Sorcerer & Sword: "Eh."
Christopher Kubasik:
It's a comedy of errors from start to finish...
Despite Ron's sage advice about his own choices on these matters, I went and read the review.
There are lots of things to comment on that aren't worth the time to comment on. But this one thing set off all the alarm bells and wrapped it up nicely for me: the "actual play" part of the review is Sergio rolling dice with himself to determine the outcome of a combat with some characters me made upo for a fight. Really. He rolled dice, looked at the values, determined who got the higher one, and adjudicted in the favor of the character with the higher value. And that was his combat example.
Which meant that when Sergio wrote in the comments section, "Kickers, bangs and similar devices are not about the system, they are at most useful ideas, good suggestions, and nothing else," I wasn't at all surprised.
jburneko:
Reviews and posts like Sergio's are exactly the kind of things that cause any progress on Sorcerer Unbound to grind to a halt. I have real issues with the idea that you can't *make* someone understand something. A very real deep part of me wants to believe desperately that understanding is just a matter of repeating yourself with enough variations until you find the right one for this person. I know that's a naive lie but to contemplate the reality of it makes me very upset. Like childish, tantrum, want-to-break-stuff, and should-probably-talk-to-a-therapist-about-it-level upset.
Anyway, Christopher, you were very brave to wade into that conversation at all.
Jesse
greyorm:
After following the post-review "discussion" and taking the reviewer's presented attitude and certain counter-"points" into account, it began to seem likely it was not so much a review as a political statement that doesn't care whether or not it understood or represented the product being reviewed.
I could be wrong, of course, and earlier it seemed there were some suggestions I was...but given the attitude and nature of the responses to efforts by a number of folks to politely criticize where the reviewer's understanding of the material fell down, that notion was quickly disabused. Note his own admission that he doesn't want to listen, and if we consider there's a counter-argument from the reviewer that consists of: "Well, you're just an Edwards fan-boy." it might occur that this isn't about S&S or RPGs or reviewing games. It's about swine.
And I think we all know what that means.
Which is why, Jesse, I don't think you should throw your hands up in the air over this. The reviewer doesn't WANT to get it; in fact, he's actively OPPOSED to getting it.
He is not the target audience for Unbound, or even AN audience.
As soon as you realize guys like Sergio are the hobby equivalent of Creationists spouting fake and illogical counter-arguments to evolutionary theory and repeating flawed assertions as rebuttals to those same flawed assertions being pointed out, caring what he thinks will stop mattering because thinking has no part in his argument. He is a troll who has found an effective audience through reviews.
And trolls aren't interested in how games work or how to understand games.
So you aren't trying to write for this guy. You aren't writing for him because he doesn't want to understand Sorcerer, either pro or con. He just wants to stir the shit. That seems harsh and uncharitable, but becomes pretty clear when you read the review and the material that follows in the thread: the classic signs are blatantly extant (note the Analysis section: outward claims of sincerity disproven by behavior, the use of intentionally demeaning statements, the futility of all arguments, the position of blamelessness).
You can't consider these folks' "position" when you're thinking about writing Unbound, because you're trying to be charitable to a position charity is useless in response to. Doing so is like giving the benefit of the doubt to someone who is clearly lying -- who is insisting the sky is red, solely to see how long you'll argue with him, and becoming disheartened because you wonder how you'll ever explain the sky is blue. Clearly you won't!
It isn't about the truth-or-falsehood of the argument-at-hand (that's always just a convenient and insincere veneer): the conversation can always become about something else that can be shit-stirred for a while. In this case, it isn't about whether or not Sorcerer works, or how it works, or if it does what it says or doesn't. At all. That particular other guy is not interested in what color the sky actually is.
jburneko:
Oh, I understand all that. What I find so disheartening is that (a) such an outlook exists and (b) that there's nothing to be done about it. I'm a fan of the Law & Order spin off Criminal Intent because it indulges my fantasy that there's always a way to break someone. That there's always a way to make them look in the mirror and see themselves for who they really are and feel shame for it. There was a thread on Story Games asking about what super power you would want and I said, "the ability to impart perfect understanding." But this is a personal issue of mine and I'll get over it. I just wanted to commiserate with the disappointment and frustration with the review.
Jesse
Per Fischer:
Don't let this particular kind of stupidity drag you down, Jesse. I know what you mean, and I feel the same desperation about not being able to do anything about it, but hey...
I had a hope, albeit a small one, that since this person went to great lengths paying for the books and writing up the longest review in the world, there might be a chance of him listening to calm advice. Apparently not.
"Eh" indeed.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page