The following article suggests little things that you can with regard to the formatting & informational content of your review to improve it & also make it more long-lasting.
Use Simple HTML
We do allow HTML in our reviews, so please feel free to add just a little bit of HTML to your text to improve its readability. If nothing else, bold and italics can help a lot if used carefully. If you're unfamiliar with HTML, you just mark anything that you want to be formatted with a pair of "tags" in angle brackets, a start tag at the begin and an /end tag at the end. Here are a few common examples:
- <b>bold</b>
- <i>italics</i>
- <a href="http://www.rpg.net">link to RPGnet</a>
Here's a reference on HTML; you'll never need to worry about the headers or the paragraphing in a RPGnet review, as the system takes care of those, but scroll down to look at the "Elements usually placed in the body element".
Two last pieces of advice. First, use HTML sparingly. Nothing can make a review look ugly as quickly as too much bold or too many hyperlinks. Second, please don't let MS Word create your HTML, as it adds on all kinds of style and header tags that will make a mash of your review.
Break Up Your Review
First, always be sure to use paragraphs well. A long scroll of unbroken text is the best way to ensure that your review doesn't get read. Just mark paragraphs with two returns and the review formatter will take care of the rest.
Second, if your review is at least several paragraphs long, consider using headers to break it up. This can be done with <b>bold</b> tags or header tags like <h3> or <h2>. (The headers in this particular article are all <h3>.)
The exact headers that you'll want to use will vary based on the content of your review, but here are a few examples of reviews using headers:
- Appearance, Setting, System, Summary - headers for an RPG System review, as seen in this review of Dreamwalker.
- Appearance, chapter-by-chapter Content, Final Analysis - headers for an RPG System review, as seen in this review of Fantasy Hero.
- Introduction, Overview, Comments, Verdict - headers for an RPG Adventure review, as seen in this review of Carved in Stone.
- Components, Game Play, Game Design, Conclusion - headers for a Board Game review, as seen in this review of Attack!.
The idea isn't to necessarily to go copy any of these header formats,
but rather to make sure that your own review is organized by topic and
has headers, as you see fit.
Double Check Product Lines
Similarly, please try and make sure the product line name is accurate and matches what people have used in the past. This is because the product line is used to list "Related Reviews" on each review page. If yours doesn't match, people won't get to read your review when a new review is written for the same product line.
Most typically, the name of the product line should not include the genre category of the game (e.g., "Call of Cthulhu", not "Call of Cthulhu RPG"). Generally, try not to use an edition number unless there's been a big change from one ed. to another.
The absolute best way to find the best product line name is to sample through the database and see what's been recently used.
Include Publisher Information
Finally, if you include as much of the additional information as you can (ISBN, product number, price, etc.) the hard work you did writing the text of your review will be that much more useful. Typically, you can get all of this info by consulting the publisher's web site.
The ISBN is particularly helpful because it's less inconsistent than a product name (as discussed above), and so people will be much more likely to read your review on partner sites like Pen & Paper, which link it our databases on a product-by-product base. Enter ISBNs with hyphens, as they usually appear.
Finally, with all that said, a big thank you for contributing to the RPGnet Review Database!
