Review some SJG roleplaying products!

[Polydamas]

I see that there are now two reviews of GURPS Aliens: Sparrials by blindmapmaker and Ravensnpennies. My own plans are proceeding as I have foreseen. Lets keep going!

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm a little torn about if its best to review the core books in the system or the supplements.

I think that reviewing anything, and placing it anywhere that search engines can index, is better than nothing!

[DouglasCole]

I'm going to be doing a very detailed review of the GURPS Action series. My first post, covering Action 1: Heroes (Introduction), is up.

[Peter Knutsen]

Reviews on personal blogs, or system-specific blogs, or even more so personal and system-specific blogs, are less visible than blogs on generalist RPG sites such as rpg.net. And I do think findability is an issue.

At least, 6-7 years ago when I tried to find reviews of certain GURPS Traveller products, I kept finding lots of sites wanting to sell me those products and very few actual reviews.

[johndallman]

Reviewing on Amazon and other bookselling sites may be quite worthwhile.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Reviewing on Amazon and other bookselling sites may be quite worthwhile.

Maybe. Or such reviews might drown in the masses. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there turns out to be a many ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch-type people who have a lot to say specifically about GURPS, on Amazon US and Amazon UK.

I also imagine that reviews on Amazon (either UK or US - I don't think they share reviews) are linked to one specific database item, and sometimes the same RPG books can exist several times in the database... No. I think something like rpg.net is actually optimal, if you guys want to promote your system of choice.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

While Compact Castles is sold through Warehouse 23 and written by someone who has written for SJ Games, it is not itself an SJ Games product.

True dat but it's very cool and everyone should buy it.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

True dat but it's very cool and everyone should buy it.

Well, obviously.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Maybe. Or such reviews might drown in the masses. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there turns out to be a many ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch-type people who have a lot to say specifically about GURPS, on Amazon US and Amazon UK.

I've glanced at reviews of my books and not seen that, or not enough to have a sense of it as a recurring theme.

[Polydamas]

Search engine optimization is an occult art. While I suspect that placing reviews on sites which rank highly for the correct keyword or which have many roleplayers browsing them is better than sticking them in the comments to an alfalfa farmer's blog about cats, I don't feel like speculating about the best possible location is as good a use of my time as actually writing reviews. It is not as if there are already hundreds of reviews of a typical roleplaying product available on Warehouse 23 and I want mine to hit the first page of Google results.

Large online booksellers sound like a reasonable place to post reviews.

I suspect that if Peter was having trouble finding reviews, that was because those reviews did not exist (and bookselling sites usually have "review" somewhere on their page for a product even if it is just the label of an empty section or a button "write a review!")

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Large online booksellers sound like a reasonable place to post reviews.

Absolutely. Some people turn to Amazon for reviews and then buy at a physical store. Amazon as a research destination cannot be overlooked.

And we can even turn to Amazon to get an idea of positioning in the overall market. If we look at D&D5e, Pathfinder, and GURPS sales at Amazon we find:

Player's Handbook - #228 in books
Pathfinder - 4,658 in books
GURPS Characters - #49,201 in books