[The Future of this Blog]

 So you may have noticed a distinct lack of new written reviews here on this blog, and that of course is because I haven't really been writing any.

The issue is nobody really reads this (or any) blog and I need to be selective with on what I choose to spend my time and effort. Like, my worst-performing video reviews get over 100 views, and here I'm lucky to get 10. Promoting the blog in the videos and on social media doesn't really seem to bring much traffic this way, and I've tried finding another planform, but there just aren't any left that are good for long-form text post and have an actual audience.

So while I won't say that I'm not going to do any more written reviews, it is very much a situation of a thing I'll only be doing if I find a game I really want to talk about, but won't work in video format.

[Let's Make Us A Character]

Hey, do you like that part in the videos where we make a character? Then you'll love Let's Make Us A Character, a new series when I go in-depth into the character creation for games that I normally wouldn't review due to my focus on obscure titles. The first three episodes are already out and cover character creation for Original, Basic, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

[Bloody Shillelagh]

A little late here, but I recently put out a micro RPG where you play as maniacal leprechauns causing a bit of mischief on the one day a year where they can cross into the mortal realm.

Available for free as a PDF for device reading, as well as a printable format (in U.S. letter and A4) for printing up and folding into a pocket zine.

Acquire it here

[New Rating System]

I've finally gotten around to updating my rating system, which I will explain in brief here with some more explanation after the break.

Games will still be rated on the same six criteria, but points will be awarded differently. Character Creation, Mechanics, and Presentation will still be rated out of 5 points to determine the "Base Points." But now Setting, Writing, and Content will now be rated out of 3 points and rather than being part of the total Base Points, will only provide an adjustment as follows.

3 = +1, 2 = +0, 1 = -1, 0 = -2

Also, the adjustment from Writing may be applied directly to the points for Presentation and displayed in the "Writing and Presentation" section when I don't really have anything to say about the writing.
All existing reviews have been updated to the new system, if you want to see the new ranking of all games you can view the list https://rpggeek.com/geeklist/246251

[Slight Format Update]

I mentioned this in a previous review, but I'm tired of basically noting that there is nothing noteworthy in a particular rating category. So moving forward when I don't have anything to say, I'm not going to bother. So just consider a 3/5 with no write up to be "Game is acceptable, but unremarkable in this particular area."

[New Size Labels]

Greeting obscure role-playing game enthusiasts! I have now added a size label to all reviews indicating the length of the document in pages. You can now browse reviews of games that are 1, 2–29, 30–100, or over 100 pages in length. The new labels can be found on the sidebar with all the others.

Technical stuff: Page count is based only on "content pages" excluding covers and character sheets or similar pages (that's how I was qualifying things as one page, so I'm sticking with it). Also, any digital documents laid out in two-page spreads will be categorized by laid-out pages, not by PDF page count.

Update: changed the labels a bit, now they display in order and all of them actually work.

[Change in Ratings Format]

Hello all, I've decided to make a slight change in my rating and review format. Basically all that's changing is layout is being moved from the writing section to the art section--which has been re-titled "Presentation."
In this new format, the order in which content is presented will still be covered in the "Writing" section, but all aesthetic and readability qualities of layout--including use of tables, inclusion of helpful sidebars and summary pages, and things like typeface choice and column/page breaks--will be covered in the "Presentation" section. Also, I may now take cover art into consideration under Presentation--cover art was previously excluded from the "Art" score.
I've mainly done this in the interest of trying to keep my review scores semi-objective, as giving myself the authority to decide when art was "unnecessary" or "unreasonable to expect" is a little unfair. Also I've decided to be less generous in handing out N/A scores for Character Creation and Content. Specifically, anything where players need to make choices or rolls during character creation--or advancement--will now get a score, and "just make up your own stuff" will now get a 0/5.
I can't say how this is going to affect average scores, as it now makes it impossible to get an N/A score in a section in which a 0/5 is possible--and a lot of previous reviews did have an N/A in. Of reviews that I've updated to the new format, it has somewhat evenly raised and lowered scores. I'll most likely be updating the reviews for shorter--and lower scored--titles, and possibly the bigger, more in-depth ones eventually.

[Spooktober Horroreviews!]

Why hello there, this is just a notice that for the whole of October I'll be reviewing two horror games each week. But to make things interesting, each week I'll be reviewing one game that might be good and one game that probably isn't good... and it'll probably be fairly obvious which is which. So make sure to tune in each Tuesday and Thursday in October—except for the last one which will be on Wednesday because I ran out of Thursdays.