RPGPundit hates Isle of the Unknown.

[benoist]

Apr 28, 2014 15:28:07 GMT -6 kent said:

We agree that a writer needs independent appreciation to believe his work is worthwhile. Above you say, "it's got nothing to do with the number of sales or "hails" in my mind". And I have said the population is too small to provide insightful reviewers. So what form of evaluation is left to make the effort of presenting ideas worthwhile?

Actual play.

That is the only true measure of anything of merit in gaming. If you have one guy out there who can better grasp what a setting like Aione (sp?) is about and spin it on his own, as his own thing where his own creativity gets into the wheels of the machine and makes it, in effect, his or her own universe, and that the people at the game table get to have fun in the process, then that is the only value of any consequence to gaming. Some people don't have the desire to share these types of things, don't see any potential benefit from it, their gaming is their own and they don't care to spread the love, that is all fine, but usually these people also have the common sense and courtesy to realize others might care. What's more, I'd expect they wouldn't try to improvise themselves authorities on the subjects of intellect and creativity applied to games, since they haven't done anything of the sort themselves, and therefore only demonstrate personal deficiencies in both areas of claimed expertise.

[rpgpundit]

And yet, your chosen response to my review was argumentative and childish. Hmm, fancy that.

[cadriel]

Apr 28, 2014 15:02:01 GMT -6 rpgpundit said:

Your garbage, on the other hand, was just an island full of one-time mutations that make no sense and have no point.

I cut out everything that wasn't an argument in the RPGPundit's post, and this is what was left. Everything else is bombast.

This claim is factually false. On the face of it, Geoffrey's book contains five types of elements - chimeric creatures, magic-users, clerics, statues, and towns. The RPGPundit's entire argument about the book is essentially that he doesn't like the creatures. And that's his right, but it's simply not factually true that Isle of the Unknown contains only "one-time mutations."

There is some elaboration on the argument that follows:

Bledsaw's one-liners cover everything that's needed. Your three sentence entries are woefully inadequate, on the other hand, because there's no coherence to any of what you've done. Incoherent monsters in an incoherent environment that have no coherent versimilitude.

Again, these claims are simply not true. Simply looking at the full-page pictures will reveal that the magic-users are themed according to the Zodiac. The clerics are plainly based on medieval Crusader orders. The statues clearly take inspiration from Greek and Roman mythology. You're free not to like any of it, but to state that there is simply an "incoherent environment" is false on the face of it. There are pretty clear themes expressed in the book; even the chimeric creatures, being consistently animal-based, reflect a basic level of coherence not far below that of the Wilderlands.

I don't mind if people don't like the book. I do, and opinions differ. But stating that it's just a bunch of random creatures is saying something fundamentally false about the book. It presents several different and clearly themed types of elements. It's fair to say you would rather have had strong, explicit connections between these elements, but Geoffrey has made it abundantly clear that this is how he likes his RPG products.

[rpgpundit]

None of what you presented there makes an argument for coherence. Its just a handful of repetitive encounters that have no foundation. If I made an island of hexes and populated them with creatures that are fruit/nut hybrids, statues of NBA all-stars, and Illusionists based on characters from the Legion of Superheroes, that doesn't somehow magically equal a credible setting.

Isle of Dread is a credible hexcrawl sandbox, for example... but oh, wait, it was published in nineteen EIGHTY-one, meaning it fails certain asses "Old-school litmus test".

(the Wilderlands are a credible sandbox setting too, but again, it is because all of what is there makes sense and can have a directly-inferred purpose)

And again, before any idiot starts claiming its that I don't like Gonzo, even the setting of the TV show "Adventure Time" is a credible setting, regardless of being very high on the Gonzo scale, because again there is a consistency and construction to the world in question. There is no such glue binding the Isle of the Unknown. It could have been randomly generated by a computer program written in BASIC by a nine-year-old.

[Zulgyan]

RPGPundit, you should seek psychiatric attention.

Organizing this sort of lynching of someone else on the internet over an RPG product, your sadistic enjoyment of the fray you are trying to create, your aggresive and violent language (totally unnesesary for making your legit point), and your megalomaniac remarks, is showing of a deeply f**ked up mind. I pity you.

Get help.

[Finarvyn]

And it's a lock. Thanks for pissing all over my boards, folks.