Man, I used to love Roleplaying Reviews in the old Dragon. I love D&D, but I credit Dragon's review column for opening my eyes to a variety of new and exciting games that broadened my view of the hobby and kept me interested all these years. I especially enjoyed the theme columns, such as the one where three difference sourcebooks on Vikings, psionics, etc were compared, contrasted and rated and the horror-themed Halloween installments.
I would never have known about games like great Champions, Vampire the Masquerade, Amber Diceless, etc if not for Dragon.
So what I propose is this: Instead of a bunch of columns about video games and novels, things that have nothing to do with D&D or roleplaying in general, why not a new, impartial non-d20-exclusive RPG review column? After all, there's a whole world of great, quirky and revolutionary games out there and anything that highlights that is a good thing.
That would be a real service to gamers, especially the non-internet-addicted ones that are frequently cited as an important demographic by the Paizo folks.
Thoughts?
Yes! Yes! That is a wonderful idea and I know how to fit it in; Kill "Coup de Grace" it is a horrible waste of paper and space. The magazine also really needs to get beyond Wizards as well.
I like the idea, but there are so many resources already doing it. Over at EN World, you can get two or three reviews of just about every product.
The old Dragon didn't have competition from other D&D publishers. Everything was TSR, so when it did reviews, it was of non-D&D games, or of TSR products. Now, with multiple d20 publishers producing the exact same subjects (as bad as TV movie-of-the-week repetitions), a product review column is likely to be either bias-heavy or PR-poor.
I'd prefer anyone BUT Paizo doing comparative product reviews for D&D.
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I'd prefer anyone BUT Paizo doing comparative product reviews for D&D.
Heh, Paizo would prefer anyone but Paizo doing comparative product reviews. ;)
For the most part, reviews in Dragon were not all that popular (despite the indications to the contrary in this thread), and they become terribly out of date after about three months. Think of it like this: If you go back to any old issue of Dragon that had reviews, there's a chance that you can use one of the non-mechanics articles from that issue in your current game (maybe there's an advice article in there or just a flavor-heavy article). What I guarantee, though, is that the reviews in that magazine are useless to you (or at least the majority of them). Wasted pages.
Besides, as Seeker pointed out, there are many third-party, completely neutral groups out there more than willing to do product reviews. EN World and gamingreport.com are the two that spring to my mind. Best of all, they're searchable! :)
(For the record, Dragon is not completely neutral. It's still owned by Wizards of the Coast, and I doubt very much that they'd like to see us give one of their products a bad or neutral review.)
"It's still owned by Wizards of the Coast, and I doubt very much that they'd like to see us give one of their products a bad or neutral review."
TSR didn't seem to mind. Maybe it's not the smartest policy from a business perspective, but it sure was good for Joe Gamer when it came time to spend his hard-earned cash. You have to admire honesty that frank.
"TSR didn't seem to mind. You have to admire honesty that frank."
It's much easier to be honest when you have no direct competition for your product. TSR had only one licensed D&D-product competitor: Judges Guild. And those prducts made TSR a kick-back. Plus TSR got prior review. If a particular product from TSR got a bad review now and then, it wasn't a big deal. They sold less of that module / accessory. But they didn't lose the sale to a competitor.