So... reviews (and mini-reviews, actual plays, non-RPG books, etc.)

I have written a long post explaining why writing reviews "on demand" is not always a good idea for me right now (2021). I don't know if I'll ever publish it. 

It boils down to "it takes time and effort, doesn't seem to generate interest, I am only interested in a few games/systems/genres/themes, I am really bored by most stuff I read, I want to be fair, and not offend anyone".

Also... I'm a small publisher. So, if I ever review a game I don't like in a genre I like, it might sounds like sour grapes. I don't see a reason to do that - except for big WotC modules, because everyone knows this and I'm not offending another small publisher when I criticize these "blockbuster" books. And "trading" reviews with other small publishers will bring about obivious conflicts of interest. Maybe someday we bloggers can join and create some kind of decent system to do that.

I did some reviews in the past - mostly of games I liked. Take a look at them, I think they are useful.

So, I'm not accepting RPGs for reviews right now, at least until I can think of a better way to write them. Maybe I can ask the readers what reviews they want. Maybe I can turn theses review into YouTube videos... Would you be interested? I don't know. Let's see.

(If you like writing reviews, and want some review copies of my games, by all means, just let me know. I always appreciate the feedback and signal-boosting).

HOWEVER...

I do own more than 3,500 RPG files, and sometimes I skim though them to mine for interesting ideas.

So, I might write "mini reviews" with my impressions from time to time.

In addition, whenever I have the opportunity to USE something on my table, I find that my impressions become a lot more valuable, detailed and informed. It happens rarely, but when it does I'll share some "actual play reviews" with you.

AND I might write about a few RPG-related books... Appendix N stuff, fantasy, sci-fi, game design, creativity... These can be interesting too.

Notice that I already have tags such as "review", literature" and "actual play" in this blog.

All types of reviews will contain:

- Why did I buy/read this? Explaining why I was interested in the first place. Not gonna lie, the answer is often "a nice cover" or "it was on sale".

- Is it: Useful? Inspiring? Bloated? Tiresome? Lacking?

These five characteristics are mostly self-explanatory, and sufficient for our purposes. 

However a few distinctions might be worthwhile. 

Usable ideas are ready for the table. They do not require extra effort by the GM. If necessary, I'll explain how useful it is specifically if you're playing D&D 5e or OSR D&D. Good maps, a good index, good organization, clear text... these things are incredibly useful.

Inspiring ideas are good for just that - inspiration. Awesome art, cool text, funny passages, etc. It might be ambiguous or incomplete, but it inspires the GM to create interesting situations - although this will often require extra work.

Bloated books are full of filler. Useless information, stats, etc. "Official" modules are full of bloat. 

Tiresome ideas are just poorly executed. Maybe because they are boring or predictable (again, "official" modules do this a lot) or maybe because they are just puerile or silly (most often found in "indie" RPGs). I'll probably say which one.

Clear books contain all important bits - relevant information, cross references, illustrations showing how things look (instead of just inspriation). If something is lacking, I'll tell you here.

There is some redundancy here, I'm sure, but it is helpful to make things clear.

The reason I'm writing this now is that I've just read a few PDFs and I'll write a few mini-reviews soon... so I'm keeping this post for easy reference.