"If you are going to make fun of a rules set..." Topic

…you should at least have the common courtesy of having played it. Or read it.
You look like an ass when you slam terminology or concepts that are not in them.

That is all. You know who you are.

Seems reasonable.

Oooohhhh…

Name and Shame!!!!

wait…does this also work for SPI boardgames????

Walking by the table and shaking your head in disgust does not qualify as having played or read it.

I tried quite a few SPI wargames (once) before I gave up on them.
It got to the point where it was like eating olives. Me sainted Mother kept telling me that I had to keep eating them and "learn to like them".

Dear John

Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.

Otto

John,

I had a review of an RPG I created a few years ago. The reviewer slammed my game… but then admitted he had NEVER played the game. I unfortunately got sucked into a flame war with him on the merits of having at least tried the game before commenting on it. He never gave in. Some people are just like that. You will never win with those types of people. Just give up now.

Mike

It depends on what the reviewer says.

If you read a set of rules and it's internally inconsistent or fails to define crucial terms you can certainly point that out without having played it.

An insistence on having played the game before making any comment on it is irrational.

It's also funny that people who make positive comments about rules without having played them aren't pilloried .

SPI? Some of them were good. OK, there others that weren't.

The introductory game Napoleon at Waterloo was really quite a good game, though it didn't have all that much to do with the actual battle. The Duke's optimal strategy was to attack the French and break them before the Prussians got into contact.

Yeah, there were all those games that taught lessons – with a bludgeon. Oy vey.

Musket and Pike was fun, even if most of the stuff in it was overturned by newer research. But fast and furious? You bet.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Altho, ignorance of a subject has never stopped people from talking before, so…

Who said 'Opinions without knowledge are ugly little things' ?

Always liked playing Seelowe

Please at least tell us what rules your talking about so we can tell you how much they suck!

John, I thought you were going to say

"….do it on TMP."

I like TMP, that's why I come here, but lots of people here (including me, sometimes) talk complete the stuff you put on the roses about things they know next to nothing about. It's why TMP is so entertaining.

I can't count how many times my friends and I played SPI's Wacht am Rhein, back in the 70's. It's a big game! We had a lot of fun with that one.

Some folks just gotta do it and you don't get DH'd for uninformed slamming of rules like you would if you slammed a TMP member.

Dear John

I think there's a question of degree here.

It's like Bede19025 said, if you read a set of rules you can make a judgement on the spot if it's not for you. This can be after browsing even just a few pages at a dealer's booth. Saying a game sucks just because that's a different kettle of fish. On the other hand saying a game is great without having played it or read it. That's almost as bad.

But then war gamers will be war gamers and you have to expect this sort of thing.

As regards the original post: I think it was a reviewer with the Times of London who said,

"I never read a book before reviewing it--it biases one so."

Always loved that quote!

Can I guess oh master JtOFM? Might it by chance be FOW?

Make it easy on yourself and just ignore them.

Why care what they think?

John is right! I lost count of how many people dismiss Card driven games without ever even reading the rules…

I usually play a game three times before condemning it publically. The only exception being… well I don't want to hijack the thread. OTOH, if I've read about, and talked about, and seen the effects of snuff, I don't need to try it to know I don't want to do it.

I enjoyed many SPI games in years long past. Particularly that one in North Africa. Armee Gruppe Afrika? The scenarios were very enjoyable. The campaign you set it up, admired the attention to detail and logistics, and packed it back up. So yeah, I guess they were all over the place for playability.

I believe you are thinking of Campaign for North Africa. I've never seen it but heard many a tale of its existence…

It's pretty common to see folks who play RPGs gushing about some new game that they've never played or even read. I think there is more of a cult of personality around RPG designers than there is with wargames… more 'identity politics' around certain game mechanics and settings.

Generally I'm up for whatever. It's more about who I play with than what rules we play.

I thought you were going to say, "Please have the courtesy to have never played them."

No different than the Oscars……guess it's just base human nature.

DM

It's like Bede19025 said, if you read a set of rules you can make a judgement on the spot if it's not for you.

Please note that I said "play" or "read".

Re original point:

What fun is that?

What if the Rules are so Badly Written, and so Non-Historical that you can't play them?

Yep, "Panzer Parking Lot's!"

…you should at least have the common courtesy of having played it. Or read it.

Isn't that a bit unreasonable? If a person truly hates a given set of rules most fiercely, then wouldn't it be almost mental torture to actually force him to read through them, never mind actually forcing to play a game with them? Even the haters have human rights!

Unfortunately you are dealing with human irrationality. Some gamers have a set of rules they like, either for valid reasons, or pure habit. They see any other rules people are attracted to as a challenge to "their precious." On the other hand, as one writer above noted it's often a "cult of personality"- whatever a specific person does is great and literally words from on high. People still clamor for seats on "the Kool table in the Cafeteria." Those who reject or spurn such things were often never invited. Some people are tired of "flipping" their collections to new basing systems or adverse to making a new learning curve. Some people like snails, some like oysters, some like both, some like none.

That's the problem with emotions. Logic has nothing to do with it.

I don't agree that you have to play a set of rules to criticise them, nor even to have read them all the way through.

Life is too short to force yourself to waste time playing stuff you are going to hate just so you are 'qualified' to comment on it.

I look at a lot of rules, and some/many send me to sleep in the first three pages, which is never an encouraging sign. Others have too many words, or too few, or too many pretty pictures.

I certainly don't need to read them all the way through or let alone play three games of them to say that they do not appeal to me personally.

My opinions on them are of course worth exactly what you paid for them.

Yep, "Panzer Parking Lot's!"

Of you are going to bring up that totally irrelevant point that is unavoidable with ground scale versus figure scale, then I will point out that one does not form the plural with an apostrophe.

We all know what we lie in a set of rules. It becomes easy than to read them, or just part of them, and think these are not for me. However, more than once when I then played those rules I find out I do like them after all. So anyone who rips a set of rules without playing really has no business reviewing those rules. It is just an uninformed personal opinion.

one does not form the plural with an apostrophe

Hijack: nor does using quotes around a word indicate emphasis – rather it indicates spurious status of the word, like seeing "mushrooms" for 39 cents a pound.

Miniature Wargames has a nice approach in their review section. When reviewing games the reviewer notes if he's only read through them, dabbled or played them intensively. I've always appreciated that information.

So far, no one has said this, so maybe it's not considered important, but READING a set of rules, and PLAYING a set of rules can produce radically different opinions of the game.

In 1979, I bought and read a dedicated set of rules for miniatures Colonial games called "The Sword And The Flame." It had incomprehensible reliance on cards to cue the game's basic procedures, and used dice to determine movement distances.

After 9 years of other miniatures war games (most painfully, Napoleonics and WRG Ancients), I KNEW that the key to a realistic game was to process out all the uncertainty, and claim total control of every aspect of combat through voluminous and usually complicated rules. And if you didn't have a rule for it, it couldn't happen.

Two years later, I actually played the game, and experienced my gaming epiphany, as have thousands of war gamers before and since.

So, READING a rules set, and just KNOWING it's not going to be for you, is simply a big juicy piece of hubris between two thick slices of prejudice.

TVAG

is simply a big juicy piece of hubris between two thick slices of prejudice.

I'm going to borrow this phrase. ;]

'Hijack: nor does using quotes around a word indicate emphasis – rather it indicates spurious status of the word, like seeing "mushrooms" for 39 cents a pound.'

Ooooooooooh, BURN!

I often gives rules a pasting without ever playing them, why?, because, 'it amuses me' (trademark pending)

John

On the difference between reading and playing:

I always find DBA tough to read but a tasty simple game to play.

I also try to avoid slamming a rules set because we are a small hobby and it just doesn't make sense to trash others.

"If you can't say something real nice,
just don't talk at all that's my advice"
- Billie Holiday

Generally the only time I will trash a rules set is if somebody starts a thread or asks directly, "Do you like Game X?" And even then it's always a set I have tried at least once to see if I enjoyed it or not.

"mushrooms" for 39 cents a pound.

Where?

'Making fun' of a rules set is not the same as detailed criticism.

Many people, for example, have made humorous comments about the title of 'Snappy Nappy' – a set of rules I enjoy – which does not require them to have read or played them

Detailed criticism of a "Panzer Parking Lot's"

Rule 666.1 We need Twenty Reichsmark worth of Pfennigs to pay the parking meters for our Panzer Division!

Rule 666.2 Don't let the 4th SS give you parking ticket, You don't want to pay that fine!

link

Here we see Fritz Von tz, your local Meter Maid.

link

What a lovely world it would be, if people knew whereof they spoke.

I just read the results of a poll in which 24% of Americans have very strong feelings about the repeal of the 2004 Ukraine Administrative Assistance Act… despite the fact that no such legislation exists.

When the pollsters inserted a Hitler analogy into the question, the percentage of people who had a strong opinion about this non-existent legislation jumped to nearly three-quarters.

-

I've published half a dozen games in the past decade or so and been reviewed many times. I'd say that only about 5% of those reviews have come from people who've played the game.

Indeed, I don't think that ANY review of my game in any wargaming magazine has ever been written by somebody who played the game.

And if by "review" you include: web post or blog entry, then probably at least a third of my reviews have come from people who haven't even seen the game.

-

It's that last category that has always fascinated me. These "reviews" are often total fiction: furious rants against things that he imagines might be in the game. (If he even bothers to guess what's in the game at all.)

What motivates a person to go out of his way to trash something he's never seen? Obviously in the hope of preventing other people from buying or enjoying it, but Why?

Did I steal his girl in High School? Does he belong to that faction of wargaming that hates all new things and wants them to fail?

Caution is recommended when/if responding in these situations, lest the reviewer become a Martyred Paladin for Truth, fighting on behalf of the Common Man against the evil forces of… something or other. References to Nazi camps and the First Amendment become almost obligatory at that point.

-

This is probably why the smart game publishers make sure that they're ubiquitous; always chatting on somebody's blog or podcast, always contributing some article or column in somebody's magazine, etc. That's their way of making sure that they can keep a handle on the chatter and control the spin, or at least counter the disinformation.

(As for me, I'm not one of the smart ones. I'm just tired.)

First read and play a ruleset before you critisize. Simple as that!!

I did that once at a convention. I saw a game using rules that I had never played, but just knew that they were no good. I made a overly loud comment to a friend who was playing that I thought the rules were crap. It just so happened that the designer was playing the game, which I didn't find out until later. Actually a very well known game designer. When I found out the designer was there, I felt terrible. I would have apologized if I had met him again. I still would, and this was over 20 years ago. My lesson was learned the hard way. First, play the game before criticizing. But also, there is no reason to verbally downplay a game or ruleset at a convention. People are playing the game to have fun, and they don't need an idiot like me telling them how bad it is.

Some Rules are so bad they just make you want to….
YouTube link

Dear Sam

Well Sam, in your case I suspect that it's the price of fame. Some people just don't like anyone who is less anonymous than them. You've published a fair number of rule sets. You're well known. You've written many articles in MWAN and Miniature Wargames (or whatever it is now), and some people just don't like that. You also have to accept that some people take what other people say as gospel and pass it along. It's the fallacy of "the friend of my friend is my friend and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all the little fallacies in between."

You have a definite personality. I have one too. Some people like me, some hate me. I suspect the same is with you, and that there are "constituencies" that consider you or me either the best thing since sliced bread or demonic forces let loose in Eden.

Usually, I have found, there's no in between.

I think it's just the price of fame. Don't let it bug you or you'll wind up in rehab.

You have to accept people as they are, not as you'd like them to be.

I've found that people are driven far more by irrationality than logic.

If you don't believe me, look at the first two cases of your post.

… or it is just possible that the rules were reviewed by an expert in games design and the period in question and the rules author's nose is out of joint.

I know of one case where a controversial review was written by the playtest group – and the rules author claimed the reviewer had never played the game – ROFL.

I tend to play before I criticize, and my criticism usually doesn't extend past, "I didn't enjoy it, here's why:" That way I can keep my opinion less contentious and actually valid since I did try it out. For me it can be as simple as it doesn't play fast enough for me, or there's too much chart work, what have you. I will always at least play it before I speak on it.