Does anyone know of a good way to find reliable reviews / input on quests and scenarios? As it seems like an unreasonably high number of “bad” reviews for PFS on the paizo site tend to be from moaning players who were either bored and/or found things too hard/easy for there liking
It makes it tricky to try and see whether scenarios do have elements that mean they should be skipped
Organized Play Associate
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I don't have a good answer for this, unfortunately, but I do want to generally encourage GMs and players to leave (constructive) reviews on scenario pages! We do read them, our team loves when a new positive review comes in, and if there are issues we definitely want to know so we can avoid pitfalls in the future.
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Does anyone know of a good way to find reliable reviews / input on quests and scenarios? As it seems like an unreasonably high number of “bad” reviews for PFS on the paizo site tend to be from moaning players who were either bored and/or found things too hard/easy for there liking
It makes it tricky to try and see whether scenarios do have elements that mean they should be skipped
The markets a little too niche for any kind of professional independent review.
Even "whining" is useful data if specific.
Is the complaint legitimate: Is everyone complaining about the same thing? ... then there's probably something to it. Are half of people saying one thing and the other half saying the other? Not so much.
Is the subject of the complaint something you care about? Someone getting a lore or metaplot thing wrong only matters if you care about that.
Does the complaint tell you the style of the adventure? If you have a role playing party and the complaint is "Thog Smasherator the IVth had nothing to do while silly people who bathe made with the talky talk" Then thogs negative review has told you this may be a good scenario for you.
Are the reviews consistent with their assessment of the difficulty? If so does your group care one way or the other. If a scenario rates as too easy, it may be perfect for beer and pretzyl groups. if a scenario is consistently complained of as too hard it may just be what your band of min maxed death machines are looking for.
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I try *not* to review something without both GMing and playing unless:
A: The experience was so overwhelmingly positive that I felt compelled to go buy the .pdf for the scenario right away.
B: The experience was so underwhelmingly negative that I felt the need to get the feedback up, both for GMs/players as well as the writers of a given item.
Typically speaking, though, when I write a review I try to look at it from both angles -- a few of the scenarios would seem 'easy' until one runs a table with nary a skill in sight for miles.
Conversely, there are scenarios that seem like they'd be hard and complicated with a lot of bells and whistles -- and they're actually over-written a bit to help the GM.
There are some unscrupulous folks who have used the rating system to 'submarine' ratings for scenarios that are actually pretty decent, or 'overinflate' ones that have been pretty horrible for me, personally.
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I actually find the scenario reviews on Paizo to be quite useful (especially when there are several) using the techniques that BNW mentions above.
With the caveat that there are at least 3 or 4 reviews its pretty rare for me to have a markedly different opinion of a scenario after I GM/play it than what I got from reading the reviews.
But Wei Ji is definitely correct on one thing and its worth keeping in mind. Most people only get around to reviewing scenarios that they really like or really dislike. A disproportionate number of my reviews are 1 or 5 stars.
So I assume that a lack of reviews means that most people thought the scenario was ok with nothing much to say one way or the other
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I try to GM and play a scenario before I review it, but honestly, sometimes people are annoyed by different things.
Personally I tend to ignore a lot of reviews from players since I am never quite sure if what they have experienced is sufficiently similar to the scenario as written.
A good GM can smooth over some of the rougher bits, while a bad GM can make mistakes that have a significant impact on how much a given player enjoys a scenario.
Of course, and this did impact a couple of scenarios recently, large parts of the scenario's story are just not something player characters can learn through normal gameplay. The GM might love something the players won't learn for several months, which can make it tricky.
There are scenarios, that make me unhappy when they force me to do more prep/research, and that is something players might never notice.
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If I got to make one change to the review page format it would be to give each reviewer’s rating a weighted score. So if they only give 1 and 2-Star reviews you would instantly see that. I came up with a “standard review format” that I intended to use for reviews. At least my reviews could be compared to each other.
Most people only get around to reviewing scenarios that they really like or really dislike.
But each review is fairly long and takes a while to write, so I didn’t want to just post a couple. Haven’t had time to pre-write more.
Of course, and this did impact a couple of scenarios recently, large parts of the scenario's story are just not something player characters can learn through normal gameplay. The GM might love something the players won't learn for several months, which can make it tricky.
This is one of my big pet peeves, and fully 20% of my review score is dedicated to it. If you don’t GM much you probably don’t realize just how often scenario introductions contain information that is not readily available to the players and that simply can’t be communicated to the PCs in-game. If the GM wants to let them know why the bad guy wants to kill them, how the artifact came to be where it is, or anyone’s motives for anything, they have to break out of immersion and just tell the players.
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Not sure how much this helps, but from what I've seen a bunch of low reviews as the first reviews on a scenario can mean there's a potential problem for GMs, often some kind of a new subsystem which ends up frustrating players. (See Bid for Alabastrine for an example of this.)
It can also mean a scenario with some really glaring errors that are then corrected. For example, Tarnbreaker's Trail was completely broken as released but then changed to be only a little broken
Venture-Agent, Minnesota
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Have you looked at the reviews written by Jessica Catalan? Her d20 Diaries are excellent, and Hmm-approved!
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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If I got to make one change to the review page format it would be to give each reviewer’s rating a weighted score. So if they only give 1 and 2-Star reviews you would instantly see that. I came up with a “standard review format” that I intended to use for reviews. At least my reviews could be compared to each other.
Most people only get around to reviewing scenarios that they really like or really dislike.But each review is fairly long and takes a while to write, so I didn’t want to just post a couple. Haven’t had time to pre-write more.
Of course, and this did impact a couple of scenarios recently, large parts of the scenario's story are just not something player characters can learn through normal gameplay. The GM might love something the players won't learn for several months, which can make it tricky.This is one of my big pet peeves, and fully 20% of my review score is dedicated to it. If you don’t GM much you probably don’t realize just how often scenario introductions contain information that is not readily available to the players and that simply can’t be communicated to the PCs in-game. If the GM wants to let them know why the bad guy wants to kill them, how the artifact came to be where it is, or anyone’s motives for anything, they have to break out of immersion and just tell the players.
Agreed.
I *try to* incorporate the lore and background info into the scenarios when possible, expanding the briefing bit a bit to include relevant background info that's not spoilerish for the scenario, and some of our local GM's explain badguy motivations/reasons/background plots when PC's have won the final fight and are looting corpses by inserting paperwork/diaries/have the rescued NPC/captured boss explain what was going on/etc. It's not always an easy call though because sometimes some of that info might be relevant in the future scenarios and PC's aren't supposed to learn it just yet.
Also, I find the reviews on paizo's page often helpful, and if I'm looking for a scenario of some type (high level, low level, easy to prep, lots of social, lots of combat, good puzzles, in absalom, in worldwound, including themes, etc) I often just ask in the organized play online discord server.
The reviews, especially the first ones, usually reveal if there's a fundamental problem with the scenario (bad/broken submechanic) or other glaring issues, but I'd pay more attention to the content of the reviews than the actual score.
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1) You read each review with a grain of salt.
2) You take an amalgamation of all of the reviews. Often there is a common theme that runs through all reviews, it depends on how the GM and players like it.
3) Read the reviews, run a table, and compare that to what other reviews have said. Find a reviewer you agree with and follow them.
I find the reviews extremely helpful in knowing whether I want to GM or be a player in a scenario, much more helpful than long winded "professional" reviews.
After about 20 reviews, the star rating is pretty much spot on, at least for me. There have only been a few times when I've disagreed with it.
I wish there was an easy way to see new product reviews, like we had before on the front page. I loved logging each day and reading what people thought on different products. I think Paizo really screwed up when they removed it from the front page, I don't log onto this website much anymore.
