Hello all, before I begin this is an article I'd like to make some points in reference to this article. This was wrote so as to encourage people to review scenarios and campaigns and make the Blacksmith a better place.
Let me point out a few things. Reviewer's review, so as to help other people. Receiving emails about your reviewing saying thanks for taking the time to comment on someone's work is probably the best part of the job. By reviewing a persons work you give them a chance of further improving their work or making a better piece of work next time around. Reviewing a designers work and watching there next release improve on there weaknesses from before is good, in that you know you have helped someone. Reviewing different peoples work is a great way to improve your own designs, seeing what works and doesn't is a great way of refining your own work and making you don't make the same mistakes. A review should always be set out well. This makes it easier to read and makes it possible to navigate it easily. All reviews should have clearly defined sections. Leaving a line free between sections helps do this and takes no more effort, honest! Adding an introduction to reviewing someone's work is a great way for beginning a review. In an introduction you can briefly describe what you are doing in the game and who the main characters are. "Aztec Insolence " is a campaign based in the Yucutan jungle. Here you follow the exploits of General Phinexa and Cozla. This tells you where the campaign is set and whom the campaign is based around. At the end of a review it is a good idea to sum up an authors work. You could do this my saying: - Overall: This campaign is a solid piece of work, if it was not for a particularly hard final objective, this would be worthy of a download from anyone. This includes both some good and bad about a campaign/scenario. Try never to be only having negative opinions about a person's work, this doesn't encourage a player to continue making a campaign at all and may stop him designing altogether! Which is definitely not a good thing. Taking the time to go through your work and spell check it before submitting your review is very good. Nobody would like to see someone criticise a person's work for poor spelling when the reviewer's grammar is no better. Spending time checking spellings is always a good idea and makes the review seem more professional and look like a lot of time has been spent on it. Paragraphs are important for seeing where talking about one part of someone's design stops and talking about another part of the design begins. Paragraphs also contribute to the presentation of a review, naturally everyone wants there work to look good why not a review as well? Event some of the weaker submissions in the blacksmith have at least one good thing about them. Even the "Best of Aok" creations aren't perfect, all campaigns have something bad in them just as all bad scenarios have something good in them. All designers aim to make the perfect campaign, this is impossible as sooner or later someone will come along and make a better campaign than you. Try to be positive and suggest ways of improving such as visiting other sights and perhaps downloading releases in the "Best of Aok" section as to see what features make a good piece of work and gain ideas. Hopefully, this article has inspired at least one person to give reviewing a chance. Reviewing is good both for your own designs, assuming you design scenarios/campaigns and for helping other people. Lets make the reviews in the Blacksmith better and make the Blacksmith better than ever! P.S. I tried sending this to Rasher but got a returned email.
Reviews are in effect, a way of voicing your opinion on someone's work. Reviews serve two purposes, reviews first purpose, and in my eyes more important feature is to help the author improve in his designing. The final purpose of reviews is to help the downloader decide whether or not to download the author's release.
The author should get other peoples views on his work; this will help him to improve his work next time around. Knowing people have spent time to comment on your work is inspiring and makes you want to make a better design next time around.
An example of this could be: -
Here you have the chance to get your opinion about a campaign across. With view you should also include a description of why you felt a part of the campaign was too hard/easy.
Saying: -
"This campaign was very hard, I never completed it!"
is not what to do.
This is a better way of showing the difficulty of a campaign: -
" This campaign was hard throughout, there was a lot of enemy units and the balance between strengths of your men and the enemies was greatly im-balanced."
Thanks goes to
Discworld Designer!
MY DESIGNS:-] 2002PTC Honourable mention, collaboration with Qazitory
Troll Bridge v1.3, Dragons Lair v1.1
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