I want to be clear about what I review, how I review, and why.

I don’t want to be known primarily as a reviewer of RPGs, books, and music.

Even though reviews get more traffic than most other types of posts, I don’t do many of them. If views and followers were my primary metric, I would do more reviews, but I don’t.

I have received requests from creators to review their projects and I have turned down every one of them.

What I review.

I review things I think my audience will find meaningful, entertaining, or informative.

I have a specific audience in mind for this blog.

That little triangle of overlap in the middle is my ideal reader. That reader is a metalhead who plays OSR games and enjoys sword-and-sorcery fiction. I try to keep my writing focused on that group as much as possible though sometimes I do stray outside the circle.

My reviews are the result of my own interests and curiosity. I’m not reviewing things to be a reviewer or critic.

I’m telling you about what I’m interested in and what I’m excited about.

I review things I buy.

When I review something, I bought that book, album, or game with my own money.

There has been one exception to that. I received a free galley copy of of Slaying the Dragon by Ben Riggs. There was no requirement or expectation from the publisher for a review. They sent it to me without any request at all. I read it because I was interested in the information. I wrote a review for my monthly email newsletter. I found the book to be quite flawed. There were some bright spots but it had a lot of problems.

I only write reviews of things that I’ve put effort into.

I only review games and adventures that I have played. I have learned that some of the most important elements and experiences of a game or adventure can only come through when you play it.

When I review music, I’ve listened to it at least four or five times and once with headphones and a notebook to hand.

When I review a book, I’ve written down a lot of notes and will probably read it again if I haven’t read it twice already.

This insistence on attending closely to the thing I’m reviewing means I can’t write a lot of reviews because they take too long.

How my reviews are structured.

I start the review with an overview or sometimes a little story. I want to give you enough information so you know what this is about and give you the opportunity to move on if it isn’t for you.

I break my reviews into subsections.

• Who is it for?
• What is it for?
• Does it succeed?
• Discussion/ Lessons learned

I identify who I think the thing I am reviewing was created for.

Good writing, design, and art is for someone specific. It is impossible to make something that everyone likes. I identify who I think the thing is for so readers can decide if it is for them or someone else.

I identify what I think the creator was trying to accomplish.

Good writing, design, and art has a specific intention. I identify the intentions, see if something unintended emerges from the experience of the creation and communicate that to the reader.

I look at whether or not I think the creator succeeded in achieving their intended purpose with their intended audience.
Because of the way I do these reviews, I’m almost always writing about something that is successful in it’s purpose. I spend some time telling you how it succeeds. If there is a criticism, I typically include it in this section of the review.

This is what tells you whether is something is successful or not. If the thing was created for a specific group of people and those people enjoy it then the thing is successful. Whether the thing was worth doing on a financial, artistic, philosophical, or cultural level is a different question and generally outside the scope of the reviews that I write.

With non-fiction books or documentary films, I try to find lessons or the theme of the narrative. When reviewing a game, I’ll write about what I learned from it on the matter of design that goes beyond whether or not I liked it. With music, I often talk about how it made me feel. I don’t do a lot of music reviews. I am not a musician and don’t have the vocabulary or knowledge to asses the skill of the performer. I merely know what I like.

I write recommendations

I only review things that I’ve completely engaged with work that’s not grabbing my attention isn’t going to get that level of engagement.

A critic worth paying attention to has to engage with the bad and the good. I don’t want to deal with the bad. I’ve gotten into the habit of bailing on things that suck or aren’t for me.

A 20 page adventure gets 2 or three pages to grab me. If a book sucks 25 to 50 pages in, I put it down and probably don’t come back to it. A movie gets 15 to 20 minutes. A comic, 3 maybe 4 pages. There are a few exceptions but that’s largely the rule.

Memento Mori. Life is not worth spending on things that I am not obligated to spend my time on. Reality imposes itself already. Why spend time on crap? I don’t think its fair to review something I didn’t go through carefully and give my full attention. If it is bad, mediocre, or for someone with different tastes than my own, I probably didn’t finish. I’m not going to review it if I didn’t finish.

Conclusion

That’s it. That’s what I review, how, and why. Most of the reviews you read on this blog are positive because life is too short to spend messing about with things I don’t have to.

The purpose of reviews on the Grumpy Wizard is to tell you what I like because I think some of you will like it too.

I want to be that dude who plays you an album because he thinks it’s cool. The guy who pulls down a dog eared paperback and says, “This changed my life.” Someone who opens an RPG book to show you an illustration you’ve never seen before just because he thinks it’s cool.