Sergio's spot on in many points (like the tacked-on advice that has fuck all to do with S&S, or Destiny that dangles around without any connection to the system, or the derivative nature of exemplaric settings and PCs), but there are so many factual errors that it insults my craftperson's pride as a reviewer.
From the review alone, he doesn't sound to me like someone on the war on swine. The focus on the fluff-y parts, the extensive search for thematic points (civilization vs barbarism), the use of references to LeGuin essays, the lamentation about the shallow character creation and the extremely free-wheeling system use looks to me more like the handwriting of a typical WW storyteller, than that of a typical user here on theRPGsite.
Maybe it looks a bit elsewise if I read the RPG.net discussion thread, but as of now, I'd stand to my evaluation.
BTW, I had no trouble with the language, it was more the content that made me read in a slow pace. (What might have to do with the fact that I'm not a native speaker and therefore not that perceptive towards bad wording, grammar mistakes etc.)
Yeah, to be fair, Sergio doesn't write very well and much of the latter half of his review seemed baseless. I have a severe dislike of the Forge folks, but even I could see that Sergio seemed to be willfully ignoring the meaning of a "Sorceror" in the Sorceror game during his Conan rant (Ron's penchant for poorly thought-out terminology again perhaps) and that his "actual play" didn't even use the system correctly.
The first half of the review, where he analyzed the text of the book, was pretty much spot-on, however. I bought Sorceror & Sword when the rpg.net buzz about the book was huge. The essays about the S&S genre were disappointing to me to say the least, for many of the same reasons given in the review. The whole "indie manifesto" thing was a larf, too.
The Forge thread is just plain funny.
Interesting that he closed it right after the first post defending the review.
His reaction in the initial post is very off-putting. He's clearly convinced that he is absolutely right and that any criticisms of his work are absolutely wrong. Always a bad sign in a creative person, especially one who has tended to be quite savvy economically in terms of producing and publishing small press games.
The correct response would be, à la Fred Hicks, "Thanks for taking the time and effort to so thoroughly review my book. I'm sorry that some of it didn't appeal to you but your criticisms were instructive and will help me in my future productions."
Yeah, well, I won't be buying that. If I bought it it would be a pure pleasure read for the S&S genre essays, and it sounds like they're not worth reading.
The S&S essays are alright. That said, now that I type this, I realize I have completely forgotten what they're actually saying. So, they're alright but apparently not memorable.
Re. Sergio, he's a BRP FOREVAR dude. Above all, though, he's a crackpot.
Quote from: walkerp;220280The correct response would be, à la Fred Hicks, "Thanks for taking the time and effort to so thoroughly review my book. I'm sorry that some of it didn't appeal to you but your criticisms were instructive and will help me in my future productions."
Indeed.
Seanchai
Quote from: KenHR;220268The first half of the review, where he analyzed the text of the book, was pretty much spot-on, however. I bought Sorceror & Sword when the rpg.net buzz about the book was huge. The essays about the S&S genre were disappointing to me to say the least, for many of the same reasons given in the review. The whole "indie manifesto" thing was a larf, too.
I was planning to buy Sorceror & Sword too, but luckily I didn't. If it's written as Ron's articles are, I wouldn't have understood a thing.
This, and other things, taught me to take the hype from rpg.net with a grain of salt.
Quote from: walkerp;220280The correct response would be, à la Fred Hicks, "Thanks for taking the time and effort to so thoroughly review my book. I'm sorry that some of it didn't appeal to you but your criticisms were instructive and will help me in my future productions."
Absolutely! No authour ever gained anything from arguing with a reviewer.
But then, no authour gained anything from preventing discussion of a review by others. Silly Uncle Ronny. It's not like his Forgers were going to side against him and his book in his little den :D
I don't know Ron personally, but to me he seems neither like a guy who considers it as important to be popular outside of his circle of believers, nor as someone who cares about how much money he makes with his game design hobby.
When these two interests don't apply, you don't really need to be polite to negative reviewers, although it makes you look like a jerk.
Quote from: Pierce Inverarity;220207The problem with Sergio is that, while partly spot on, he is also nuts.
Yup.
Quote from: KenHRYeah, to be fair, Sergio doesn't write very well and much of the latter half of his review seemed baseless. I have a severe dislike of the Forge folks, but even I could see that Sergio seemed to be willfully ignoring the meaning of a "Sorceror" in the Sorceror game during his Conan rant (Ron's penchant for poorly thought-out terminology again perhaps) and that his "actual play" didn't even use the system correctly.
My problem with this is that everyone is talking about Conan when they talk Sword&Sorcery. There are several examples of S&S protagonsist who would not fit the "sorcerer" mold, and are governed by very different forces. So while Ron's solution may fit some characters (e.g. Conan, Jirel or Solomon Kane), the fit becomes bad when we consider Ffahrd and the Grey Mouser (who are very much not "driven" after
Ill Met in Lankhmar - they are mostly irresponsible people getting into various calamities), Cugel, Satampra Zeiros (you may make a very forced analogy with him, but it won't be worth much), Merritt's earthman protagonists (excluding the guy from
Dwellers in the Mirage), and a host of Leigh Brackett characters, with the possible exceptions of John Eric Stark (a weak case) and Conway from
The Lake of Gone-forever. Sorcerer's characterisation only fits a restricted circle of S&S heroes, and even there it is hammering the square peg into the round hole.
Kinda poor form from the guy advocating "fit the rules to the game"... :D
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;220545Absolutely! No authour ever gained anything from arguing with a reviewer.
But then, no authour gained anything from preventing discussion of a review by others. Silly Uncle Ronny. It's not like his Forgers were going to side against him and his book in his little den :D
Dude is that how they're spelling "author" in Oz nowadays?
Yes. Also we write about favours, colours, and scientists will speak of vapour pressure.
And then we analyse and institutionalise and civilise. The only time we use the "z" (zed, not zee) in place of the "s" is in the word "Americanize".
We can also both spell and say "aluminium".
Queen's English, old boy.
Well, my dictionary, which is the Concise Oxford, says 'author'.
Alnag: When you are brave enought to criticize... let's say 4e you got similar response from 4e fanatics... same story, with different actors, only diffërence is that in one of these cases the response is seen as blasphemous rage while in other case it's seen as righteous rage...
Good point Fritzs. As always the real problem tends to be fanaticism more than the actual opinion, whether for or against.
Quote from: Melan;220814My problem with this is that everyone is talking about Conan when they talk Sword&Sorcery. There are several examples of S&S protagonsist who would not fit the "sorcerer" mold, and are governed by very different forces.
Always a danger when one generalizes. Also why writing to a formula or trying to strictly to adhere to a genre as defined what's already written in a genre instead of just writing a good story often falls flat. Also probably why, despite all of the claims that some people are playing "story games" that they seem very reluctant to talk about the quality of the stories they produce in their games as stories.
Quote from: Melan;220814My problem with this is that everyone is talking about Conan when they talk Sword&Sorcery.
Absolutely, I'm right there with you on that point. But Sergio's criticism still willfully ignored the intent and application of the game mechanics. If he'd applied them properly and used Sorceror's terminology, then illustrated how those mechanics still failed to emulate a lot of what goes in S&S (using examples like yours), that part of the review would have been much stronger. That's all I was saying with regard to the Conan criticism.
Leaving aside the problems with the product, some of which I agreed with and some of which I did not, I thought it was a terrible review.
He reviews the supplement without any knowledge of the rules of the game it's a supplement to, and so misses the mook rules.
He playtests by playing against himself using houserules when the full rules do in fact cover the situation in question.
He ignores kickers and bangs, which while I don't think are as revolutionary as is claimed for them are fundamental to how the game is supposed to be played. His stated kickers just aren't, they're flatly not kickers as described in that game.
He makes factually wrong statements, it's quite clear in Sword that a Lore 1 character may not have bound demons.
It's a poor hatchet job. I sold my copy of Sword, as although I found some of the essays quite useful the system in the end didn't do it for me (ironically for the reason identified, most S&S characters aren't sorcerors in the Sorceror sense), and I am most definitely not a Ron Edwards fanboy - but a shit review is still a shit review. He ignored the rules as written, seemed not to have read them all, houseruled the game unnecessarily and then criticised how his own houseruled played out when he did a mock fight.
When people tried to correct factually wrong statements in the thread he got aggressive, sure there were also some of the usual "you didn't get it" responses which annoy me as much as anyone. But plenty of responses were not "you don't get it" but "that's not what the rules as written say" which is quite a different thing.
The Forge thread I have no interest in, save to note that it's Ron Edwards personal forum for his games and as far as I'm concerned he's welcome to run it as he sees fit and if I don't like it (and I don't particularly) I'm free not to post there (which I don't).
If someone reviewed Gurps Fantasy without a copy of Gurps to hand, made up houserules because they couldn't find some rules in the supplement itself, and then criticised it because those house rules didn't work, we'd laugh at them. Sergio's review was a partisan piece of hackwork, nothing more.
Also, criticising a game in a review is brave? I don't think so.
Incidentally, if I recall correctly Sergio hasn't gamed with an actual group for several years now, which I think unfortunately does show in his reviews and essays. I don't think you necessarily have to play a game to review it, but I think if it's a long time since you played anything you can end up getting a little, well, odd.
Balbinus: What interests me more is the fact that even such shitty review is viewed as some heroic act in holy war by some people... As if it's really no longer is about any discusion, or even gaming, but about religion...
Quote from: Fritzs;220827Alnag: When you are brave enought to criticize... let's say 4e you got similar response from 4e fanatics... same story, with different actors, only diffërence is that in one of these cases the response is seen as blasphemous rage while in other case it's seen as righteous rage...
If I remember correctly Fritzs, I didn't lock any thread about 4e so far. Not even that. You had my full attention in adressing all the issues you fear are wrong with 4e. So your comparison somehow miss the crucial point. Which is not the review per se, but rather the handling of it.
I pretty much don't care which kind of rage it is, what I care is whether there are some issues worth discussing. If you belive, that sergio's review has no true point whatsoever and so it deserves to be bashed, locked and forgotten well... say it than. If not, what do you thing, was it handled the proper way?
Quote from: Fritzs;220924Balbinus: What interests me more is the fact that even such shitty review is viewed as some heroic act in holy war by some people... As if it's really no longer is about any discusion, or even gaming, but about religion...
Yup, fanaticism again.
Quote from: Fritzs;220924Balbinus: What interests me more is the fact that even such shitty review is viewed as some heroic act in holy war by some people... As if it's really no longer is about any discusion, or even gaming, but about religion...
We sing in praise of total war
Against the Forge whom we abhor
To spread the word of Pundit our lord:pundit:
"We shall have boiling oil for our Forgeites!" ;)
By the way...for those of you with no sense of humour, I'm kidding. there is no war the Forge ideas are beyond the everyday experience of most rpgers, fortunately. Mockery of Uncle Ron's cockamamie theories is only to be expected.:)
Quote from: Fritzs;220924Balbinus: What interests me more is the fact that even such shitty review is viewed as some heroic act in holy war by some people... As if it's really no longer is about any discusion, or even gaming, but about religion...
We sing in praise of total war
Against the Forge whom we abhor
To spread the word of Pundit our lord:pundit:
"We shall have boiling oil for our Forgeites!" ;)
By the way...for those of you with no sense of humour, I'm kidding. There is no war, the Forge ideas are beyond the everyday experience of most down to earth rpgers, fortunately. Mockery of Uncle Ron's cockamamie theories is only to be expected.:)
Quote from: droog;220825Well, my dictionary, which is the Concise Oxford, says 'author'.
Maybe we need Samuel L Jackson's character from Pulp Fiction, Jules Winnfield to tell our Kylie "Write English motherfucker!":D