@Taskerland The crux of reviewing games *properly* will always be that you have to drag your group along with you, or it's just reading and imaging how it might all play out. One of the reasons people gravitate towards write ups with stat blocks and balancing is they can scan a scenario and mathematically deduce "this will be unthreatening to GM"

If there was a big group of people sharing reviews it would be much more doable. Broader shoulders. One group can't fairly be a testbed - not fun.

@Printdevil It's interesting that, of the people who do review across more than one silo, a lot of them are board-gamers so they have a circle of friends who are happy to jump on some weird game and give it a try for a couple of sessions and then never return to it.

@Taskerland That's easy to do with board games though, and most people are looking at the onboarding ... tee hee or learning stage of a game, to see whether it's worth buying rather than the longevity of a game. We look at RPGs in a much more structural "would I invest a two year long campaign in this"

@Printdevil @Taskerland Some research from a few years ago suggests that the typical hobbyist boardgame gets played something like six times. (This was used to excuse the monstrous waste of "legacy" games.) I think it's also worth considering the number of systems that show up with quickstarts these days: yeah yeah you can generate a character later, here's something you get you right into the actual play experience and see if you like it.

@Taskerland @Printdevil The PbtA I've looked at most closely is Monsterhearts, and that has an explicit endpoint. You can port one or more characters from there to a new campaign, but it's definitely a separate thing.
I find I actually prefer shorter campaigns but that may be because I enjoy inventing a world more than running in it.

I've played my box of Senet that I got for the KS1 history "Egypt" a damn sight more than six times.

@Taskerland @RogerBW

Scratch any grog complaining about Monopoly and you'll usually bring up some weird old family wound about being beaten by an elder brother at it 30 years earlier and all games since "haven't used the proper acquisition rules"

Then they'll go post about their players on Dragonsfoot.

@Taskerland @RogerBW

@Printdevil @Taskerland Well, I'd say I feel seen, but I don't think I have any old wounds and I tend to look at the game's history (and the fact that the other half, the variant designed not to be boring, was ignored when it was stolen). And to be fair I don't tend to talk or even think about Monopoly unless someone else brings up the subject.

I don't enjoy monopoly either but there's a definite pathology about it amongst grogs

@RogerBW @Taskerland

@Printdevil Weird thing is that Diplomacy is one of the well-springs from which RPGs originally formed but grogs aren't all that interested in it. Too much talking. @RogerBW

@Taskerland Full sympathies and understanding. I do you hope you keep up some RPG writing about your own group's experiences, though!

Diplomacy, Credo, there are/were lots of talky games, but I think the talking wasn't as interesting as war-dollies, t-shirts, smelling of stale companioniship and carry outs.

@Taskerland @RogerBW

@Printdevil @Taskerland @RogerBW Is it the talking? or the deviousness and counter-plotting?

@Taskerland @Printdevil For my group, a campaign is a maximum of two three hour sessions. We will revisit a game but usually with new characters.