Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Dungeons & Dragons: Real Life Edition (2nd review)
Dungeons & Dragons: Real Life Edition[edit]
Heavily revised this from the previous edition. I think this might finally be feature-worthy. I would just like a review of the main page, not the subpages, please. Review away. —Unführer Guildy Ritter von Guildensternenstein 00:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
- I'm doing a review so bugger off
- and any rumours that I may be just holding this for ransom until Guildensternenstein completes the review of Isaac the Tank Engine is libellous and the fact that I'm in here while he's in there is completely coincidental and in no way should be seen as a... aw, slap it, nobody would believe me anyway!
- Pup
Despite the fact that he can't spell humour correctly, I've liberated Boomer's template for this article. Everything below is purely "In My Humble Opinion." I had a humility badge once, but they took it away from me because I wore it. Pup
| Concept, which must be the basis of your article if I'm using this template: |
8.5 | It's a fantastic concept, hence the reason I'm using this template. As I've said elsewhere I'm going to go through all of the Dungeons & Dragons: Real Life Edition pages as part of this review, not that I'm reviewing them all, but as they all feed back into this main page.
Having said that, my major beef with the concept is that for this for be feature worthy, this means that all of the Dungeons & Dragons: Real Life Edition pages need to be feature worthy, or at least of a significantly high standard. The reason I'm saying that is that this page by itself will not stand alone, but as part of an overarching series of pages. In fact the reality is that this is not a page on its own, but more a central menu for a bunch of sub-pages. (Of course we write for the pure joy and artistic merit, not for any vain and hollow attempts at getting VFH.) So although you and I know what I'm talking about, for the benefit of the uninitiated we have:-
So where I'd like to see this change somewhat in terms of concept is to see these four articles rolled into the one. Yes, I know that what I'm talking about is somewhere in the vicinity of 9,862 words (I counted every one by hand), but what you've done here is written the equivalent of the Players Handbook. And if I get my D&D terms stuffed up, then forgive me but I have the original pressing of the basic D&D rules here along with the AD&D 1st edition stuff, but nothing 2nd edition or beyond. (What, you mean PuppyOnTheRadio is a closet nerd. Gasp!) Now this means that you could have this as an UnBook, but to be honest I think people have a tendency to scrutinise the quality on UnBooks, UnScripts and UnNews a little less then they do the main space, so on a personal level I'd be less inclined to do that as this does have feature potential. Of course that leaves us with the question of whether this will be too long. As a comparison with a few other featured articles: God, Internet, and Canada are all about 6,500 words long; Kitten Huffing is about 7,200; Ireland is about 9,500; Doctor Who and Japan clock in at about 11,000 words. I would say that the length of what you have at the moment could make one very significantly long article, but still feature worthy (but more on length below.) So overall: Two legs bad, concept good. (Bloody chickens!) |
| Humor, without a second u, because I'm American: |
8.5 | Overview
Imagine a world of disgruntled office workers, petty criminals, and pimpled nerds. Imagine a world of endless traffic jams, greasy fast food, and monotonous deskwork. Imagine a world of paying rent, reading the newspaper, and picking up your children from daycare. Can I just say that I adore this intro? It sets up the tone of the piece perfectly, explains the concept in extremely simple language, remains true to the Gary Gygax way of over-doing everything. It is also typical of the humour throughout the entire article.
If I have a complaint here is that there seems to be a gap between the intro and here that needs something in it. Maybe something related to the history of the game, the development, the setting. D&D was inspired by Lord of the Rings, what is the inspiration for this game? Sex and the City? Constitution determines how long you can last in physical activity - wouldn't this be a more appropriate place for a sex joke than strength? Also the middle sentence under intelligence steals some of the thunder from the joke. It turns what could work as zippy repetition into redundancy. And no Comeliness? Or has that been done away with after the 50th edition?
This bit struck me as being a little dull, and almost just a plain fact. The inclusion of "Suck" is good, but not enough of a laugh to justify this section. Either this needs expanding to have examples, more of a play around the levels of competency, or it needs nixxing.
I love it. I wouldn't change this section much if at all. The only thing I'd be tempted to do is extend the description of each of these by about another sentence.
Again I like this first section. Snappy and punchy all at once. I'd be tempted to remove the expletive because it's not needed in here to make the joke work, but that's a personal thing.
I would make a slight amendment to this, but this is based upon my own experiences of playing D&D. You roll the character, fudge the figures, get everything where you want it, show it to the DM, who then decides that your character is too powerful, summarily halves all your attribute/ability scores (because he can), while at the same time rolling for his own NPC's abilities on a 1d6+12. "In many places within this text we will use the masculine pronoun "he" rather than he/she or any other variant. You should assume that wherever the word "he" is used we're talking about a male. Usually adolescent. And wearing glasses."
I would possibly or at least give player the option of a random generated race, where it's a 1d100 roll, representing the level of melanin, where 01-10 is White Folks and 90-100 is Negro and options in between. I'd also have a look at a few other Uncyclopedia sites that you can direct traffic to while I was at it. I'd probably have Feather Indian point here myself. The better the article that you lead to the better your article will look as a result. Oh, and as this is where I would insert the Character Races sub-sheet, I'll throw that in here in regards to the review. Character Races This intro is very similar to the one in Overview, so if you are to bring this all together then I would combine the two intros and cut them down a bit to keep it snappy. I don't think this intro works as well as the other BTW. The humour here is good, racial stereotyping stuff. It sits comfortably on the nicer side of the racism line. Only minor changes that I'd be looking at here.
As you've already worked out no doubt I'm lumping these two together. In this case I prefer the intro you have in Character Classes or the one in Overview, but both of them lack a certain oomph facter. I'm not going to go into depth on the character classes, except to say that you've created 4 "meta classes" and then broken that down into 16 "sub-classes." That's a lot to go through. In fact I'd say it's too much to go through, and I did have trouble going through it all. The problem is that once you've gone through five of them it becomes very monotonous. The only other thing I'll say is "No one reads the flavor text anyway." Actually I usually skip past the stats and go straight to the flavour text and then go back to the stats later.
A slight problem that we have in continuity here is that while in the Overview you have Moral Alignment as "Good, Evil and Unaligned" in the Alignments & Deities you have the Moral Alignment as "Good, Evil and Neutral." Although minor this did break the continuity of the comic reality somewhat. Another thing that I will mention here actually comes from my own Role-playing experiences. In RL there is no such thing as a fixed alignment, and people will be chameleons in regards to what their moral standard is at any given moment. I have been known in the pat to be a teensy bit critical of people for their religious beliefs, but by the same token I have friends who have those beliefs and I don't criticise them for it. If this is an IRL version of D&D, then there should be a nod to the fact that a character can change their alignment at any given time whenever they want to. To be honest playing without Alignment restrictions actually improves gameplay of most of the games I have played. (But of course I would say that. I am Chaotic Good after all.)
I would be inclined to re-order this section into "far left - left - unaligned - right - far right" rather than the way it is now. But having said that, I have no major issues with this section. What I would look at though is a couple of minor edits.
I like them short, sharp and punchy. Much like a midget dominatrix.
There is one issue which I have with this section, and that is that it is too American. Of those mentioned, the ones that are truly international are Obama, Hilary, Oprah, Springer, and Johnny Depp. Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin I would have recognised the names of, but not been able to give you much details about. Peyton Manning, I have to say, is a name that wouldn't have registered on my radar at all. Having said that knowledge of who these are is not essential to the understanding and appreciation of the humour behind it all. Again I won't go into depth on these, except to say how dare you say those things about our God and saviour, Johnny Depp. He was marvellous in Lost in La Mancha. So having gone through all that I now feel the need to justify the scoring on this and the last section. So I'll say that according to PRG 8 is more than adequate:, might be VFH, and 9 is way above average, probably VFH. I wouldn't go as far as saying that is is way above average, but I wouldn't go so low as calling it simply more than adequate. So it's a fraction in between somewhere. |
| Your spelling and grammar, which probably sucks: |
8 | I noticed a couple of glitches in grammar or words choice more than anything. I'm going to make a few suggestions in regards to what could improve layout, but all in all no issues as such.
The contents box is a nightmare. Not so much in Overview, Races, or Deities, but when going into classes I've had to hit page down four times in order to get to the text itself. To be honest this is what has dropped your score down more than anything else. It takes what is a good layout when you get into the article itself and drops it down to below standard. Why not nix the TOC and use a menu similar to the menu template for PEE reviews, or something else that will keep it nice and compact. Or have a TOC that only goes to level 2 headers and then sub-TOCs under each level 2 header. In regards to the same layout for the same thing over and over again. Why don't you use a template? D&D is based upon templates, even going back to Basic D&D in 1974 used the same repetitve layout to describe classes, monsters, etc. I had a quick look here and they have a few templates that are easy enough to steal and modify to whatever you need to have them say. (I have to say that they have beaten you to the punch on this one. Check out the name of the featured article, and the caption on that image.) |
| Images, or lack of: | 7.5 | I do love the image of the cover of the player's handbook. That conveys the humour of the article again in a simple snapshot. It's fantastic.
In regards to the other images, they all do what they are meant to do, but in many cases they dominate the article rather than enhance the article. (Again if you use a template for aspects of the articles that might clean that up somewhat.) I'd be looking at right aligning them if they're not already, and dropping the size down to about 65-75% of what they are at the moment. I'm a little confused with the image under Ideological Alignment. Although I understand what it is trying to portray, it;s not in line with the text that it relates to, and it's waaay too big. I'd also expect that given you've used images for all the different classes and all the different races, why not for all the different Ideological Alignments? The other thing I'll pick on here is the use of stock images with the watermarks still on. Ignoring the obvious copyright issue there, the watermarks detract from what you're trying to sell me. When I was playing with Six Hats I |
| Miscellaneous, not averaged, despite what some would have you believe: |
8.5 | Again, we're sitting somewhere between the "might be" and "probably" feature worthy status here. |
| Final Score, totaled, as most would have you believe: |
41 | As for the overall score, feel free to add or subtract a few points from the result in your mind, as I'd changed them a few times along the way here. I definitely feel that this has feature potential. If I didn't would I have spent this much time reading, re-reading, researching and generally pontificating about it?
Now you've given me one other issue here. I usually do a comparison between the length of my review and the length of the article being reviewed. As I've reviewed one article but that has led me to cover four different articles, have I written a ratio of 4:5, or a ratio of 4:1. |
| Me: | Pup | |