Reviews Reviewed

More Thoughts on Reviews

A couple of weeks ago, before I went to Gamehole Con, I started reflecting on the reviews I’ve done at Grognardia over the years and, in the process, wandered off into a few different but related topics. Having done that, I’d now like to return to what I originally intended to discuss: my feelings toward reviewing in general, then and now.

In the early days of the Old School Renaissance, new and interesting products were comparatively few, so it was quite easy to keep up with them. Given Grognardia’s place within the OSR at the time, I felt a certain obligation to do so. I wanted to keep readers informed about as many releases as I could, while also supporting other creators who’d taken the bold step of putting their ideas into print. The OSR was still a small and collaborative community and I believed in leaning into that spirit as much as possible. Writing reviews was an obvious way to do it.

My natural inclination has always been to be positive. I don’t enjoy writing negative reviews. I prefer to accentuate the positive and, if I encounter a product I don’t care for, I’d rather say nothing than criticize it publicly. That’s always felt like simple courtesy. If you look back over the reviews that have appeared on the blog, you’ll find that most are indeed positive, though rarely uncritical. I’ve always believed it’s possible to acknowledge flaws while still recognizing a creator’s effort and intent.

Back then, I received a lot of review copies. I’m not boasting when I say that, in its heyday, Grognardia was a major outlet for the OSR. Lots of people read it and commented and publishers large and small recognized that a review on the site often translated into stronger sales. I was flattered by the attention and rarely declined an offer. When something arrived in the mail, I made every effort to read and review it promptly.

The danger, of course, was that I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Even when a product didn’t particularly excite me, I felt an internal pressure to be “nice.” I never lied about my opinions or praised something I disliked, but I can’t deny that I sometimes strained to find kind things to say out of a sense of obligation. That’s simply my nature. I don’t court controversy and I’ve always subscribed, however quaintly, to the old maxim, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

That’s why, when I revived the blog in 2020, I made a conscious decision to accept far fewer review copies. I no longer wanted to feel guilty about disliking a product or to twist myself into knots trying to find something good to say about it. These days, if I review something, it’s usually because I bought it myself and genuinely thought it worth sharing. I still occasionally accept review copies — mostly from publishers whose work I already admire — but that’s the exception, not the rule.

The trade-off is that I don’t buy many new products anymore. I already own more games, adventures, and supplements than I could ever use. At Gamehole Con, I spent four days surrounded by gaming material and didn’t buy a single product — unless you count a pair of six-sided dice shaped like gelatinous cubes. I’m older now, content with what I have, and not driven by the urge to accumulate more.

That’s the main reason I don’t write as many reviews these days. But it’s not the only one. When I do choose to write about a book, adventure, or game, I want it to mean something. I want it to be part of a conversation, not just a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, but an exploration of what makes a product interesting, how it fits into the larger history of the hobby, and what it says about where we’ve come from and where we might be going.

If my reviews are less frequent now, perhaps they’re also more personal. They’re reflections of my own enduring curiosity about the games I love and the people who make them. I may not feel the same obligation to cover every new release, but I still take great pleasure in shining a light on the works that genuinely inspire me. For me, that’s the kind of reviewing that matters most.