The best posts in the critique category of this year.
What are the Bloggies?
The Bloggies are back. A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games. It’s one-part award show and one-part battle royale. It’s silly. It’s intense. It’s an opportunity to read great posts from across the blogosphere.
What is this about then?
I love RPG blogs, but my friends don’t. They’re not going to read the 80+ blog posts that make up the entire Bloggies competition. But maybe they’ll read the best ones if I give some solid recommendations. If you’re someone who already plans to read all (or most) of the Bloggies, this isn’t for you. This short series will offer a few recommendations for the five Bloggie categories this year: advice, critique, gameable, theory, and meta.
You can find the post about advice here.
Critique for Casuals
This category includes critical analysis of books, games, and more. Here are the four posts with the most intriguing or focused criticism. For anyone who enjoys analyzing RPGs in great depth, read The Isle and then read failforward’s review and Sorensen’s musing thoughts on the module.
Playing the Chaplain’s Game
A straight forward review and explanation of the game that is enhanced by the reader trying out the solo game themselves halfway through and then returning to finish the piece. Without spoiling too much, this is the first RPG review I read where I truly thought a writer was explaining a mechanic incorrectly. Apparently I’ve done too many coin-flipping programmer brain teasers.
The Isle: The Review (Mostly) - The Glamour Pt.3
The best OSR review of the bunch. I would be lying if I said I had definitive thoughts on The Isle. I think the book’s spartan graphic design and the text’s insistence it must be read and not referenced, spotlight it in a crowd of OSR adventures. For all its sins, The Isle features beautiful writing and surprise while avoiding the nigh unreadable justified columns and eighty bolded words per A5 page that other OSR adventures employ.
For those interested in going the extra mile in analysis, consider reading Sam Sorensen’s take on The Isle in What Does a Work Not Need?.
Review of Initiative Methods
The most comprehensive review of initiative methods I’ve seen. If you’ve never written an initiative method into a game though, it’s a pass.
The D&D 4th edition renaissance: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits
I’m only including this one for the other freaks who played multi-year long D&D 4th edition campaigns.
Critique complete. This was a heavy one, with one post in particular amounting to a light novella of reading. Still trying to finish the rest of these as fast as possible for the upcoming Bloggies voting, but I won’t be surprised if I also fall short of reading 80+ posts and writing up recommendation lists like this one.
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