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"...

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

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!"