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Looking at my review history on Paizo.com I noticed that I very rarely go under three stars in my reviews. I think only 4 enter the 1-2 star range with a pretty good chunk being within 4 or 5 stars. So what gives? Am I pandering? Am I an overly generous GM or reviewer? Why don't I review things that suck? Well the answer to that is complicated but summed up its because I tend to not buy crappy products. But I can't leave you with an explanation like that so I'm going to elaborate.
Here is a blog post listing my reasons for not putting out many bad reviews.
Let me know what you think, and I promise I'll get to some of the darker corners of my computers and share some of the products that I really can't recommend.
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I generally make relatively safe purchases.
I have purchased content from the author/publisher before, it is something likely to my taste, it's a small and focused PDF, or it was a Kickstarter project with large amounts of funding.
Smaller PDFs generally have a tight focus, so they seem more difficult to get wrong.
Kickstarter projects I've reviewed got extensive playtesting.
Also in general I feel the 3PP are afraid to put out bad products. Something like the ACG would sink a popular 3PP since it would destroy their reputation.
Insain hits it right on the nose, especially with that last bit. Pathfinder-era 3PP products tend to be a lot better off quality-wise, as a whole, than their earlier-era predecessors.
I wasn't playing any d20 back in the 2000s so I wasn't around from the 'everything d20' era of gaming so I'm not sure how much better Pathfinder's 3pp environment is but I think the vetting process has been doing me good. I don't have too hard of a time navigating past bad things and the more prominent publishers seem to be fairly active on the forums and talkative about content and balance. Plus there are publishers that just consistently put out good stuff to the point that the standard is a bit higher than Paizo at some points. For me worse products have been products where no one has anything to say whether it's players or creators.
I'm actually hesitant to give out any reviews because of how ridiculously picky I am + how hard it is for my head to turn idea into words. I mean, I could leave a review but it would take an immense time for me to justify why I gave the review I did because otherwise it'd feel unfair.
The worst product i ever bought was probably the ACG and even with its many errors, I'd still give it at least 3 out of 5 stars. 4 stars on a day I'm feeling generous.
The worst product i ever bought was probably the ACG and even with its many errors, I'd still give it at least 3 out of 5 stars. 4 stars on a day I'm feeling generous.
The Advanced Class Guide, if it were a third party product, I would probably give it four or five stars. There were a number of errors but all in all the classes were solid and brought a lot of neat options and archetypes to the table. The flaws it does have aren't a large percentage of the product and don't render it unusable and sometimes are hard to catch because the rules as intended are obvious. When something requires some clarification and an erratta here and there I don't hold it against a product too much and at best I'd note the glitches and warn against some aspects like class redundancy and a lack of daring in some respects.
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My rough guide to being a third party publisher reviewer.
It's just a starting point, but some people might find it helpful.
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I will say this; Reviews of third party products are WAY better than reviews on Paizo's products. Maybe Endzeitgeist and others made a pretty big standard but a lot of paizo product reviews have little to no detail and often have the most inane complaints. So basically no, or useless information in regards to helping you make a purchase.
Well, average review quality is really different for both groups. But Paizo content gets more reviews and some are still very helpful, so in the past they were a great help.
Endzeitgeist and others write awesome expansive reviews, but to be fair, they write it with a different motivation and not every reader wants to read through these long postings.